By Hank Stephenson and Ben Giles | Arizona Capitol Times
Arizona lawmakers pulled an all-nighter and worked well past sunrise Saturday morning to approve a $9.1 billion budget proposal after Republican leadership spent the day rounding up the votes to get it across the finish line.
The budget was hammered out between Republican legislative leaders and Gov. Doug Ducey behind closed doors, but received significant blowback when legislative leaders unveiled it to rank-and-file lawmakers earlier this week, many of whom threatened to vote against it unless there were serious changes made to the proposal’s deep cuts to higher education.
In the end, however, they only got slight reductions to the governor’s proposed cuts, along with a series of minor changes to policies and bottom lines in the 13-bill budget package.
The Senate and House each approved the budget by thin margins. In the Senate, five of the budget bills required the vote of a sole Democrat, Sen. Carlyle Begay, along with 15 Republicans, to send the measures to the governor’s desk.
