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

When the Legislature meets in a special session later this month, one of the agencies whose budget problems they will attempt to fix is the Registrar of Contractors. Tyler Palmer, legislative liaison for the Registrar of Contractors, said the agency lost about $390,000 in funding for operating costs when Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed a budget bill in September.

For months, the big question at the Capitol was whether Gov. Jan Brewer would run in 2010. Now that she has announced she will, the big question is how much support she’ll find among a fractured Republican establishment.

A Maricopa County judge has rejected an argument by one of the state's largest utilities that could have fundamentally changed water law in the state, saying the law's intentions are clear even though the law itself might be imperfect.

In her 2008 State of the State Address, Gov. Janet Napolitano proposed providing, despite the state's growing economic challenges, free college tuition to Arizona high school students who get good grades, perform community service and stay out of trouble.

Groups trying to overturn an Arizona law that prohibits employers from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants are encouraged that the U.S. Supreme Court has expressed an interest in their appeal. The court normally agrees to take on only a small number of appeals, and it hasn't yet decided whether it will hear the business and civil rights groups' appeal of the law. But the justices on Nov. 2 asked the U.S. solicitor general - the lawyer who argues the Obama administration's cases before the court - to submit a brief in the case.

Gambling that Arizona lawmakers will approve its funding in time, the state tax collection agency is shelving plans to lay off more than half its staff early this month. After Gov. Jan Brewer's vetoed some of the Department of Revenue's funding in September to kill an unrelated provision of the same bill, Director Gale Garriott said the department would probably have to lay off 450 of its 710 workers in November.

The budget fix being shopped to Republican lawmakers would erase a little more than a quarter of the estimated $2 billion deficit and include about $300 million in permanent spending cuts. House Majority Whip Andy Tobin said the deal Republican leaders have reached with Republican Gov. Jan Brewer would include $140 million in cuts to K-12 education and $140 million in cuts to ADES.

To Dr. Ronald S. Weinstein, a doctor's eyes and ears are as important as instruments or tests. A patient's tone and body language can say as much as his or her words, he said, and eye contact and seeing that a doctor is paying attention establishes trust for the patient. But that doesn't necessarily mean that doctor and patient have to be in the same place, said Weinstein, director of the University of Arizona College of Medicine's Arizona Telemedicine Program.

A tribal government in Arizona has stepped up lobbying efforts against rules being proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency that threaten the closure of a power plant. This time, the tribe is reaching out to state lawmakers.

Legislative leaders and the governor have reached an agreement on the framework of a special session later this month. The plan is to fix the budget problems of several agencies that resulted from Gov. Jan Brewer's veto of a budget bill that had contained funding mechanisms for the agencies.