A day after House Republican leaders failed to find support for their budget package, a bipartisan proposal in the Senate found easy seas and was overwhelmingly approved.
The House budget is floundering, as leaders attempt to persuade four Republicans to switch their votes when the chamber reconsiders the general appropriations bill May 22. On May 15, the bill, H2781, was defeated 27-31.
The next day, months of negotiation on the Senate’s budget culminated with the approval of a $10.6 billion spending package. The main budget bill, which passed 24-6, was negotiated among Republicans, Democrats and Gov. Janet Napolitano.
Senate leaders say the next move is to negotiate with House leadership to reconcile differences between the two budgets. “I imagine we will be meeting with the House leadership and the governor together to resolve our differences,” Senate President Tim Bee said.
The House budget spends about $91 million less than the Senate budget. Chief among the differences are a large tax cut package in the House plan — $63 million compared to the Senate’s $7 million — and the Senate’s inclusion of $46 million to set a $33,000 salary minimum for all teachers. The House proposal would provide the same amount of money, but not establish it be used to create a minimum salary level.
The House budget also spends $48 million less on health and welfare programs than does the Senate.
In the House, Majority Leader Tom Boone, R-4, blamed a Democrat amendment attached to the bill during floor debate for the budget’s failure, Speaker Jim Weiers said he didn’t know why the bill was rejected.
“You never know what’s going to be up there,” he said. “There’s a lot of people that are noncommittal when it comes to where they’re going to be and they say, ‘We’ll tell you when we get to the [vote].’”
The Democrat amendment removed a provision from the bill that would have transferred $62 million from the general construction account to the State Transportation Acceleration Needs, or STAN, account to speed construction of highways. Democrats and a handful of Republicans supported the amendment because it would allow rural areas to receive more money.
Mason: lawmakers had ‘little time’ to evaluate budget
One House Republican said she voted against the bill because her leaders tried to fast-track the bills and left little time for lawmakers to evaluate the budget proposal and debate it.
“The process, I thought, was horrible,” Rep. Lucy Mason, R-1, said after the vote. “My vote was a vote against the rush as much as anything else. I found that the process was lacking.”
She particularly objected to the lack of analysis of various amendments and blamed the hurried pace of the process.
“When we have amendments that are going to be coming on in a couple of hours and we haven’t had a chance to actually look at them, when you’ve got Republicans and Democrats putting amendments on and you don’t have full analysis of either one,” she said. “I think it was a very broad-brush approach and I find that disturbing.
“You need to have the opportunity to address specific issues and find out what the policy is that’s related to those line items. A lot of that was missing.”
House Minority Leader Phil Lopes, D-27, said it’s unclear what the next step in passing a budget will be, but said he still supports the Senate budget package, which includes the input of House Democrats.
Weiers said the House was “still committed” to working with the Senate on negotiating a compromise between the two plans.
House Republicans opposing the bill on the vote were: Andy Biggs, R-22; Jennifer Burns, R-25; Eddie Farnsworth, R-22; Trish Groe, R-3; Pete Hershberger, R-26; and Mason.
While the House budget was crafted by Republican leadership, the Senate budget was forged through several months of meetings among Republican and Democrat leaders. Bee said he decided early on to work with Democrats and the governor because it would be better for the state’s bottom line.
“It’s been my experience down here during the last four years with Governor Napolitano that, as the Republican majority negotiated a budget, almost every year that budget was vetoed and then we would come back to the table with the Democrats to negotiate another final budget and ultimately the spending was much greater, I believe, than what a one-round negotiation would produce,” he said. “I believe that this negotiation has produced a very lean budget that still addresses the needs of the state.”