Senate closing in on budget deal

The State Senate may be close to reaching an agreement on a budget bill, according to sources within the Senate leadership's offices.

"They are working on it right now," said a staffer for Senate Majority Leader Thayer Verschoor (R-Gilbert).

As reported today by the Associated Press:

"Senate fiscal hard-liners are trying to pressure a fellow Republican who says he won't budge in his opposition to a GOP-drafted plan designed to cut a projected revenue shortfall...

"They didn't name Sen. Tom O'Halleran during the caucus but one did later and O'Halleran raised his own hand during the meeting and afterward during an interview."

The office of Majority Whip John Huppenthal (R-Chandler) told PolitickerAZ that fellow Republicans were "working to address Sen. O'Halleran's concerns." The Senate leadership spent a large part of the day trying to hammer out the specifics of a budget proposal, which, if the backing of 16 senators can be mustered, would be drafted as a bill and brought to the floor for a vote.

The Senate is attempting to move quickly on the issue. The budget process has stalled for some time over a dispute as to how the state should attempt to eliminate the projected $1.2 billion shortfall for fiscal year 2008-2009. Gov. Janet Napolitano supports the employment of bonding certain projects, which would clear up the budget in the short term but mean the money would have to be repaid down the road. Republicans have refused to adopt bonding, instead insisting that the difference be made up through dipping into the state's "rainy day fund" accompanied by cuts in services.

However, the Republicans may need to soften their position to pull O'Halleran to their side.

"The reason I'm voting against it is I don't know of any major business in this country that would use up all of its cash reserves in year one of a three-year problem," O'Halleran told the AP. "This idea that we're not going to bond as part of the budget solution now or longer term is just ridiculous."