Gov. Jan Brewer has released a plan to close a $5 billion budget gap in the Arizona budget over the next 18 months. That's good, you might say.
Not so fast. The plan relies too heavily on spending cuts - on top of what the governor acknowledges were $1.09 billion in cuts over the past 12 months - and offers too little in the way of proposals for increasing revenues.
Worse yet, her plan would shift costs from the state to the counties, which could require increases in property taxes. Her plan would withdraw vital services to vulnerable populations who need them now, during this economic crisis, more than ever.
The governor wants to ask voters to reverse a 2000 mandate to provide health care to anyone below the federal poverty level.
If approved, more than 300,000 people would be dumped from Arizona's Medicaid program, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the governor said.
These people would still need care - though they may wait until they are much more sick to seek it - and hospitals cannot legally turn them away. Ultimately those of us who are able to pay and the health insurers would have to make up the difference, and pay more.
The governor said the AHCCCS dump would save $700 million. But as a result, she said, the state would lose $738 million in federal matching funds. That would add to the deficit, not reduce it.
The governor also wants to end the KidsCare health program and stop services to 17,000 seriously mentally ill people.
She also would zero out the state's juvenile offender agency, sending all the young offenders who are now in the custody of the state to the counties.
Some counties have no facilities for juvenile offenders and would have to contract with other counties, such as Pima County, to house them, Pima Supervisors Chairman Richard Elías told us.
Further, because the juvenile program is controlled by the state Supreme Court, the counties "can't manipulate the costs," he said.
The counties will have to increase their budgets to cover the costs.
Brewer said she would reduce education funding to 2006 spending levels. That will mean the end of gifted programs, all-day kindergarten unless parents pay for it, GED programs and literacy programs.
Under her plan, per-pupil spending for the state universities will drop by a total of 25 percent since fiscal year 2008, said Rep. Steve Farley, D-Tucson.
Brewer's plan also includes borrowing and deferring payments of $1.5 billion.
The governor has been asking lawmakers for the past year to allow voters to decide whether to add 1 cent to the state sales tax, which she estimates would raise $1 billion. We agree that voters should have the opportunity to decide.
She also offered a proposal to tax labor costs for repair work. And she wants to stop paying businesses, mostly big retailers, some $20 million in return for filing out their tax forms.
Democrats told us they could support Brewer's revenue proposals as long as they're not packaged with a tax-cut proposal that was revealed earlier this month by House Speaker Kirk Adams, R-Mesa, and would slash corporate and business taxes.
"I don't see any reason to ask voters to increase their sales tax and at the same time give businesses a $600 million tax cut," Senate Minority Leader Jorge Luis Garcia of Tucson told us.
Even Senate President Bob Burns, R-Peoria, was concerned about the Adams plan, saying it's worthwhile to try to make Arizona more business-friendly, but reducing those revenues now may be premature.
"You've got to stop the bleeding of the state right now," he told Capitol Media Services.
We agree with Burns, who is demonstrating a keen understanding of the matters at hand.
We believe the governor didn't go far enough in proposing new streams of revenues.
There are tax loopholes that could be closed on "thousands of products and services currently exempted from taxation," Farley said.
The Democrats' proposal to extend the sales tax to a broad range of services has fallen on deaf ears at the GOP-led Legislature.
We have long argued that the state's tax code needs comprehensive reform; it is dangerously over-reliant on sales taxes, which are volatile.
Brewer's budget plan is so harsh that we hope she is using it to try to alarm voters and prompt them to rise up and demand that lawmakers undertake a bipartisan exploration of better solutions.
The partisan divide in Phoenix is at least as broad as the state's budget gap. The governor has not always been at the table as Republicans have crafted budget plans; nor have the Democrats.
Getting any new revenues approved is difficult because 11 members of the Senate and 22 members of the House were listed as signatories of Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform no-new-taxes pledge as of Oct. 1, according to the ATR Web site.
While some may be bending to the financial realities - Burns, for instance, is a signatory who has nevertheless tried and failed repeatedly to get Brewer's sales-tax increase through the Senate - most appear dug in.
Arizonans are paying a price for the state's wildly dysfunctional budget deliberations - and it's a price that's too high, at the wrong time.
So study up. Learn what your lawmakers believe and hope to accomplish. Start by following our series by our hometown lawmakers starting tomorrow on this page.
Then follow up: Tell them what you think.
We think you should demand bipartisan, non-ideological efforts at the Capitol to craft a budget that's good for Arizona's future.
Learn your
lawmakers' views
Beginning Monday, the Star's editorial page will publish guest opinions by our Southern Arizona delegation on how to solve the state's budget crisis. We asked our hometown lawmakers to share their views on health-care cuts, education cuts and other cuts that might be made. And we asked them what revenue-raising ideas they would support.
"I don't see any reason to ask voters to increase their sales tax and at the same time give businesses a $600 million tax cut."
Jorge Luis Garcia,
Senate Minority Leader, Tucson |
