After two months of budget cut negotiations, lawmakers and lobbyists head to the State Capitol

Lawmakers will meet at the State Capitol today to begin a special legislative session in hopes of making definitive decisions about cuts in the state's budget.

The session, which was called to identify from where $1.56 billion in cuts to the state's budget will come, will open at 10 a.m. with an address from Republican Gov. Jane Dee Hull.

The length of the session is open-ended, but some legislators are speculating that it will last beyond Thanksgiving and well into December. Although the universities' roles in the cuts will be an important topic of debate, they will likely affect myriad state budget areas including trauma care, bilingual education and revenue bonding.

The trauma center issue will hit home for Tucsonans, who are facing the possibility of life one the largest cities in America without level one trauma care if the Legislature cannot find more than $4 million to keep the centers at University Medical Center and Tucson Medical Center open.

But the Arizona Students' Association - a lobbying group made up of students from across the state - will be traveling to the session with the hopes of keeping the universities' cuts at 4 percent.

Republican state senator Brenda Burns, two state representatives and several student leaders will speak, while trumpeting the group's slogan "no more than four" in front of hundreds of students, university parents, educators, alumni and members of the community.

ASA co-director Jenny Rimsza explained last week that the administration and student lobbyists, who typically are at odds during tuition negotiations, are united in their resistance to higher cuts.

But ASA directors, careful not to speculate, realize they will be faced with an uphill battle in the spring against higher than average tuition increases, because UA President Peter Likins has already said that he will advocate higher tuition to combat the cuts.

But Likins doesn't decide the extent of the tuition increases. That job belongs to the Arizona Board of Regents, a group that is historically opposed to large increases.

Denny Marta, ASA co-director, said right now ASA is "sitting at the same table," and he said he is confident that relationship will continue when tuition time arrives.

"We will be seeking a tuition that is as realistically low as possible," he said.

Marta said ASA might also be involved in the drafting of UA's 2003 fiscal year budget, which will also be confronted with cuts next year.

The session begins at 10 a.m. today in Phoenix. Students interested in going can meet ASA shuttles at the flagpole in front of Old Main between 7 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. today.