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| Arizona's budget war is a GOP standoff |
| 2009-06-28 |
| Reporting from Phoenix -- In recent years, the onset of summer in Phoenix meant two things -- triple-digit temperatures and a budget battle between the Republican-dominated Legislature, which regularly pushed to cut taxes, and Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano, who pushed to maintain them to save or expand services. In January, Napolitano moved to Washington to become secretary of Homeland Security, and Jan Brewer, a staunch fiscal conservative who was then Arizona's secretary of state, took her spot. "We thought, we've got a friendly face in the governor's office and we'll be able to do some good things," said Bob Burns, president of the state Senate. It didn't work out that way. Instead, Brewer called for a hike in the sales tax to preserve essential services, and the Legislature and the governor became enmeshed in what many call the nastiest fiscal fight in Arizona history. Republican lawmakers refused to send Brewer a budget that she has signaled she would veto. Instead, they tried to delay until the end of the fiscal year -- June 30 -- when she would either have to sign it or shut down the government. Brewer sued Burns and Kirk Adams, the speaker of the Arizona House, to force them to send her the budget, but the Arizona Supreme Court ruled against her this week. On Friday afternoon, the governor and legislative leaders announced an agreement that would basically kick the debate over to the voters, asking them to approve Brewer's $1-billion, three-year tax increase in November. "It's a really interesting trap for the GOP here," said Earl DeBerge, a Phoenix-based nonpartisan pollster. "They have been so die-hard on shrinking government and shrinking taxes, they couldn't foresee that there's a minimal level of government required." |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #3 US prison populations have soared Most if not all state chief executives have the power to commute/pardon/kick prisoners out of prisons, and the power is not reviewable. I don't know whether or not the public would be endangered by releasing any of the nonviolent offenders. It's interesting that there has been zero discussion of this anywhere. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2009-06-28 16:44 |
| #2 I suggest they go through the record and look at legislation that has been passed over the past 20 years. Starting with the most recent, start repealing it. But the one thing is going to be prison populations. Since three-strikes laws came into being US prison populations have soared. That is the one thing that is different than before ... the larger percentage of the population in prison, and the one place they are not going to be able to do much cutting. |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2009-06-28 16:00 |
| #1 "They have been so die-hard on shrinking government and shrinking taxes, they couldn't foresee that there's a minimal level of government required." How, how did the country and people survived for two hundred years without a lot of 'minimal government'? There's a lot that have become 'essential' that never existed 50 years ago or 30 years ago. Just go back to those budgets and see what was funded and what was not. At the same time check the number of administrative layers that existed between the mayor or governor and the cop, teacher, fireman, or street/road repairman, then and now. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-06-28 07:56 |