Reader Carl Noggle sends in this plea. E-mail [email protected] for more info.

Two statues are missing from traffic circles in the Samos neighborhood. They disappeared a few months ago. They represent a lot of work by the artist and were loved by the residents of Samos. The circles are at Highland and Spring streets, and at Warren and Water. No questions asked—we just want them back.

Here are pix of the two statues.

If you want an entertaining primer on the nuts and bolts of Arizona's budget crisis, you could do worse than watching Ken Bennett's Kleenex box presentation. Parts 2-4 follow after the jump.

Here is a look at the fella who dumped $2 million into the Arizona governor's race: A campaign ad Owen Buz Mills shot for an NRA position.

To no one's great surprise, state Treasurer Dean Martin has announced that he's running for governor.

AP has the details, although the story refers to Owen Buz Mills, the shooting-sports guy who dumped a couple of million bucks in the campaign last month, as Buz Owens. Guess that illustrates Mills' name ID problem...

Incidentally, Martin will be our guest on the Friday Roundtable on KUAT-TV's Arizona Illustrated this week. Tune at 6:30 p.m. on Channel 6.

Rep. Steve Farley sends his first weekly summary from the Arizona Legislature:

Howdy, Friends O'Farley…

It's Opening Week of Regular Session, but this legislative reunion doesn't quite have the same excitement to it after meeting more or less constantly for the previous year.

What does add to the excitement is the vastness of our fiscal crisis, and the persistent lack of leadership from the Governor and the legislative Republicans as we seek to address the crisis.

Here are the facts:

—> $1.5 billion deficit for this fiscal year, which is half over already
—> another $3 billion deficit for next fiscal year
—> We've already in debt to our necks, so there's very little left to borrow against.
—> It's too late to increase revenues by a vote of the people.
—> The state could simply run out of money by February or March.

Here are the Republican responses to the crisis:

—> The Legislative Republicans want to make the deficit bigger by enacting a huge package of corporate tax bailouts and a massive shift of property taxes off of big businesses and onto homeowners, including retirees on fixed incomes. They also want to cut

If anyone was hoping for much resolution to the city's budget woes at today's Tucson City Council meeting, they were out of luck.

But something amazing did happen: All of the city's labor groups stood united against a pay proposal brought forth by City Manager Mike Letcher. They provided their own proposal to council members.

In the end, the council voted to put off decisions until they could consider the alternative proposal. Tune in next week to see how that works out.

UPDATE: Rob O'Dell of the Star reports that in the evening session, the council went forward with more furlough days for city employees.

The council did move forward with 60 percent cuts to most outside agencies, although they reduced the cuts to the Downtown Tucson Partnership to only 20 percent.

The 60 percent cut could spell the end to Access Tucson, the non-profit agency that runs the city's public-access TV stations.

Councilwoman Karin Uhlich tried to save Access Tucson by drawing money from Channel 12, the city's own TV station that airs glowing profiles of council members and televises council meetings. But the effort failed on a 3-4 vote, with Mayor Bob Walkup and council members Shirley Scott, Rodney Glassman and Steve Kozachik opposing the idea.

Letcher said he'd return next month with a proposal to merge public access with Channel 12. The big question: What is Channel 12 management going to do when a guy with devil horns wants to broadcast a show in which he urinates on a ripped-up photo of the Pope?

After the meeting, Sam Behrend, executive director of Access Tucson, said the future looked grim. Although the non-profit has a small reserve, it's probably not enough to keep it in business for any length of time.

Behrend said the Access Tucson board would meet this Thursday to decide the next move.

"The options are not good," Behrend said.

Gov. Jan Brewer announced this afternoon that she has appointed Rick Myers, former IBM exec and member of the Southern Arizona Leadership Council, to the Arizona Board of Regents. He'll replace Fred Boice.

When Gov. Jan Brewer delivered her first State of the State speech yesterday, expectations were pretty low—so there were audience members who thought she did a pretty good job, despite her tendency to screw up the timing on most of her good lines.

• RAND CARLSON
• Gov. Jan Brewer

Given that Brewer began to win back some of her GOP base, the speech was a success.

The Democrats who got slapped around—such as Attorney General Terry Goddard—didn’t feel as charitable toward Brewer, which is no surprise. Democratic lawmakers were grousing that Brewer wasn’t offering much of anything new in the speech.

It’s certainly true that Brewer gave only a passing reference to her ongoing efforts to persuade the Legislature to pass a referendum that would ask voters to temporarily increase the sales tax by one cent per dollar. (And by the way, the clock is ticking on getting that proposal together for a May ballot, so if it’s gonna happen, it has to happen soon.)

Instead of focusing on that tax hike, our appointed governor—who is already seeing plenty of opponents coming out the woodwork to run against her this year—promised to deliver a lot of future tax cuts, which has Democrats wondering why they should help her approve a plan that hits the poor and middle-class with a higher sales tax at the same time that wealthy Arizonans will be getting a break on their income and corporate taxes.

Brewer was blunt in her assessment of the problem

A look back at the week gone by and a look forward at the legislative session that starts next week on KUAT-TV's Arizona Illustrated. Watch it after the jump.

BTW, KUAT-TV will be airing Gov. Brewer's State of the State speech on Monday, with commentary from Christopher Conover and me! It's supposed to start sometime after 1 p.m. on Channel 6.

State Sen. Al Melvin and State Rep. Steve Farley stopped by Arizona Illustrated's Friday Night Roundtable today. Al still believes the state can get out of this budget mess without raising taxes and opposes a one-cent sales tax proposition, although he would vote to send it to the voters for a final call. His solution to the state's budget shortfall: More cuts and more nuclear power plants.

Watch it after the jump.