ARIZONA BUDGET OUTLOOK IMPROVING

posted to Political Buzz by Andrea Kelly

Arizona's budget may not be rapidly improving yet, but state budget experts say it shouldn't be getting worse next year.

There's even better news for local governments. State Rep. John Kavanagh said next year there will likely not be further cuts to the state funding that is reserved for local government spending. An example of this is road funding. Much of the city and county road repair money comes from state transportation taxes, so the state doles them out to local governments, but has withheld some in recent years

“We’re trying to undo all the not particularly popular, desperate things we did to prevent a massive tax increase and even greater reductions in services over the last three years," he said.

Kavanagh is on the house appropriations committee, which hashes through the budget details before the full house votes on the spending bills. In an interview, he said the state does not anticipate asking Pima and Maricopa county governments to contribute to the state general fund. In the past few years, the state has required them to give local funding to the state to fill in the state's budget deficit.

REDISTRICTING REDUX: SPECIAL SESSION PONDERED

posted to Political Buzz by Michael Chihak

See the Arizona Week Notebook Blog for a rundown of the facts and foibles of the fight over Arizona redistricting.

And stay tuned. There's surely more to come.

WHAT'S SO SPECIAL ABOUT A SPECIAL SESSION?

posted to AZ Week Notebook by Michael Chihak

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer says she's not inclined to call a special session of the Legislature on the issue of redistricting unless legislators tell her they want it. Legislators say the ball's in Brewer's court.

The impasse may pass today, allowing legislators to act in time to get any change measure onto February's presidential primary election ballot.

Being discussed are a number of proposals, including asking voters to repeal Proposition 106, which they passed in 2000 to set up the current Independent Redistricting Commission. Another proposal would call for expanding the redistricting panel to add more independent members.

The current panel has five members. Proposition 106, now embodied in the Arizona Constitution, requires the panel's makeup to be two Republicans, two Democrats and one independent, who serves as chair.

Independent Colleen Mathis is the chair, a lightning rod spot if there ever was one. She was lambasted, then fired by the governor and state Senate three weeks ago. The state Supreme Court reinstated her two weeks ago, and then rejected Brewer's appeal.

The constitutional and legal entanglements of it all could -- and probably will -- fill a book.

At the least, they will fill a TV program -- Friday's Arizona Week, which will update the legal and political fight and look at the myriad legal issues from the perspectives of several lawyers.

AZ ISN’T ONLY STATE FACING REDISTRICTING DILEMMA

posted to AZ Week Notebook by Melanie Huonker

With the legal battle between Gov. Jan Brewer and Independent Redistricting Commission Chairwoman Colleen Mathis still fresh on everyone's mind, another state is in the midst of a court battle deciding the fate of the redistricting process -- Texas.

Just as in Arizona, Republicans in Texas dominate the Legislature. According to an editorial in the Star-Telegram newspaper, Texas Republicans were determined to maximize the number of GOP candidates in office.

That’s because Texas added more than 4 million residents from 2000 to 2010, adding four seats in Congress. The majority of those are Hispanic voters, who tend to vote Democratic. In another Star-Telegram editorial, the newspaper said, “Republican lawmakers opted to accommodate party interests rather than include more districts with Hispanic majorities.”

Earlier this month, a federal court in Washington, D.C., ordered a three-judge panel in San Antonio to redraw both the congressional and legislative maps of Texas.

The matter will now be sorted out in court, a familiar scenario to Arizona lawmakers after the removal and reinstatement of Mathis.

All this has some in Texas reiterating the need for an independent group, just like the AZ IRC, to draw redistricting lines.

From the Nov. 9 edition: “The Star-Telegram Editorial Board has long supported the creation of an independent, nonpartisan body that could bring more objectivity to the process of revising congressional voting districts.”

This summer, Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R- San Antonio, helped pass a bill in the Texas Senate during special session to create a nine-member redistricting commission. However, the bill did not stand in the Texas House, thwarting Wentworth’s continuous efforts to change redistricting methods.

Will Brewer call a special session of her own in order to dismantle the 2001 voter-approved legislation that created the IRC? Some GOP state senators say they hope so, and in fact a few say she promised to do so. She says she didn't promise.

This could potentially put redistricting back in legislators' hands and drive partisan politics, putting Arizona back from where Texas lawmakers are trying to move away.

GOULD FILES PAPERWORK FOR CONGRESSIONAL RUN

posted to Political Buzz by Andrea Kelly

Republican State Sen. Ron Gould has been rumored to be considering a Congressional run in 2012, but he appears to be in the race now, no longer exploring whether to launch a campaign.

Gould filed paperwork with the Federal Elections Committee to become a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in Arizona. He's said he'd like to run in what could be the new district four, along the state's western border with California (that is, if district lines don't change by the time the redistricting commission and the U.S. Department of Justice review the proposed lines).

While Gould's campaign committee is called "Gould for Congress (Exploratory)," he's submitted a formal statement of candidacy.

Usually, candidates who are exploring whether to run for a federal office open their exploratory committees with tax filings with the Internal Revenue Service, which is what Republican State Sen. Frank Antenori has done. Gould instead went straight to the Federal Elections Commission, which is where candidates are required to file financial and organizational records once they're officially running for office.

REDISTRICTING RESTART; LEGALITIES LINGER

posted to Political Buzz by Michael Chihak

The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission will resume meeting Tuesday. As it does, the specter of more legal fighting hangs over state politics.

The commission's will meet after a three-week hiatus for legal proceedings over the unseating and reinstalling of chair Colleen Mathis.

Meetings will be held Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in Tempe so the five-member commission can review comments and testimony that came to it during a month of public meetings around the state. Those meetings ended in early November, when the commission was supposed to begin finalizing its congressional and legislative maps.

Instead, Gov. Jan Brewer notified Mathis that her removal was being sought for "gross negligence" in the way she conducted the commission's business. Brewer -- backed by a two-thirds vote in the state Senate -- accused Mathis of violating the state Open Meeting Law and of violating the state constitution's provisions for redistricting.

Mathis was removed on the Senate's vote, but she and the commission appealed to the state Supreme Court. The court first ordered Mathis reinstalled, saying Brewer had overstepped, then rejected the governor's request for a stay of the order pending further appeal.

The legal fireworks almost certainly won't end with that. Brewer's spokesman says she is considering her options, and legislators are considering theirs, too.

Don't be surprised if the governor takes another legal step this week, and that could include calling a special legislative session at which an early ballot measure would be proposed to in effect repeal the 2000 voter initiative that created the commission.