The jobs bill, announced on Monday and debated fiercely since, has passed the Arizona House and the Senate, even as many legislators acknowledged its flaws.

As the mayor of Cave Creek, I empathize with what Gov. Jan Brewer and state legislators are facing with the state’s budget deficit. Taxes can be raised only so high and spending cut only so deep before Arizonans’ quality of life suffers.

When pressed about whether cuts to higher education would lead to higher tuition, the Governor’s Office hedged, but the heads of Arizona’s community colleges said the reduction is so steep they will have little choice but to propose that students pay more.

Answering a fiscal 911 call from the nation's governors, the Obama administration Thursday gave cash-strapped states a menu for cutting Medicaid spending, one of their biggest budget headaches.

State budget writers want to know why universities can't handle budget cuts now that they are taking in more money than they were three years ago.

Arizona is still designing a proposed fund for hospitals and other health care providers, with no plan as of now to use it to provide reimbursements for transplants dropped from state Medicaid coverage in a 2010 budget cut, the state's Medicaid director said Tuesday.

Arizona State University President Michael Crow told lawmakers Tuesday his administration will ask for a tuition fee increase to help offset the governor’s proposed higher-education budget reductions.

Arizona soon will be taxing a new product — medical marijuana.

Gov. Jan Brewer's budget proposal gets its first formal review at the Legislature on Tuesday.

Those unpaid furlough days for Arizona state employees would be a thing of the past under Gov. Jan Brewer's proposed new state budget.