Key state budget bills still outstanding, but no fear of shutdown
Gov. Doug Ducey dusted off his pen Tuesday, signing 10 bills into law after a self-imposed monthlong hiatus as he waited for a state budget.
Meanwhile, with a new budget year starting Thursday, two key bills dealing with private-school vouchers, civics education and criminal justice still await Senate approval.
They are part of an 11-bill package that shapes how the state government will operate as of July 1.
The Senate approved an expansion of the state’s voucher, or empowerment scholarship account program, but the House eliminated it and added a civicseducation requirement. The differences have to be reconciled before the bill can become law.
In the criminal justice bill, the House and Senate versions differ in how they define when a local government rule or policy would trigger possible pre-emption by the state. The House version is more stringent.
Even if the two bills are not approved
by the end of Wednesday, the state government will continue to operate as the main money bill is already on Ducey’s desk and is expected to be signed Wednesday.
Tuesday’s action included:
Approval of a bill that creates a new income tax category for small businesses, carving out potentially hundreds of high-income earners from the 3.5% tax surcharge created by Proposition 208.
The surcharge is levied on any taxable income earned above $250,000, raising the top rate for those filers to 8%. Senate Bill 1783 provides a way for many higher-income taxpayers to avoid the surcharge and the rate jump.
Instead, they will pay a maximum of 3.5%, dropping to 2.5% by 2025. SB 1783, which Ducey is expected to sign,
has the effect of cutting Proposition 208’s anticipated revenue by up to $377 million, or about one-third.
A sharply worded clash between senators Michelle Ugenti-Rita and Kelly Townsend, as each voted against the other’s election bill, killing both.
Senate Bill 1241, sponsored by Townsend, R-Mesa, would have made a series of changes to state election laws, including a requirement that counties provide receipts to voters who cast their ballots at polling places where the ballots are counted on site, such as in Maricopa County.
Townsend accused Ugenti-Rita, RScottsdale, of failing to hear her bill earlier this year in committee out of spite, while Ugenti-Rita said the proposal needed “a more thoughtful and deliberative approach” and cast the deciding vote that killed the bill.
Minutes later, Townsend was the decisive no vote in killing Senate Bill 1083, a Ugenti-Rita bill that would have changed the thresholds for a mandatory recount of election results. Current law calls for recounts in legislative races, for example, if the candidates finish within 50 votes of one another.
Ugenti-Rita proposed requiring recounts when candidates finish within one-half of 1% of the total votes cast, which in almost all cases would be a wider margin than 50 votes.
On a 20-10 vote, the Senate approved House Bill 2053, more than doubling the daily stipend of lawmakers from outside Maricopa County.
If it were law today, lawmakers would earn a daily stipend of $151, which is calculated by averaging the highest six months of per diem as determined by the federal government’s General Services Administration. The current rate is $60 a day.
The bill still needs House approval. Late Tuesday, Ducey signed 10 bills that mirrored legislation he vetoed last month as he tried to prod lawmakers into completing work on the $13 billion budget and its accompanying $1.3 billion tax cut.