State budget plans seems like a gamble
There's simply no way to endorse a state budget that balances the books by counting on Arizonans to gamble more and to drive dangerously fast on the freeways.After months of dragging its feet, the Arizona Legislature finally adopted a new budget Thursday - one that eliminates a predicted $2 billion shortfall but significantly avoids hard decisions about state priorities. Gov. Janet Napolitano heavily shaped the final outcome and quickly signed the budget into law Friday.
True budget cuts came in at $348 million, with $50 million falling on the state's three universities, according to Capitol Media Services. Another $106 million will be taken from the tax dollars used to support highway construction and maintenance to fund the state Department of Public Safety instead.
But this budget also borrows about $1 billion in a variety of ways, including postponing $660 million in monthly payments to school districts into the state's next fiscal year. This means the next Legislature will return in January facing yet another huge shortfall. Meanwhile, the "rainy day" emergency savings will be gone and many of the speciality funds will be empty as well.
Then, there's how lawmakers and Napolitano handled the issues of university building construction and a new statewide photo enforcement program.
The new budget authorizes the Arizona Board of Regents to borrow $1 billion to repair existing buildings and to add new ones. Earlier versions of this package had required the universities to pick up 20 percent of the debt payments out of their own budgets, with the Legislature funding the rest starting in 2010.
Now, the Arizona Lottery will have to cover the debt payments. To make that possible, the lottery no longer will have limits on its advertising budget and can create new games to entice more people to play.
We have supported photo enforcement as a useful law enforcement tool. But this budget undermines that value by saying violators caught by state cameras won't have points added to their driver's licenses or face higher insurance premiums. Sen. Marsha Arzberger, D-Willcox, told Capitol Media Services this was done to encourage people to just pay the fines so the state could raise as much money as possible.
Given the enormous scope of the budget problems and the political divide at the Capitol, there was no path to a final budget that would have made many people happy. But we suspect lawmakers will come to regret postponing so much of the problem into the future on the hope that the economy and tax collections will boom again sooner rather than later.
Original Source : http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/119627
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