A state budget is in the offing, as legislative leaders and the governor have agreed to a compromise between a pair of budgets approved last month by the House of Representatives and the Senate.
“The Senate and the House have come very, very close to an agreement on the budget,” House Speaker Jim Weiers announced on the floor June 14, adding there were still a few loose ends.
Despite the agreement, which was reached after negotiators met until nearly 11 p.m. the day before, a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing to act on the budget bills June 14 was cancelled to allow the final language of the budget to be drafted and approved by the negotiators. The meeting was expected to be rescheduled for June 18.
House Minority Leader Phil Lopes, D-27, said he expected his caucus would support the final budget, barring any changes before the Legislature reconvenes June 18.
“If the details come out the way the agreement was, I can live with it,” he said.
Republican and Democrat leaders from both chambers, along with representatives from Gov. Janet Napolitano’s office, have been negotiating a budget compromise since late May, when the House and Senate approved separate budgets. Talks intensified in early June when the Legislature took several days off to allow legislative leaders to meet uninterrupted.
Republican Sen. Robert Burns, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he was glad an accord had finally been reached after several weeks of negotiations.
“It’s way overdue — it’s past time to be done,” the District 9 Republican said.
Details
Very little is known about the specifics of the budget accord, but two lawmakers close to the negotiations independently confirmed several details:
• The budget will be about $10.6 billion in spending and tax cuts.
• The budget will include $10 million in new tax cuts. The Senate’s budget originally called for $7 million in business property tax cuts, while the House’s plan contained $63 million, including a tax credit for donating to college savings plans. The budget will retain the Senate’s business tax cuts, though it remains to be seen what the remaining $3 million will be used for.
• There will be no extension of the deadline to claim tax credits for donations made to provide private school scholarships. The House budget had called for extending the annual deadline from Dec. 31 to April 15 to encourage more donations.
• The budget will include $25 million per year for the next four years for the 21st Century Fund, which is designed to make timely investments in new medical, scientific, and engineering research programs to stimulate the high-tech economy in the state.
• A KidsCare “gag rule” law preventing schools from telling students about publicly funded health care programs will be removed.
• State employees will receive a 3.25 percent pay raise, as included in the original Senate budget; the House had sought the same amount of money for employee pay increases, but wanted a portion of the raise to be tied to performance.
• The budget will retain the Senate’s $9 million appropriation to increase child care subsidies given to working mothers; the House budget originally contained no funding for an increase.
Details on the budget are scarce because legislative leaders said they would not discuss actual components of the budget — with the media or with other lawmakers — until the deal has been finalized.
“Let me just say it has been very effective in the past when we meet with the members prior to having the press…[find out] what the details are,” Senate President Tim Bee said.
Even still, several House Republicans were unhappy their fiscal priorities were not going to be included in the final budget. Rep. Jonathan Paton, R-30, said an increase to a tax exemption for federal and state retirees he was angling for was left out of the prospective final version. The proposal, he said, would have cost less than $2 million.
“It’s important because I’ve got a lot of retirees in my district,” he said. “I’m going to keep pushing it — I don’t quit.”
Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, R-22, said the concerns of the House Republican caucus were not going to be addressed in the final version. He said the caucus pushed hard for significant tax cuts, school choice reforms and oversight over government spending on education and social welfare programs.
“It doesn’t represent the budget that was passed over here [in May],” he said.
Farnsworth was also critical of his leadership’s decision not to give details of the budget to the caucus immediately.
“I wish we would remove the gag order on leadership,” he said, referring to the budget’s removal of a similar provision for schools.