If We Didn’t Know Better, We’d Say He Does it On Purpose
Gov. Ducey again waited until happy hour on a Friday last week to sign a tranche of bills we’ve been waiting on. The announcement hit our inbox shortly after 4 p.m., so we thought it best to bring you the news when you had a more reasonable chance of seeing it. The five bills the governor signed are:
HB2025 schools; parental classroom visitation policies (Udall)
HB2086 DHS; school immunizations; exclusions (Osborne)
HB2325 schools; instruction; 9/11 education day (Kavanagh)
HB2453 governmental entities; mask requirement; prohibition (Carter)
SB 1319 vision screening; program (Kerr)
We’re In The Money
Also on Friday, the Legislative budget office (JLBC) released its monthly estimate of state revenues. April is always a strong month for state revenue, because the tax man cometh. However, even by those standards this April was a record-breaker, as the state brought in an all-time record $2.07 billion. All-told, the state has taken in just over $12.7 billion over the ten months of FY2022, which exceeds the current budget forecast by 8.9%. In April, JLBC estimated the state would have a surplus of $4.09B on June 30. They now say “Given the strong recent revenue performance, we believe FY 2022 revenues will substantially exceed the April forecast level.” That is the way budget people spell “cha-ching!”
But We Can’t Agree How to Spend It
Despite the fact there is cash available to fund priorities, the Legislature still remains mired in a stalemate. While Republican Leadership and the governor’s office maintain they have made significant progress toward an agreement, the required votes among rank-and-file members remain elusive.
There are Republican holdouts who believe the state’s large cash balances are simply evidence of taxes that are too high, and don’t want to “grow government” by spending more.
Then of course there are Democrats, who would love to be able to take advantage of those holdouts to leverage Republican leadership into a deal that spends significant sums on their priorities.
There are both Democrat and Republican members who would like to spend a signficant chunk of money on K-12 education.
Meanwhile, the clock continues to tick toward June 30 at midnight.
The result is a high-stress, real-life version of “Lets Make a Deal” meets muscial chairs. You could get everything, but try to get too much, and you could go home with nothing, and no one wants to be the one without a chair when the music stops.