We are hours away from the ONE deadline the Legislature is constitutionally obligated to meet. The House republicans are still in caucus about the budget. Nothing released yet, you can watch the proceedings live at http://www.azleg.gov/, click watch live proceedings.
Meanwhile, over in the Senate: The Senate Rules Committee rejected the measure that would refer a temporary sales-tax hike to the ballot. The 1-5 vote was a serious monkey wrench in the whole process with less than 14 hours left before the deadline to enact a budget for fiscal 2010.
In case you haven’t been following the progress until now, last night the budget bills were all re-referred from the Senate Appropriations Committee to the Senate Education Committee. This morning Republican Senators Gould, Harper and Steve Pierce all voted against the first general appropriation bill along with the one Democrat who was present, Paula Aboud, defeating the main budget bill.
In Senate Education, the various budget bills passed along a party-line vote. The Republicans voted in support (Senators Huppenthal, Linda Gray, Paton and Sylvia Allen). The Democrats opposed the budget (Senators Aboud, Landrum-Taylor and Lopez).
There are still not enough Republican votes to pass the sales tax referral. The Governor has publically stated that if the budget gets sent to her without the sales tax referral, then she will veto the entire budget package.
Please take a moment and take our survey about the Legislature. Tell us what you think.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=s4ZUK4PNe3i9q8Tb2Hj_2fcw_3d_3d
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You survey link actually is to your account on Survey Monkey and not the survey itself. You might want to check the URL to the actual survey.
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