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After Governor Jan Brewer vetoed the Senate’s budget plan on July 1st, and called a special session, you could only assume that nowhere in her wildest imagination did she think the legislature would take seven weeks only to bring her the same bill.
Well, that’s exactly what happened.
On Wednesday, the senate voted on a 1-cent sales tax hike, which Brewer had insisted be included in a new budget plan, and shot the measure down after weeks of legislative hissy fits, name calling, and of course: vacations.
Yes, in the last seven weeks, while gallivanting across the country, or in Senator Majority Leader Chuck Gray’s case; the Caribbean (how posh), legislators were supposed to be coming up with a plan the governor could support. Here we are, a month and a half later, and the legislature has handed Brewer the same plan she vetoed.
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Gray told the Arizona Guardian most legislators weren’t expecting to be voting today, which is why nothing has changed.
“We weren’t expecting to vote this,” Gray says. “I was as surprised as you were that we were voting on this.”
Senator Gray — To be honest, we’re more surprised you actually showed up.
