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With a $10 billion budget in place, the state Legislature finally adjourned Wednesday night, but not before passing a frenzy of legislative buzzer- beaters.

The 164-day session ended after numerous hardball negotiating sessions between Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano and leaders of the Republican-controlled Legislature. The battle was not unlike those of previous years with one major difference: This year's negotiations started with projections of an estimated $1 billion revenue surplus, as opposed to a deficit.

And, largely because of the unusual surplus, the approved budget includes provisions that trim individual income taxes by 10 percent.

But don't start spending that tax cut money yet. It won't be visible until the 2006 tax filing cycle, when income taxes will be calculated using the new tables. The tax reduction will be phased in over the next two years.

Napolitano's signature ended a marathon legislative session and a contentious tug-of-war, but one that left both sides with much of what they wanted and a relatively small amount of political bloodshed.

The Legislature convened in January with a projected revenue surplus of between $850 million and $1 billion. After Napolitano presented her $10.1 billion budget, the consensus among political observers — as expressed in a Star editorial — was that the Republicans would insist that the surplus be used to lower income and property taxes.

That is, of course, how things played out.

In addition to the individual income tax cuts, the newly approved budget includes a three-year suspension of a state education property tax that is levied at 43 cents for each $100 of assessed valuation. That reduces the tax bill for a $200,000 home by $86.

The Republicans who advocated the tax cuts were not concerned about the possible loss of revenue because, they maintained, the lower taxes will stimulate business activity and offset the reduction in revenue.

We hope their prediction is correct. As recently as three years ago the state was struggling to recover from a $1 billion deficit. A combination of political action and economic improvements turned that negative into a positive, but the memory of those bad times should have influenced lawmakers to take a more judicious approach toward saving for a rainy day.

On the governor's end of the rope, the new budget provides her with more than she requested in two education areas, though she had to make a major concession to get the approval of Legislative leaders.

Teacher salary increases were approved at $100 million instead of her requested $90 million.

The difference between the governor's original budget and the one adopted represented an excellent compromise in which both sides agreed to increase the overall amount for teacher salaries and to compensate educators for increases in payments into the state pension fund. The compromise contains a bit more flexibility for school districts than the governor originally intended, and leaves some of the spending decisions affecting nonadministrative personnel up to the individual school jurisdictions.

Families with small children were among the biggest winners in the budget, thanks to Napolitano's dogged insistence that all-day kindergarten be extended throughout the state. The governor asked for $105 million to expand full-day kindergarten and $160 million was approved in the budget. This should result in a significant saving for parents living in school districts that charge for kindergarten. All-day kindergarten is a welcome and long overdue benefit for Arizona families.

The budget includes $2.5 million each for education vouchers for two programs, one that allows disabled children to attend the school of their choice at state expense, and the other providing the same benefit to former foster children who have been adopted. This sets an uncomfortable precedent of spending public dollars for private and parochial school tuition, but ended up being a bargaining chip. The governor agreed to the voucher program, she said, to win agreement from the Republicans on her other priorities, such as the all-day kindergarten bill.

With the budget approved, lawmakers scampered about Wednesday night dealing with a flurry of bills that had been hanging in limbo for weeks and months.

The main bill of interest to Tucson was a Tax Increment Financing measure that ultimately will provide the city with considerable income from state sales taxes to be used for infrastructure improvements in the Rio Nuevo District Downtown. (More on this measure and its impact on Sunday's Editorial Page.)

Voters will see some of the Legislature's last-minute handiwork on the November ballot. Voters will be asked whether English should become the state's official language and whether they want to beef up the laws preventing illegal immigrants from receiving some state services.

Thankfully, the Legislature did not, however, forward measures that would have penalized employers of undocumented workers, nor did they order a referendum on a proposal that could have changed state law to include a charge of criminal trespass — a proposal that was clearly a reaction to the flow of illegal immigrants into Arizona.