Journalists’ Roundtable: Senate Audit Fight & State Budget

Time now for the journalists’ roundtable and this week a look at the increasing animosity between the State Senate and Maricopa County over the Senate’s attempt to audit County Presidential and U.S. Senate votes. We also had a proposed budget making the rounds at the Capitol. Our guests: Jeremy Duda of Arizona Mirror and Andrew Oxford of The Arizona Republic.

This week’s journalists’ roundtable covered:

• State Senate vs. Maricopa County
• Proposed State Budget

State Senate vs. Maricopa County

Jeremy Duda: “This was in response to Senate President fan and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Peterson. They decided not to issue the subpoenas. They said we’d like you guys to come down into the Senate and answer some questions and answer some accusations, tell us walk us through some of this stuff.”

Andrew Oxford: “They say that they have recovered their contractors as they recover the directory of files that what County was initially accused of deleting. It’s not clear if the contractor found those files before or after the campaign.”

Proposed State Budget

Jeremy Duda: “There’s an interesting feature regarding prop 208. 3.5% surcharge if you make over $250,000 a year for individual half a million as a couple is has a 4.5% cap on income taxes. So if you pay that through Point 5% surcharge you’re not paying 6%.”

Andrew Oxford: “We’ve seen a lot of frustrations with the unemployment system. And it’s been a big reminder of just how low Arizona’s cap on unemployment are, you know, the maximum right now is $240 a week. Obviously, there’s been the federal boost on top of that people have been receiving it, but that’s going away.”