Friday, February 05, 2010

Special session update3 - crossing palms....with shoulder blades

...that's a way of saying that there is some serious arm-twisting going on at the lege..

cross-posted at Blog for Arizona...

On Thursday, the Arizona House of Representatives approved the referral to the ballot of a temporary increase to the state's sales tax.

The vote was 34 - 25, with one vacancy (Sam Crump resigned on Monday). 12 Democrats and 22 Republicans voted for the referral, and 13 and 12 voted against it.

In an interesting twist, the House did *not* consider the rest of the budget-related bills. According to ever-vigilant (and snarky) correspondent Jen, the talk around the Capitol is that Speaker Kirk Adams is holding the special session bills in order to pressure Senate President Bob Burns into taking up the House's tax cuts for corporations bill (the Rs call it a "jobs" bill, but it would be better called a "jobs for soon-to-be-ex-legislators looking for a place to land after they get kicked out of office in November" bill.

So to sum up: The House passed a referendum that may or may not be approved by the voters (and if I were a betting man, I'd bet " not") and refused to do anything else to address the state's budget deficit unless their corporate patrons get a big gift from the lege.

Ummm...yeah.

It's obvious that the most of the Rs in the House don't give a damn about the state or about doing the jobs that they were hired to do - representing the best interests of the people in their districts and the state.

1 comment:

Thane Eichenauer said...

I find it hard to read the presumption in the close without wondering how it is that you think that there can be no representing Arizona voters unless it is by voting for higher government taxation.