As National Consumer Protection Week comes to a close, legislators and Gov. Doug Ducey are working to pass a state budget that would gut the fund that pays for consumer protection efforts in the Attorney General’s Office and instead use some of that money to sue the Obama administration.

If there’s a unifying theme to the budget proposal introduced on March 4, it’s that education, state agencies and state programs should brace for painful times ahead.

Republican leaders in the Legislature plan quick action on a budget deal hammered out with Gov. Doug Ducey.

ASU President Michael Crow yesterday blasted Ducey’s proposed $75 million cut to the universities, writing to ASU’s alumni community and others that the governor’s budget plan “signals to the state and the nation that higher education is a low priority in Arizona.”

The slide in the percentage of education funds that ends up in Arizona classrooms appears to have stopped. But it also isn't getting any better.

People across the country and around the world flock to Arizona to gaze into the vast depths of the Grand Canyon and bask in mild winters while attending some of the largest sporting events of the year, including the occasional Super Bowl.

The ongoing K-12 inflation litigation in Cave Creek v. Ducey could send the state’s fiscal house hurtling toward an abyss, but an upcoming lawsuit could make that financial abyss a bottomless mess.

Many have criticized Ducey for presuming in his first budget plan that the state does not have to pay schools inflation funding while promising a structurally balanced budget by FY17. But a longtime Capitol observer said the governor’s strategy is politically shrewd – and completely understandable.

Gov. Doug Ducey proposed a combination of one-time solutions and hundreds of millions of dollars in budget cuts, including big hits to universities and Medicaid providers, while Arizona waits for the economy recover enough for its budget to be structurally balanced by fiscal year 2017.

As Gov. Doug Ducey prepares to unveil his first executive budget proposal, he and Republican legislative leaders stood together to show a united front as they tackle Arizona’s fiscal crisis.