Wednesday, December 16th, 2009...8:48 am
The Special Session May Turn Out to be Just Thousand Island Dressing
Well, our next special session has been called. Whether it actually will accomplish something or will be a series of ten-minute “pledge and pray” sessions remains to be seen.
(Yep, each day’s business opens with a prayer. To paraphrase Mo Udall’s old joke: the chaplain looks out at the assembled legislators and prays for the State of Arizona.)
Bob Burns’s working “majority” in the Senate on this issue may be down to as little as eight members. This makes him a bit more willing to work with Democrats than his House counterpart. This, as I’ve written before, likely means that the Senate bill will be free of the lifting of “105″ restrictions (those that prevent the legislature from messing with voter mandates) and extra tax cuts. A bill free of these, though, is unlikely to get a hearing in the House.
As for the House, the Governor reportedly thinks that there are twenty Democrats ready to vote for her sales tax proposal. One Democratic member I spoke to thinks the number is a lot less. “One, maybe,” the member reported. Given that a proposal floating among House members includes items such as more tax cuts to get the votes of über-conservative members (which also wipe out the revenue gained from the sales tax) as well as a raid on voter protected funds, the twenty vote number seems like wishful thinking.
I suppose that La Cervecera may have some plan here: that by calling a session, even without a deal for what actually gets discussed, it will shame legislators into actually passing something responsible that she can sign. She should have noticed over the past few months of late night votes and special sessions that this hasn’t worked well in the past.
2 Comments
December 16th, 2009 at 11:51 am
If 20 Democrats vote for a sales tax increase that backfills corporate tax cuts I will be furious.
December 17th, 2009 at 12:10 am
Nice title.