PHOENIX — Just hours after they adjourned one of the longest legislative session in state history, Gov. Jan Brewer is calling lawmakers back to work on a new budget.
Brewer is line-item vetoing specific portions of the $8.4 billion spending package approved by lawmakers early this morning, saying it is “fatally flawed.”
She intends to bring legislators back to the Capitol on Monday for a special session.
Brewer said she still wants a temporary increase in the sales tax to alleviate cuts to K-12 education, health and human services and public safety.
“As governor, I intend to see this through until we have achieved together what I have long advocated — a prudent budget that neither over-spends nor under-funds,” Brewer said in a statement. “The legislative budget ignores my consistently expressed goals and instead incorporates devastating cuts to education, public safety, and our state’s most vital health services for the frail.”
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None of this, she said, will affect state government services in the short term.
Lawmakers approved the budget early Wednesday morning — three hours after their midnight deadline and without the sales tax ballot referral Brewer wants.
The Senate approved the bills just before 3 a.m. Wednesday, following a midnight approval Tuesday by the House.
House Speak Kirk Adams, R-Mesa, said the votes just didn’t exist for what Brewer wanted.
“I’m telling you, unless we would have hypnotized people, we did everything that we could to convince people to support the governor’s proposal for the tax referral,” Adams said. “And short of the body snatchers returning, the votes were simply not there.”
The approved budget includes $600 million in cuts to government programs, with $220 to K-12 education, and more than $700 million in borrowing. Those efforts and others are aimed at reducing the state’s $3 billion budget shortfall.
To entice Republicans onto the sale tax referral, the negotiated package had also included a flat-income-tax proposal to take effect in 2012.
However, that element was eliminated, too.
Sen. Jonathan Paton, R-Tucson, said he wasn’t “completely happy” with the package but decided to support it.
“I didn’t want government to shut down, and I felt like it was the best we could do under the circumstances,” Paton said. “We owe it to the citizens of this state to keep government going.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Al Melvin, R-Tucson, said he was pleased with the outcome of the budget. He said Brewer has “no grounds to veto it.”
“If she vetos it, it’s only because she’s in a huff because she didn’t get her sales tax increase,” Melvin said.
LONG SESSIONS
Longest legislative sessions in recent history:
• 1988: 173 days
• 1990: 172
• 1992: 171
• 2009 (As of Tuesday): 170
• 1976: 165
• 2008: 164
• 2006: 164
• 2007: 163
SOURCE: State Senate secretary
