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PHOENIX - Arizona's legislators met for a special session Monday to close the state's budget battles. This is the legislature's seventh special session, and the second this year, to work on the $700 billion deficit for this fiscal year and the $3.4 billion deficit next year.

Republicans are optimistic.

"Hopefully we'll have an agreement on the budget, we'll get it voted out, and we'll have a balanced budget for the state by the end of the week, that's what we're hoping," Republican State Senator Frank Antenori said.

Democrats say it could take longer than that.

"I'm expecting it to last for a little while, my understanding is there aren't enough votes on the republican side of the aisle to get the budget out of the senate," Democratic State Senator Linda Lopez said.

Others say this long, partisan process has left them in in the dark.

"We haven't seen anything substantive from the leadership yet, so I'm a member of the Democratic Party and we've been willing to work with them on a bipartisan basis, but we haven't been included so far," State Representative Nancy Young Wright said.

But in the House and Senate, and on both sides of the aisle, there is a sticking point many Tucson legislators say they do not want to see in this version of the budget.

"I'm not too happy with the idea of pushing the juvenile corrections back on the counties," Sen. Antenori said.

"In actuality it forces it to the local level so that the local folks are going to have to raise taxes on the citizens of Arizona," Sen. Lopez said.

"Hopefully department of juvenile corrections and a couple of other things that have been kind of the bug a boos in getting this thing worked out are smoothed over so we can move forward with the budget," Republican State Representative Vic Williams said.