Dana Naimark, the leader of the Children’s Action Alliance, is going to push for increased funding for child-care subsidies in the upcoming special session by trying to dispel the notion that subsidies are a form of welfare.

A small group of lawmakers and Capitol staffers will begin making their pitch for a new child safety organization to the Legislature next week.

Optometrists want the ability to prescribe steroids, hydrocodone pain killers and other potentially dangerous drugs, but lawmakers say a bill allowing them to do so is circumventing the legislative process and would put the public at risk.

Eight Republicans helped to reject a bill Thursday that would have sharply expanded a program that uses public money to send students to private schools.

  The Capitol community’s attention is turning to the work of a small group of lawmakers and Capitol staffers drafting legislation to create a new child safety and welfare agency, an effort that will require a special legislative session in ...

Senate President Andy Biggs said his chamber may not accept the changes to the budget made late Thursday by the House.

After a week of political bargaining over the state budget that included a failed attempt to consider the spending package on the floor and an emotionally charged press conference declaring negotiations had broken down, Republicans in the House of Representatives banded together to approve a $9.24 billion spending plan for the 2015 fiscal year late Thursday night.

The Arizona House has begun debating a state budget plan that adds spending to the plan passed by the Senate.

Six moderate Republicans put on a show of force this afternoon, marching out of the House to announce that budget negotiations between them and House Republican leadership had officially reached an impasse on the Senate budget proposal.

Dissident Republicans met off and on all day behind closed doors in their bid to have the nearly $9.2 billion spending plan approved last week by the Senate expanded to deal with their own priorities. At least part of that includes additional spending for the new Division of Child Welfare, created by Gov. Jan Brewer to replace the troubled Child Protective Services.