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PHOENIX — House Speaker Jim Weiers and a top Senate Republican will take the first steps today to effectively block the state from ever again collecting a property tax that had been used to help finance education.

The plan by Weiers, R-Phoenix, and Sen. Jim Waring, R-Phoenix, would make permanent the temporary suspension of the tax.

That tax disappeared in 2006 as part of a deal between the GOP-controlled Legislature and Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano, who concluded that there was enough money to fund all of the state's obligations without the income from the tax.

But the tax will be reinstated automatically in 2009 and would bring Arizona about $250 million a year. The tax, when last levied, cost the owner of a $200,000 home about $90 a year.

Weiers acknowledged the state's $970 million budget deficit on Tuesday, as well as predictions by his own budget staff that the revenue picture will get worse before it gets better. But he said it is precisely that situation which convinces him the tax never should return.

"It's not fair, with the economic times that we have, to try to balance the budget on the back of the homeowners that are looking at some really, really hard times when it comes to property," he said. "And so it's the right thing to do."