The former Arizona director of a leading tea party group says he has scrapped plans to deliver Valentine’s Day cards that featured murderous dictators including Adolf Hitler to Republican lawmakers believed to oppose anti-union legislation.

Arizona’s Republican congressmen recently sent a joint letter to House Speaker Andy Tobin asking him to push forward legislation barring automatic deductions of union dues from public employees’ paychecks.

Gov. Jan Brewer today announced her plans for simplifying Arizona’s complicated sales tax system, which followed recommendations from a task force on eliminating the multiple jurisdictions and layers of bureaucracy that businesses face in paying transaction privilege taxes.

Despite all the typical partisan political disagreements, lawmakers seem to have found at least one proposal that has bipartisan support: increasing their daily pay.

A proposal by Arizona House Speaker Andy Tobin to increase a tax credit given to businesses that invest in research and development by 200 percent could be just one of many pushed by Republicans again this year in the Legislature.

Gov. Jan Brewer signed an emergency appropriations bill today that provides $4.4 million for Child Protective Services to hire new staff, and lawmakers sent another bill to her desk to continue funding the Independent Redistricting Commission as it heads to trial in federal court.

It's early on in the Arizona legislative session, but so far the proposals described by one top Republican as "esoteric" and criticized by Democrats as unconstitutional have dominated the headlines — despite promises from GOP leaders to focus on top-tier issues such as balancing the state budget and improving education.

Before lawmakers decide what kind of discretionary spending they want added in the fiscal 2014 budget, Rep. John Kavanagh said they have to make a choice about whose revenue projections they’re going to believe.

As one of only three representatives in their fourth and final term in the state House, Speaker Andy Tobin, a Republican from Paulden, has more institutional knowledge than most. He has risen through the ranks from freshman, to the majority whip, to majority leader, to the top position in the House. Tobin, who because of term limits is unable to run for re-election to the House, has seen the state through surplus and deficit. Looking back on his time in the Legislature, he is determined to leave the state in better condition than it was when he was first elected.

After receiving a briefing on the governor’s $8.9 billion budget proposal, Republican leaders said they want a final spending plan that hews to the conservative approach they have adopted during the past few years.