House Democrats call for bipartisan approach to solving the state's budget mess

Today, the Democratic Caucus of the Arizona House of Representatives sent a letter to Republican Governor Jan Brewer and the Republican leadership of the legislature calling on them to seek a bipartisan solution to the state's budget woes, citing the Rep's moves to have the same adversarial parallel budget process this year that didn't work last year.

From the press release -

In the House Appropriations Committee Wednesday, Republicans wanted two competing budget worksheets or have a process with parallel bills from the two parties, which is the same process they used last year that failed to solve the budget. Republicans did not want to work together in the committee Wednesday to create a joint worksheet.

"That kind of divisive mindset won't solve anything because a parallel process is not a bipartisan process," said Rep. David Schapira, D-Tempe (District 17), a member of the Appropriations Comitteee. "The facts are simple. Competing budgets get us nowhere and we end up with more slash and burn cuts to jobs, education and health care, and an even bigger budget deficit."

From the letter (sorry, no link available) -

We've see this process before, we saw it last year. Republicans create their own budget, Democrats create their own budget, a Republican governor creates her own budget, and they all hit dead ends.

My idealism tells me that the efforts of the House Dems will be rewarded, but my natural cynicism (combined with the experience of the last year) tells me that their efforts will again be rebuffed by the blind ideologues that occupy the offices of the Governor and the R leadership in the lege.

Still, one can hope, and I am a life-long Red Sox fan - we've learned that sometimes hope is rewarded.

Just so the reward for this hope doesn't take 86 years to be realized - Arizona can't afford it to take that long...