EDUCATION FUNDING CUTS WON'T HURT -- SCHOOLS OR ECONOMY -- GOP SAYS

posted by Michael Chihak

Gov. Jan Brewer's budget proposal released in January is serving as a fine template for the Republican-controlled state Senate and House to make adjustments, leaders of both houses' appropriations committees say.

In separate interviews for Friday's Arizona Week, Sen. Majority Leader and Appropriations Committee Chair Andy Biggs and House Appropriations Committee Chair John Kavanagh said the two houses are pretty close to agreement. They also said they think they're close to what the governor will accept.

The Senate passed its budget proposal Wednesday, adding $600 million or more in cuts to what Brewer had proposed. Biggs said the Senate plan eliminates the need for rollovers and borrowing, the "gimmicks" on which the budget has rested for several years.

Kavanagh agreed that the Senate proposal is close to what Republicans in the House will want when they take up the budget, likely as early as next week.

Then comes the negotiating with the governor, who has promised to protect educational funding as much as possible. Despite that, the Senate significantly increased the cuts both for K-12 and universities.

Those cuts won't hurt the economy, both appropriations chairs said. Biggs said the business tax cuts passed earlier are what businesses really want, and he and Kavanagh said they don't see educational quality diminishing because of the cuts.

Biggs was asked if the defection of two Republican senators in the final budget votes on Wednesday, one who opposed the universities cuts and the other the K-12 cuts, would mean disappearance of a veto-poof majority should it come to that, said: I hope we won't need it."