By Julia Shumway and Nathan Brown | Arizona Capitol Times
Budget bills cleared their first hurdle Tuesday after a day of arm-twisting and political maneuvering, but problems getting it passed persist.
One Republican in the House voted against every budget bill, while a fiscal hawk in the Senate skipped the appropriations committee in protest after Senate leaders added another Republican to negate her “no” vote.
And still others are determined to vote against the budget, or at least some of its components, in its current form, leaving Republican leaders to cajole and coerce reluctant representatives demanding more or less spending before they can end for the year.
“Budgets are put together with compromises, so this must be a very good budget because we’ve got people mad on both sides,” said Sen. Vince Leach, the Saddlebrooke Republican who serves as vice chair of the Senate appropriations committee.
Rep. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, who is leading a group of Republicans who want additional spending cuts, voted against every budget bill in the House Appropriations committee. However, he said he liked much of what was in the bills and plans to talk with House leaders to find an agreement that will satisfy him and the rest of the holdouts.
“I’m hopeful that Republicans will be able to reach a deal and produce a better budget by the time this comes to the floor,” he said.
Hoffman’s group, which he said represents a quarter of the 31-member House Republican caucus, has said it wants to nix tens of millions of dollars in the budget for road repair, state parks and pay raises for state employees, as well as spending $7.5 million on election issues, including watermarked ballots and future legislative reviews of election results.
Across the mall, there was a conspicuous silence each time the Senate Appropriations committee’s secretary called on Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita for her vote. The Scottsdale Republican stayed away from the Senate today, after GOP leaders responded to her explanation that she couldn’t support the $12.8 billion spending plan as a fiscal conservative by appointing Senate Majority Leader Rick Gray, R-Sun City, to the committee to vote “yes” and cancel out Ugenti-Rita.
Another Senate Republican on the committee, Kelly Townsend of Mesa, threatened to vote against a budget bill that contained policies for K-12 education because it would allow school boards to require students and staff to wear masks.
