Eileen Klein, president of the Arizona Board of Regents, is quoted in the Arizona Capitol Times today with a spot on observation about the Tea-Publican state budget:
Eileen Klein, president of the Arizona Board of Regents, said the additional lost dollars could result in the presidents at the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University seeking higher tuition hikes than planned, at least for students not in guaranteed tuition programs. She said the universities will lobby lawmakers to return to the Ducey’s original proposal, calling the higher figures “a serious step backwards in terms of economic development.”
Arizona State University is expected to stick to its pledge not to hike tuition, no matter what. But Klein sees the revised budget, coupled with prior cuts, as a bad sign for the state university system.
“Right now, they’re on a path to defund,” she said.
Exactly! The goal of the anti-government, anti-education, anti-tax Tea-Publicans in the Arizona legislature is to privatize public education by any means possible, because public education is the largest expenditure in the state budget. Without public education, state expenditures can go down and they can reduce the taxes of the wealthy elite whom they serve, because Tea-Publicans really hate to pay taxes to educate other people’s children.
So Tea-Publicans force the universities into dramatically raising tuition, AZ budget plan guts higher education funding, and they shift the taxing burden for community colleges and JTED: Ducey’s budget cuts would gut career training, onto the counties, which will have to raise property taxes in order to keep these education facilities open.
Tea-Publicans seek to privatize K-12 schools through school vouchers to for-profit private schools, charter schools and parochial schools. Unfortunately with respect to K-12 schools, the Arizona Courts disregard the Constitution, authorize the privatization of public education (The Arizona Constitution, Article 2, Section 12, and Article 11, Section 7, have effectively been rendered dead letter law by the Arizona Courts).
What our lawless Tea-Publican Arizona legislature is doing is completely unconstitutional and a violation of their oath of office. Because the Arizona Courts have let them get away with it in the past, they are counting on this again.
Our lawless Tea-Publican Arizona legislature routinely violates two provisions of the Arizona Constitution out of ideological opposition to government, public education, and taxes:
Article XI, Section 6: The university and all other state educational institutions shall be open to students of both sexes, and the instruction furnished shall be as nearly free as possible. The legislature shall provide for a system of common schools by which a free school shall be established and maintained in every school district for at least six months in each year, which school shall be open to all pupils between the ages of six and twenty-one years.
Article IX, Section 3: The legislature shall provide by law for an annual tax sufficient, with other sources of revenue, to defray the necessary ordinary expenses of the state for each fiscal year. And for the purpose of paying the state debt, if there be any, the legislature shall provide for levying an annual tax sufficient to pay the annual interest and the principal of such debt within twenty-five years from the final passage of the law creating the debt.
Our lawless Arizona legislature has for years been in violation of the Arizona Constitution because: (1) it is failing to provide for the cost of public education, and (2) it refuses to raise taxes sufficient “to defray the necessary ordinary expenses of the state for each fiscal year.”
Worse yet, Tea-Publicans have been unlawfully engaged in the theft of local school district funds for which the Superior Court has already entered a judgment ordering our lawless legislature to pay restitution in this fiscal year, and may order restitution for the previous five years of their theft. But that’s not the full extent. Our lawless Arizona legislature faces another lawsuit for its failure to fund public education:
[A]n earlier case in which our lawless Arizona legislature shortchanged our public schools, in which the Arizona Supreme Court held that the statutory financing scheme for public education violated the Arizona Constitution, Article XI, § 1, Roosevelt Elem. School Dist. No. 66 v. Bishop (No. CV-93-0168 1994), is now the basis for yet another lawsuit against our lawless Arizona legislature.
The Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required) reports, Lawsuit will seek funding for school maintenance:
A public interest advocacy group is planning a lawsuit alleging that the state has unconstitutionally underfunded building maintenance and soft capital for school districts, which could force the state restore hundreds of millions of dollars of budget cuts made in recent years.
As I said yesterday, these guys are not serious about good government, compliance with the law, and serving the best interests of the public. They are all derelict in their constitutional duty, and are guilty of legislative malpractice, if not misfeasance in office.
What they are doing to the children of Arizona ought to be considered a crime.
What is so depressing is that these arguments even have to be made.
Here is an argument that might work even with conservatives: If the schools are no good, people who can pull their kids out and go to another state will go. Many of those people will be good doctors and health professionals. Without good schools or good doctors cities and towns will not be able to attract businesses (’cause who wants to live in a third world state if they don’t have to). Without good schools, good doctors, and businesses the entire economy of the state goes downhill. Then because you can’t find a good doctor you will want to leave the state … And you won’t be able to sell your house because nobody wants to buy in a run-down state like this so you won’t be able to get the money for your property. Oh, and by the way, when you need to go to the doctor you can’t find a good one to treat you, so maybe your life is cut short. That is why you want good schools — all the way through college and grad school, dude!
It’s an old story that goes something like: For want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost, for want of a horse the rider was lost, for want of a rider the message was lost, for want of a message the battle was lost, for want of the battle the kingdom was lost, all for the want of a nail and a shoe. It’s all connected.
The best argument for public education…unless , of course, you are a RWNJ AZ legislator.
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