February 15, 2010
We wound up our 6th special session last week, passing the four other bills that were part of the budget revision package.
SB 1004 was a legislative authorization of the state lottery, originally approved by voter initiative and due to expire in 2012. That paved the way for SB 1003, which authorized the "securitization" of lottery proceeds. That means we will take an upfront payment, effectively bonding for future revenues. This bill also provided for the sale of an additional $300 million in state buildings, again providing an immediate cash infusion. When we did this last year (for $735 million), the actual subscription amount came in at over $1 billion. So we knew there was a market for this financing. Whether these two actions were prudent remains to be seen. I certainly don't like adding to the debt burden of the state, but these are desperate times. As was pointed out during floor debate, we could lay off every state employee who is paid from the General Fund and we still wouldn't close the deficit.
SB 1005 was a mostly uncontroversial measure which calls for the proration of the standard deduction for people who are part-time residents and file returns in more than one state.
All of these bills passed with bipartisan support.
Things got a bit sticky with the final bill -- SB1002 which called for "rolling over" $350 million for K-12 and $100 million for the universities. This simply means that we defer a payment due in June to the following fiscal year. We've done this before, and now owe education four payments, which will have to be made up at some point in the future. This was anticipated to pass with bipartisan support as well, but at the last minute a conditional enactment clause was added. This tied the implementation of SB1002 to passage by the Senate of HB2250, the "jobs bill." Senate President Bob Burns had apparently promised Senate Democrats, in exchange for their special session votes, that this bill would not be brought up for a vote until the budget was passed. Many in the House were not sure that it would ever be voted upon and wanted to use the conditional enactment to pressure the Senate. It was hard for many of us to vote for the special session package without being assured that the House bill would be quickly passed, with a nexus between the temporary measures to bridge the deficit and a program that we believe will begin to get the economy back on track.
Well, SB1002 passed with the conditional enactment, but only with Republican votes. Then things really got crazy. Since we had added an amendment, this bill would have to go back to the Senate for final passage. But shortly after we acted on Thursday, the Senate adjourned the special session. When the Senate committee came to the House to make this announcement, we had adjourned -- but only for the day. (The final adjournment has to be done simultaneously.) Since no further action could be taken in the Senate, we agreed on Monday to end the special session, the Senate committee came over again, and the bill was effectively killed. The rationale was that we could actually do the rollovers in another budget reconciliation bill that will come up later.
Another fun few days in Phoenix!
Until next week,
Nancy
Rep. Nancy McLain
602-926-5051
nmclain@azleg.gov
Nancy McLain, District 3, Arizona House of Representatives
nmclain@azleg.gov or
nmclainbhc@aol.com