While legislative Republicans have repeatedly castigated the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission for sometimes operating outside of the public’s view, House Speaker Andy Tobin’s counterproposal was written out of anyone’s view.

If Republicans go along with House Speaker Andy Tobin’s plan to force a special election that would seek to change the state’s legislative and congressional maps, it will cost Arizona more than $8 million.

Republican lawmakers’ dormant war with the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission is flaring up anew, as House Speaker Andy Tobin has introduced a host of measures that would set a special election so voters could decide whether to use legislative and congressional maps drawn by the Legislature instead of those approved last month by the volunteer panel.

House Republicans are trying to get around one of last year’s vetoes by amending the Legislature’s procedural rules.

Arizona legislators say they're looking into a flawed gun smuggling investigation because it took place within their state.

The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission’s legal battle with Republican lawmakers wasn’t cheap, and the embattled panel will soon have to ask those same lawmakers for extra money to foot the bill.

Arizona legislators are imposing new restrictions on demonstrations and other public gatherings at the Capitol complex, a reaction to loud noise and congestion resulting from activities that include protests against legislation on illegal immigration in the past two years.

Attorneys for the Arizona Commerce Authority are poring over outgoing CEO Don Cardon’s contract to see whether the agency can recoup a $50,000 signing bonus he received, and will likely put safeguards into his successor’s contract to make sure it won’t be a question next time.

The road from the end of the last legislative session to the beginning of the new one was full of potholes for Gov. Jan Brewer and the Legislature.

Both sides say there’s nothing unusual about the two branches butting heads, and say they’ve moved past the disagreements of 2011. But there was no shortage of feuds between Brewer and the Legislature.

The timing for Andy Tobin’s ascension to speaker of the House was pretty favorable. The state is beginning to see an uptick in revenues due to a recovering economy, so the battle over the budget is likely to be less adversarial this session than it was in previous years.

But Tobin cautions against anyone getting the impression that the state has money to burn. As long as the state has debt to pay off, he said he doesn’t think that the unexpected revenue should be seen as a surplus.