Arizona’s economy might be recovering, but the job market didn’t quite keep pace — or at least not last month.

While Democrats gained seats following last year’s elections, Republicans are still likely to craft the state budget on their own rather than directly negotiate with the minority.

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.

Booming sales on Cyber Monday might have meant savings for consumers, but they could also have meant lost revenue for the state of Arizona, a new report said.

Total state revenues grew by a modest 2.6 percent in October when compared to the year before, but just as economists have cautioned, the road to full recovery is a long, steep climb.

After sliding slightly in August, state revenues picked up in September, the Legislature’s budget research arm reported this month.

The State Agency Fee Commission met Sept. 26 for its first review of how recent budget cuts and sweeps have affected state agencies.

Even in good economic times, school districts struggle to meet their financial obligations, leading a few to slip into receivership while others are victimized by various methods of fraud. But in an era of cutbacks in state spending and tight budgets, vigilance on where the dollars are going takes on even greater importance for schools, whose primary role is providing kids with a quality education.

A year ago, Republicans boasted that they made the tough decisions on state spending needed to close a massive budget deficit. The decision to freeze enrollment in state-funded health care for the poor was held up most often by Republicans as a shining example of how they addressed the festering fiscal imbalance.

But one incentive might persuade Arizona’s policymakers to let the uninsured back into the Medicaid fold: cash — lots of it.

The most remarkable thing about Republican leaders’ decision to explore a budget compromise with the minority party this year is that it happened at all — much less that the two sides came within a hair’s breadth of striking what would have been a rare bargain.