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.

This week's most outstanding quips, gibes and utterances.

When Gov. Jan Brewer announced her proposal to expand Medicaid to the full amount advocated by the federal health care law, Republican leadership in the House and Senate received a fight they didn’t ask for, and one they didn’t know was coming.

With a fiscal crisis that forced billions of dollars in state government cuts mainly over, the Arizona Legislature enters its 2013 session Monday with a budget surplus but little appetite among majority Republicans to loosen the purse strings. The state has socked away about $450 million in a rainy day fund and has more than $1 billion in total surplus going into the budget year that begins July 1.

As politicians point fingers in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook slaughter, a school security expert says politicians at all levels had a hand in the disappearance of school security.

While the mood at the state Capitol this past year might be best described as riotous, 2012 — the Chinese Year of the Dragon — was marked with fewer gaffes, catfights and over-the-top name calling among Arizona’s political elite.