Lawmakers will try to sift through the maze that is the federal economic recovery package in hearings this week, with Senate committees dissecting individual components of the stimulus plan and their potential impact on the state budget.   

Other committees will continue their scrutiny of state programs and agencies, a part of crafting the fiscal year 2010 budget and possibly amending again the fiscal year 2009 budget.

The Senate Public Safety and Human Services Committee will review on March 4 money available for social programs, particularly the funds for food stamps, foster care and adoption, elderly nutrition, and child-care subsidies, a potential clash point.

That same day, the Healthcare and Medical Liability Reform Committee will look into the federal medical assistance percentage (FMAP) increase in the stimulus package.

Also, the Senate Finance Committee will tackle the tax credits offered in the federal act, specifically discussing the following items:

• withholding tax reduction
• child tax credit
• higher education tax credit
• first-time homebuyer tax credit
• earned income tax credit
• renewable energy tax credit
• bonus depreciation

Sen. Jim Waring, Finance Committee chairman, pushed to hold the tax credits presentation last week. But the legislative staff was not prepared; understanding the 1,000 page-plus federal document continues to be a challenge.

"The fact that we have very bright people working on it who haven't been able to piece it together in now almost two weeks – that's how hodgepodge it was," Waring said.

The Senate Education Accountability and Reform Committee held a brief presentation of the stimulus plan's education component last week, but it expects a more detailed analysis and will tackle the subject anew on March. 4.

In addition, the committee will also look into teacher quality in the state.

 Then on Thursday, the Senate Retirement and Rural Development Committee will study the rural housing and utilities services portion of the stimulus plan.

 Meanwhile, other committees will continue the hearings on state agencies and programs, part of efforts to close up to $3 billion in budget deficit next year.

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday will look into the Department of Public Safety's crime laboratories.

Then on Tuesday, the Senate Appropriations Committee will hear from the Secretary of State, Office of Tourism, Arizona Department of Agriculture, Arizona State Lottery Commission, Government Information Technology Agency, Department of Revenue and Arizona Department of Transportation.

 The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a.k.a. stimulus package, has remained a maze to Arizona's lawmakers two weeks after it was passed by Congress.

The Legislature's budget analysts have spent hours pouring over the 1,000-page plus document, but even to them many questions remain unanswered.

 There is ambiguity in the language, which means the state has to wait for more guidelines from federal agencies to get those answers.

 This, in turn, delays the process of crafting the fiscal year 2010 budget or of fixing – again – the fiscal year 2009 budget.

 Sen. Thayer Verschoor, a Republican from Gilbert, exemplified this frustration in an interview recently.

"What are the procedures to draw down these funds? What is the procedure to qualify for these funds?" he said.

"Is the governor controlling the funds? Are some of the funds going directly to projects in the cities and the counties? Does the governor have to approve of those projects or do the cities just apply directly?" he added.

 And the Gilbert Republican was just warming up.

 In areas where thresholds or matching funds are required to draw down the federal dollars, how does the governor control the stimulus money when it would depend on whether the Legislature, which appropriate state funds, matches them? Verschoor also wondered.

Questions about procedures aside, the emerging sentiment among lawmakers from both side of the political aisle is that the state would accept the money. Arizona, which faces up to $3 billion in budget gap, needs the help.

The debate will center on which portions of the federal spending to accept.

 Many Senate Republicans said they are not willing to accept the federal funds if they contain requirements that would lead to more financial woes down the road.

"I want to take the money that we can take without it causing us problems in the future," said Sen. Ron Gould, one of the most conservative lawmakers in the Arizona Legislature. "I'm not willing to ramp up state spending just to pull down the matching money unless we are already going to spend that money anyway – if what we are spending works as the match."

"What may not be acceptable," Verschoor said, "is where it comes in and says you got to maintain this program at this spending level to get any of this money."

"For me," said Rep. John Kavanagh, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, "any item that requires us to expand programs, add more people to it, is a non-starter because then we increase the size of our structural deficit and next year, when there is no stimulus money, we have an even bigger problem."

 Sen. Russell Pearce, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, urges caution in accepting the money.

"We are not going to do, I would hope, anything that expands our structural deficit. It is one-time money. It's got to be treated like one time money," he said.