GOP may be ready to OK sales tax vote

Some Senate Republicans appear ready to give Gov. Jan Brewer what she wants: Ask voters if they want to hike the state sales tax - and then hope it fails.

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At a caucus meeting Monday, Senate President Bob Burns, R-Peoria, said Brewer has said the one thing that stands between the state and a budget for the current fiscal year she can sign is putting the issue of a temporary one-cent hike in the 5.6 percent sales tax rate on the November ballot. "We haven't been able to move her off of that."

The Republican-controlled Legislature refused, however - twice - to send that to her. And she has, in turn, used her power of line-item veto to kill some of their priorities, including sharp spending cuts, raising money by putting prisons in private hands and cutting taxes elsewhere.

Sen. Barbara Leff, R-Paradise Valley, told colleagues enough is enough. She said it's time for Republicans to vote to refer the issue to voters.

"If we do not in fact put that package together, we are going to be causing a property tax increase on everybody," she said. That's because one of the bills Brewer vetoed contained language permanently repealing the state property tax.

It was suspended in 2006 when the state had a surplus. But it returns automatically this fall unless lawmakers vote otherwise and Brewer signs the change into law.

"So we sit here and act really pure that we're not going to refer something to the ballot to allow the voters to decide whether or not they want to do the one-cent sales tax," she chided her colleagues. "Or we can allow everyone to be taxed without any choice."

Other Republicans said they are coming around to the belief they should put the sales tax issue on the ballot.

"The governor is so intransigent on her sales tax referral," said Sen. Al Melvin, R-Tucson. What probably makes the most sense, he said, is for GOP lawmakers to use that as an opportunity to get some of what they want.

What Melvin wants is to put another measure on the same ballot to fully or partially repeal a 1998 constitutional measure that limits the ability of lawmakers to alter any voter-approved mandate.

Sen. John Huppenthal, R-Chandler, said Republican legislators should see Brewer's insistence on a sales tax vote as an opportunity.

"Sometimes you have to take advantage of the energy that's coming against you to achieve victory," he said.

"The likelihood is, it's going to lose," Huppenthal said of a public vote on higher sales taxes. "So if you use this energy to achieve some real reforms, that's a bird in the hand."

But Sen. Ron Gould, R-Lake Havasu City, chided his colleagues for being willing to compromise their beliefs that a higher sales tax rate is a bad idea.

"If you guys need to run other stuff along with it to provide cover for yourself for voting for it, then you're going to do what you're going to do," he said. "But I'm not going to support it, no matter what."

And Gould said they run the risk of being tricked.

"I have no faith that the governor's a woman of her word," he said.

The discussion on the sales tax vote came before Republicans went behind closed doors for what Majority Leader Chuck Gray, R-Mesa, said were discussions about "how our leadership team is functioning." He said that fits the legal exception for "organizational" meetings to justify gathering in private.

But the full wording of that exception actually is for "organizational meetings to elect officers of the caucus," something that was not done Monday.