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

As budget negotiations remain stalled, House GOP leaders decided to grant one conservative holdout a late hearing on a bill to organize a national convention to combat federal policies perceived as threatening “constitutional and traditional rights.”

A bill moratorium and a budget stalemate meant the House and Senate weren’t conducting any real business before Gov. Doug Ducey called a special session – so why call one?

House Republican leaders bent on passing a flat tax and succeeding with threadbare majorities where past Republican supermajorities had failed hatched a plan last week: put the tax bills up for a vote and embarrass their outspoken holdout into voting for it.

The Arizona House plans to return Monday morning to pass – or fail – a budget, with or without the Senate, a top House Republican confirmed Friday.

Exactly one year after 25-year-old Landon Marsh died of a fentanyl overdose, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed a bill Marsh’s mother drafted to prevent other young people from unknowingly ingesting the drug.

House and Senate leaders and Gov. Doug Ducey have agreed on a roughly $12.8 billion spending plan, including the state’s largest tax cut in recent memory – but the budget lacks the Republican votes it needs to pass in its current form.

With their ongoing audit, as with all discourse about the 2020 election, almost all Senate Republicans have fallen into one of two camps: banging the drum about election fraud claims believed by huge segments of their base, or ignoring the recount a few blocks north to focus on legislation.

A vaping bill backed by the tobacco industry is moving forward in the Arizona Legislature after years of stalemates, and the Republican who led the fight against it blames political retaliation.

A White Mountain rancher who received $66,000 in grants from a state board she serves on will get another term on that board.

It remains anyone’s guess when the 55th Legislature will adjourn sine die. But the one thing most lawmakers are certain of is that it will take longer than two weeks.