Special Session Update: Week Eight – Time to Decide (or Not)

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Arizona House and Senate reconvene at 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday, beginning the eighth week of the Special Session. The Arizona Capitol Times reports that there has been no progress since 5-way talks began last Friday.

The Accidental Governor has until the end of Wednesday to either sign or veto the budget package sent to her last week — unless the Legislature adjourns sine die today or tomorrow; this would extend the time the Accidental Governor has to act on bills sitting on her desk for another ten days. If there are genuine bipartisan negotiations underway, this may be what occurs today.

Democratic lawmakers are making a last-minute push to convince Gov. Jan Brewer to veto the budget on her desk. Democrats urge Brewer to veto proposed budget:

[Democrats] are telling Brewer if she gives them additional time, they can come up with a budget acceptable to her and, more to the point, one their members can support — including her demand that voters be given a chance to temporarily hike the state sales tax.

Senate Minority Leader Jorge Garcia, D-Tucson, said, though, that can’t happen by the end of the day Wednesday. That’s the constitutional deadline Brewer has to decide whether to sign the budget package sent to her by GOP lawmakers last week.

But gubernatorial press aide Paul Senseman said Monday his boss is getting equal pressure from Republicans who want Brewer to sign the budget they already approved. That includes permanently and immediately repealing the state property tax.

Senate President Bob Burns, R-Peoria, said if the governor goes along, he and House Speaker Kirk Adams, R-Mesa, will continue to work on ways to refer the temporary sales tax hike to the ballot.

Senseman isn’t saying which way the governor is leaning.

Senate Minority Leader Jorge Garcia, D-Tucson, said if Brewer signs the bills on her desk she can kiss her sales tax referral goodbye.

“If she signs the revenue part of the budget, she’s lost any clout to get her referral,” Garcia said. At that point, he said, “there won’t be enough Republicans to support it” since they already will have gotten the tax cut they wanted.

Conversely, Garcia said, once the tax is no longer up for negotiation, Brewer loses leverage to try to pick up Democratic votes.

House Minority Leader David Lujan, D-Phoenix, said it’s going to take more than restoring the property tax to convince Democrats to support a sales tax hike. "[T]hat’s not the only thing it would take to get our votes,” Lujan said. “We have significant concerns about the underlying budget.”

There are other deadlines looming adding to the pressure to get a budget done. Governor is facing legislators' pressure, budgetary deadline

The pressure on her comes as state Treasurer Dean Martin took the first steps Monday to ask banks to provide up to a $3 billion line of credit for the state. He said that with or without a balanced budget, Arizona is going to need money to pay the bills that come due at a time when it has no cash in hand. Even in the best case, he said, the state will need access to at least $1.5 billion.

But the treasurer said the banks told him, as he suspected last week, that they aren't likely to open the till until Brewer signs a balanced budget into law.

"They told us, 'We really don't think you'll survive underwriting or risk management without a balanced budget because you have to be able to show how you're going to pay us back. And you can't do that without a balanced budget,'" Martin said.

Another deadline facing the state Wednesday deals with the Legislature's effort to repeal the state property tax. Officials in the two largest counties say they need to send tax bills to the printer this week if they are to get them in the mail in time to get them to property owners ahead of the Oct. 1 deadline to pay.

County supervisors have already approved tax rates that include the state levy but are delaying sending property owners their bills to see if the state portion is repealed.

How this all will play out in our highly dysfunctional state government is anyone's guess at this point.

UPDATE: In a move designed to give Gov. Jan Brewer more time to negotiate budget bills, the Legislature adjourned sine die the special session on Tuesday. Ariz. budget is again in the hands of governor

The abrupt action buys 10 more days, until Sept. 5, for the Republican governor to work out a budget agreement behind closed doors, this time with Democrats joining Republican leaders at the bargaining table. Brewer gets 10 days before she has to sign the bills, veto them or let them become law without her signature. She was hopeful a revised budget plan could be found before that 10-day window closes.

A bipartisan compromise budget agreement would require another special session before it could be approved. To get the sales-tax election, the governor must call lawmakers back to session.

By late Tuesday, the legislative Web site already was set up to accept bills for the fourth special session of the year. Lawmakers also were told to be ready to return to the Capitol.

Democrats, who had been left out of earlier budget negotiations, said they are hopeful a bipartisan budget agreement can be reached in the next 10 days, especially since budget talks with Brewer were continuing even as the lawmakers were going home Tuesday.