This year's Arizona state budget is more than 11 percent higher than last year's, but there's less new spending than there is spending to pay back debt.
With this budget, lawmakers made a long overdue deposit for $271 million to the state's rainy day fund. They also used another $190 million to pay off a portion of the debt borrowed nearly a decade ago to balance the budget.
Along with all that, spending in the current fiscal year ending June 30, went over the approved $10.4 billion budget.
Subtracting all of those debts reduces the actual year over year increase for the upcoming fiscal budget to about 7 percent.
