PHOENIX — State lawmakers return to the Capitol on Monday in a bid to finally adopt a spending plan for the coming year.
That was supposed to happen Friday. But some last-minute squabbling over protecting public schools from cuts blew the session apart.
Now, with everyone home for the weekend to cool off, Republican legislative leaders in the House hope to put the finishing touches on the plan today. But given the issues that remain, that is far from a certainty.
On paper, everyone claims to want the same thing: Ensure that schools do not lose money, at least for this coming year, even as new policies designed to save money take effect.
But some rank-and-file Republican lawmakers find the language being crafted by their leaders flawed. And they won’t accept commitments that if they vote for the plan now, the measures will be fixed in the Senate.
House Majority Leader Steve Montenegro, R-Litchfield Park, dismissed the current stalemate as no big deal. “This is part of the process,” he said. “This is what putting a budget deal together entails.”
But for the most part, the battles that are holding up a deal are not about the numbers, at least not directly.
For example, lawmakers voted last year to change the method of calculating state aid to public schools to base it on the number of students actually attending that year, versus what enrollment was in the prior year. That change is supposed to take effect this coming school year.
That was before the Department of Education did some calculations and figured that schools with declining enrollment would lose a cumulative $31 million a year.
The legislative leadership is unwilling to change the policy. But with a cash surplus, the have agreed, under pressure, to effectively keep the old policy in place for one more year.
Crafting the language to do that, however, has proved more difficult than they thought.
Ditto for another policy change that would have removed some state aid from small charter schools with multiple sites as well as plans to cut aid to traditional school districts that operate charter schools.
“The language is important,” said Rep. Heather Carter, R-Cave Creek. “The language has to work.”
Carter, however, said Sunday she is optimistic some agreement can be reached.
“We think everything is moving in a positive direction,” she said.
Still, there are other issues to be resolved.
During the years of deficit, even moderate GOP lawmakers felt they had no choice but to go along with various cuts in spending. Now, with a surplus, they see opportunities to boost spending.
One sore point among several lawmakers has been the state shifting responsibilities and costs to local governments.
For example, counties have had to pick up the cost of sending youngsters to the state Department of Juvenile Corrections. And local governments now pay money to the state Department of Revenue for collecting taxes.
But resistance remains among the GOP leadership and many other Republicans to anything that boosts funding.
Montenegro said both education and public safety are important to GOP lawmakers.
“It’s also very, very clear that having a structurally balanced budget is very important to the rest of the caucus as well,” he said of the $9.58 billion spending plan.
That goes to the fact that during the recession, state lawmakers did a series of accounting gimmicks designed to meet the constitutional requirement for a balanced budget.
For example, $200 million in aid to universities was deferred for one month, from June until July.
The trick there is that the new fiscal year begins July 1. With the maneuver, spending in the prior fiscal year effectively was reduced by $200 million.
But the debt still remains. So lawmakers hope to use some of the surplus this year to finally straighten out the books, versus spend the money on other programs.
At the same time, though, the universities, which saw a $99 million budget cut just last year, are getting back just $32 million.
But there’s less there than even that number suggests.
A total of $19 million of that is one-time funds, meaning the schools can’t count on those dollars in future years. And of the remaining $13 million, $5 million is earmarked to support “economic freedom schools” started with grants from various foundations, including those run by the Koch brothers.
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