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

A House panel voted along party lines May 5 to approve a fiscal 2010 budget bill that relies on $630 million in spending cuts and taking another $394 million from other dedicated funds.

Legislative leaders have been stymied for more than a month in their effort to coax Gov. Jan Brewer to divulge how she intends to spend federal stimulus money, despite several informal requests and a letter signed by the House speaker and the Senate president.

The biggest differences between the Republican budget proposal released April 27 and a draft leaked to the press a month earlier were two components designed to generate more than $500 million in revenue without raising taxes. And those two ideas have created the biggest backlash against the latest proposal.

Republican budget proposals have been circulated at the Capitol for several days now, but lawmakers have cancelled three separate committee hearings during the past week intended to address the fiscal 2010 budget shortfall.

A House panel could be considering a proposal to solve next year's $3 billion budget deficit as soon as April 28, a top Republican said.

Republican lawmakers have released a budget proposal they say will balance a $3.3 billion budget deficit without raising taxes or borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars. Instead, they will rely heavily on cuts to education funding and municipalities.

Republican leaders are expected to unveil a budget proposal today that would close the state deficit without raising taxes and without borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars.