Dems complain GOP’s state budget plan unclear

Republican legislative leaders finally met with Democrats on Thursday on the stalled budget process and offered them precisely zero on specifics. “We got a bunch of descriptive metaphors that, I’m sorry, I couldn’t make sense out of,” said Senate Minority Leader Marsha Arzberger, D-Willcox. “I’m not even sure we got an agreement to negotiate.”

“All we talked about was process,” said Rep. Phil Lopes, D-Tucson, her House counterpart. “We did not get an offer.”

Senate President Tim Bee, R-Tucson, acknowledged GOP leaders have had the governor’s plan on how she would make up the $1.85 billion gap between anticipated tax collections and expenses for weeks.

But, he said, even with more than six weeks since the last talks to balance the budget, Republicans were not ready to actually place their own plan for balancing the budget on the table.

Bee said he recognizes time is running out: The new fiscal year begins July 1.

“Well, obviously, the sooner we can get done, the better,” he said. “So, essentially, our plan is to begin getting our offers on the table and getting to the details as quickly as we can.”

That, however, did not happen during Thursday’s meeting with Democratic leaders, the first on the new budget since early April. Instead, Bee promised to start providing Democrats at least a few specifics — but not before Tuesday.

“Today, we started to talk about the process for laying our offers on the table,” Bee said.

Gov. Janet Napolitano has not publicly disclosed the details of the plan she gave to lawmakers to balance the budget.

But she has said it relies heavily on financing new schools through borrowing rather than paying cash, potentially freeing up $800 million. The governor said that’s the way schools used to be financed, originally by individual school districts and, in the last decade, by the state.

“(It’s) the way that we do for other buildings, the way you pay for your house, the way localities pay for buildings, the way we pay for our roads — we pay for them with bonds,” she said. “That, to me, is good fiscal sense.”

She said while lawmakers have used surpluses to pay cash in recent years, “in this financial market that makes no economic sense.”

The governor also wants some short-term borrowing, deferring close to $300 million in payments due to schools in June 2009 into the following month — and the following budget year.

She also wants to take some money out of the state’s “rainy day” fund and has proposed some spending cuts, the size of which she has not specified.

And the governor also wants some revenue “enhancers,” like generating $90 million from new photo radar cameras to be set up on state roads.

Bee said everyone recognizes some borrowing will be necessary, but he remains convinced that expenses can be cut deeper than either the governor or her Democratic allies have proposed.

“We are going to be focusing on nonessential services and agencies,” he said. He added GOP lawmakers also want to see if the current hiring freeze, which runs only through June 30, should be continued.

But not everything in the more than $10 billion state budget is on the table. “We’re limited on our ability to use (spending) reductions because of voter protections and the mandates to increase spending,” Bee said.

A 1998 constitutional provision bars legislators from tinkering with measures approved at the ballot by voters.

That not only blocks lawmakers from reducing state aid to schools, which already consumes more than $4 billion of tax dollars, but also requires them to increase that amount each year to account for inflation.

Nor can the Legislature alter a requirement that the state provide free health care to every Arizonan below the federal poverty level — $21,200 a year for a family of four — a program that now covers close to one out of every seven state residents.

The one possibility no one is discussing is hiking taxes to balance the budget: Both GOP legislators and the Democratic governor have foresworn any interest in higher taxes. Napolitano, though, is backing a proposed ballot measure for a 1-cent hike in the state’s 5.6 percent sales tax rate, to kick in for 30 years in 2010, to finance new highways, upgrade existing roads and fund new mass transit services, including a rail line from Tucson to Phoenix.