Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Last July, Arizona's Accidental Governor was cultivating an image that she was a Mother Theresa of sorts, bless the beasts and children.
Governor Jan Brewer on July 1, 2009 in her veto message of the state budget:
I received early this morning a fatally flawed legislative budget. The legislative budget ignores my consistently expressed goals and instead incorporates devastating cuts to education, public safety, and our state's most vital health services for the frail. In particular, this package of bills is shortsighted, in that it sets up an enormous revenue shortfall that will severely harm our State's future. . . Improvements in education funding, however, will require significantly more legislative work.
By September she was already walking it back. Accidental Governor flip-flops on education, concedes defeat to GOP insane clown posse
With the release of her first – and only – state budget on Friday, our lame-duck Accidental Governor has completed an about face. Confronted by a Republican primary challenge on her right, the Accidental Governor has abandoned any pretense to appeal to the middle and has returned to her roots on the far right – this is the real Janice Brewer. Perhaps it is time to start referring to our two-faced governor as "Janus" Brewer, after the Roman god (for the name play and imagery).
The "devastating cuts to education, public safety, and our state's most vital health services for the frail" that "Janus" Brewer decried in July have now been embraced by her in January (the month named after the Roman god Janus). Vulnerable populations and children are about to be sacrificed on the altar of Republican primary politics. Sharp cuts in health, education proposed:
Gov. Jan Brewer is proposing dramatic cuts to health care, education and state employee pay to balance this year's budget and next year's.
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Brewer's budget proposal for the coming year includes turning juvenile offenders over to counties, which would then have to pick up the added cost; repealing requirements to care for the severely mentally ill; killing state funding for full-day kindergarten; eliminating free health care for more than 300,000 low-income people; selling off more state buildings; borrowing more money; and cutting state employee pay by 5 percent.
She also wants, for the first time, to have Arizona tax labor costs for repairs on everything from automobiles to home appliances to support a $9.2 billion spending plan next year.
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Other proposals to fix this year's budget include selling off and leasing another $300 million in state buildings on top of the $735 million just sold, and delaying payment of another $300 million to public schools and $100 million to universities.
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Brewer's proposed budget for the coming fiscal year does not cut basic aid to universities, community colleges or public schools. That, however, is only because she cannot: Once the state took federal stimulus funds for education, it committed not to slash funding below 2006 levels.
But that doesn't stop her from eliminating state funding for full-day kindergarten to save $218 million.
The state still would pay for half-day programs, as it did before 2006. And Arnold said local schools that want full-day programs are free to do what they did until then — pay for it with local funds or charge parents.
And federal law does not keep Brewer from taking another $180 million from "soft capital" allocations that cover everything from books and computers to school buses.
But even keeping basic funding the same has an effect, reducing what schools get on a per-pupil basis. For K-12, the figure for the coming year will be about $3,370; it was close to $4,000 two years ago.
Maintaining the same level of support for universities will cut per-student funding to $7,100, versus $9,480 during the 2007-2008 school year.
That isn't the only shift in spending Brewer wants to balance the state's books.
Most significant is her plan to eliminate the state Department of Juvenile Corrections. That would require each county to house — and pay for — youngsters detained by judges.
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Brewer, however, does not intend to give counties any of the $63 million saved by closing the facilities and laying off 980 workers.
Translation: your county property taxes are going up, in some counties substantially. You know how Arizona likes to whine to the federal government about the cost of housing its immigration prisoners? News flash! Martin agrees with Napolitano Brewer is proposing to do the very same to county governments in Arizona. Reducing revenue sharing with county governments will only compound the problem resulting in higher property taxes to maintain public safety. And transportation needs:
The governor also wants to cut the share of lottery proceeds that now helps local governments with transportation needs, and reduce tourism funding. And she wants counties to pay the full costs of housing sexually violent predators from their communities in the state hospital rather than the current 25 percent share.
Brewer also wants legislators to repeal laws requiring the state to provide comprehensive care for about 17,400 seriously mentally ill, instead funding only crisis-intervention programs and medications.
What can one say to the abandonment of the seriously mentally ill and their burdened families who need assistance? It is short-sighted and unusually cruel.
To her credit, "Janus" Brewer is demanding lawmakers enact the sales tax increases themselves, rather than leaving the decisions to voters in the spring, so retailers can start collecting the extra 1-cent levy on the state's 5.6 percent sales tax on March 1. But enacting an immediate tax hike requires a two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate, when our lame-duck governor could not even persuade a simple majority of senators to support putting the question on the ballot.
Some of what the governor wants would need voter approval.
Brewer already said she wants to scale back the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System to cover only what is required by federal law plus what can be financed by the revenues from the state's share of a settlement with tobacco companies and money coming from tobacco taxes, which would knock about 310,000 off the rolls.
She also would need permission to repeal the requirement the state set aside $20 million each year for open-space preservation and to take the $124 million now sitting in that account.
Add to this list the suspension or repeal of the Voter Protection Act (Prop. 105) that Republicans in the Arizona Legislature want.
No public vote is needed, however, for Brewer's plan to eliminate the KidsCare program that provides nearly free health coverage to children whose parents don't qualify for AHCCCS but earn less than twice the federal poverty level.
Bless the beasts and children, indeed.