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Rio Nuevo became a river of gold Wednesday as the House and Senate voted to give Tucson an extra $600 million to redevelop its Downtown.

The city didn't get everything it wanted. It wanted a 30-year extension of the special taxing district that would have brought in $1 billion.

It got 12 years, but with a more liberal interpretation of how the tax is calculated than the legislators were previously considering, making it worth at least $600 million, and maybe up to $800 million.

The revamped extension passed the Senate 17-12. The House, which had previously approved the 30-year extension, voted 40-16 late in the day to go along with the shorter Senate extension.

The path to the vote was cleared in a two-hour meeting in Senate President Ken Bennett's, R-Prescott, office that included City Manager Mike Hein, Senate Majority Leader Tim Bee, R-Tucson, and Sen. Toni Hellon R-Tucson.

What emerged from the meeting was the 12-year compromise. Bee, who offered the amendment on the Senate floor, said it was basically a win-win for the city and the state.

He said it gives the city the money to revitalize Downtown while also addressing Bennett's concerns. "Considering the option of not having the bill move forward," it's the best deal that could be made, Bee said.

Bennett said the original bill would have cost the state $1.4 billion and "that's an amount that is unacceptable to this body as a whole." He said what has held the bill up for months was determining "how much money they really need" to make Rio Nuevo work and figuring out "what's the best mechanism to get there."

Bennett said the amendment "cut down the drain on the state's general fund, but provided the city with what they needed."

Hein said the amendment gives the city about $350 million in money — without factoring for inflation and growth — that it can go to the bond market with right now. He said there aren't any plans to do that for at least a year.

Hein said the compromise was "fair for the state and fair for the city of Tucson."

Many Phoenix Republicans were cool toward the amendment, and there was a groan from some legislators when the bill was announced on the Senate floor. Some Valley legislators were jeered by their colleagues for voting in favor.

Senate members had to be called back from Casa Grande and Queen Creek to ensure the votes for passage, Hein said.

Bennett told skeptical Republicans in their caucus meeting that "a lot of this was political and economic negotiations," and that he wanted to trim the district's life span to be as short as possible.

That didn't satisfy Republicans such as Barbara Leff, R-Paradise Valley, who said Tucson's district was set up differently than intended.

"They set this up, we feel, illegally," Leff said, noting that the district includes the El Con and Park Place Malls as its tax generators although they are far from Downtown.

Sen. Ron Gould, R-Lake Havasu City, said a better name for the bill should have been "Rio Dinero."

The bill's sponsor, Rep. Steve Huffman, R-Oro Valley, called the bill's passage "a real win. This bill gives our community the means to revitalize Downtown," Huffman said, adding that it is enough money to provide the projects the community expects.

Huffman said he agreed to concur with whatever version came out of the Senate and said everyone knew the final negotiations would happen in the Senate. "It was just about getting something Bennett would accept," he said.

The 12-year extension would push the district's life until 2025, for a total of 22 years.

It will keep the base year for calculating how much state tax money the district can keep as 1999. That was important in minimizing the dollar drain by cutting the extension to 12 years.

The 30-year extension included a change in the base year that would have reduced the city's take per year, even though it generated more over the full term.

Although the district was approved by voters in 1999, it wasn't triggered until 2003 when the money started flowing in. The original 10-year district was estimated to bring $124 million to Downtown.

The city must match the state sales tax it receives with either spending or projects in Rio Nuevo, and can't spend the money on a new city hall or use eminent domain for projects in the district.