The state Legislature passed a budget Wednesday morning that would cut more than $600 million in state programs and cover a projected $3 billion deficit, only to have portions of it vetoed by Gov. Jan Brewer the very same day.
“I received early this morning a fatally flawed budget,” read a public statement released by Brewer hours after the Legislature passed the budget. “The legislative budget ignores my consistently expressed goals and instead incorporates cuts to education, public safety and our state’s most vital health services.”
Brewer, who has clashed with legislators on both sides of the aisle over proposed cuts and fought with Republicans to pass a ballot initiative that would allow voters to decide whether or not to raise sales taxes, used a series of line item vetoes to overturn portions of the budget that included proposed cuts of $40 million and fund sweeps of $90 million to the universities.
Brewer has called a special session of the Legislature, which starts July 6, to make changes to the budget.
The sales tax initiative has been the most divisive issue this session. After negotiations last weekend, Republican leaders in the Legislature agreed to vote for the measure but could not get other Republicans to agree to it.
“No one in the Legislature has the taste for a tax increase,” said Rep. John Kavanugh, a Fountain Hills Republican who heads the House Appropriations Committee. “It’s just not going to happen.”
Brewer’s use of line-item vetoes allowed the state government to avoid a complete shutdown, required by the state constitution if a budget is not signed into law by July 1, which would indefinitely close such state offices as the Motor Vehicle Division and keep the University from receiving state funding. If legislators do not reach a compromise with the governor quickly, however, many vital state offices could go unfunded.
University President Michael Crow released a statement Tuesday saying it can continue to operate without state funding during the summer.
“More than 75 percent of ASU operating revenues come from sources other than the state of Arizona,” the statement read.
But, “A state government shutdown lasting through the opening of the fall semester on August 24 would impact staffing and program availability significantly,” according to the statement.
University officials said they did not yet know what exactly those impacts would be but said they are looking into the possibilities.
“We really don’t know anything yet,” said University spokeswoman Julie Newberg on Thursday. “It’s never happened before.”
The messy conflict has put the state government in a precarious position and left lawmakers pointing fingers at each other.
Kavanaugh said the governor’s stubborn effort to pass the sales tax initiative, which has little support on either side, is the main cause of the delay.
“We had a balanced budget without a tax increase that relied on borrowing and cutting,” Kavanaugh said Tuesday, before the final budget was passed. “The governor is going to have to accept it unless she wants to have a statewide shutdown.”
Rep. Ed Ableser, D-Tempe, said the governor may have been able to pass the initiative if she had been more willing to negotiate with the Democrats.
Unwillingness to cross the aisle and negotiate by both the governor’s office and Republican lawmakers until the last minute, he said, is at the heart of the breakdown.
“I’ve told the governor and the House majority leadership since Jan, 12, ‘Come talk to us. Let’s come to a compromise we are both comfortable with,’” Ableser said on Tuesday. “Not until 2:30 on June 30 did they sit down to talk to us.”
Rep. Cloves Campbell, D-Phoenix, said he remains skeptical of the Legislature’s ability to find a reasonable compromise with the governor during the special session, before state departments are thrown into financial turmoil.
“I think it’s just dragging out the process,” Campbell said. “I’d like to be optimistic, but realistically, I think we’re going to end up in the same place we started.”
Reach the reporter at
derek.quizon@asu.edu
