Governor Doug Ducey is unveiling his budget and it’s expected to detail how he plans to fill in an approximately half-billion-dollar gap in the current year’s budget, and around a $1 billion deficit in the fiscal year starting in July.
Joined by GOP legislative leaders, Ducey spoke with reporters earlier today, before the release.
So, what’s the budget going to look like? Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve spoken to a few people who have good insight into that. The incoming Chair of the House Appropriations Committee, Justin Olson, and that panel’s former chair, John Kavanagh who now serves as Vice Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Olson said lawmakers have to take on the problem head-on.
While there will most certainly be spending cuts, Kavanagh said that’s not all the budget will include.
Kavanagh said even if lawmakers tried to do that, it still wouldn’t balance the budget.
But Olson said if lawmakers and the governor reduced new spending and went back to last year’s spending level, that’d go a long way toward closing the gap.
But, that still leaves the question — how exactly did we get here?
To try to get to the bottom of that, we turn to Jim Rounds, Senior Vice President with Scottsdale-based Elliot D. Pollack and Company.
