By Hank Stephenson and Ben | Arizona Capitol Times
The Arizona Senate pushed budget negotiations into next week, declining to appoint senators immediately to a conference committee to hash out differences between budget proposals despite a signal that the House has enough votes for a compromise.
On Thursday morning, House Speaker Andy Tobin, R-Paulden, sent House leaders to present a budget deal to Senate President Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert. It struck a compromise between the two chambers’ latest iterations of the roughly $9.2 billion fiscal 2015 budget that Tobin said had Gov. Jan Brewer’s approval.
The latest budget compromise, which came after three weeks of back-and-forth between the two chambers, proposed restoring some spending cuts the Senate made to a House-approved budget on Tuesday. The compromise splits appropriations in key areas such as education between the desired spending levels of each chamber.
Yet Biggs has not committed his support to the compromise and adjourned the Senate until Monday without appointing conference committee members.
