Arizona Capitol Times Your Inside Source for Arizona Government, Politics and Business

The Arizona House and Senate may delay adjourning the session until next week, as the Legislature waits for Republican Sen. John Kavanagh to return from a trip to Louisiana to provide a crucial vote for a pair of bills.

When Republican Rep. Vince Leach proposed a bill to ban paying petition circulators for citizens’ initiatives on a per-signature basis, Democrats were collectively outraged and denounced the bill as an “attack on democracy.”

As his parting gift to the “People’s House” Arizona House Speaker David Gowan is installing metal detectors, gun lockers and is overhauling the House lobby, to the tune of at least $290,000.

With Donald Trump atop the November ballot, Arizona politicos say all bets are off in the down-ballot races, where the ripples from the “Trump effect” could turn into giant waves that wipe out the status quo at the Capitol.

Sine die was filled with several memorable moments.

Lawmakers introduced 1,361 bills, memorials and resolutions in the 2016 legislative session, but in the end, most of those measures were left on the cutting room floor.

The Arizona Legislature adjourned sine die shortly before 6 a.m. Saturday morning, capping a nearly 20-hour workday that ended a grueling week in which lawmakers passed a budget, staged a coup over health insurance for children and approved hundreds of bills in the eleventh-hour of the legislative session.

Largely along party lines, Arizona lawmakers approved a roughly $9.6 billion budget shortly after midnight Wednesday morning that they credit with increasing spending after years of tough decisions while the state slowly recovered from economic turmoil.

Lawmakers are debating a proposed $9.58 billion budget, which for the first time in years, makes significant increases in a handful of key areas.

A Senate committee on Wednesday advanced a package of budget bills that outline a $9.58 billion spending plan, with a promise of amendments to the bills on the chamber’s floor.