Arizona’s Tea-Publican lawless legislature: ‘kick us out of office’

From your lips to God’s ear! If only it worked this way.

America is a nation of laws, and no man is above the law. Our Tea-Publican lawless legislature, however, begs to differ. They believe that they are the law, and that no court has the power to compel them to comply with the law or the Constitution.

Last year the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that the Arizona legislature is obligated under Proposition 301, a citizens initiative approved by voters in 2000, to increase education funding annually to fully account for inflation.

The high court ruled that the Legislature violated the Voter Protection Act, a citizens initiative (Prop. 105) approved by voters in 1998, when it only provided a partial increase that was below the inflationary requirement.

The Supreme Court returned the case to Maricopa County Superior Court for a judgment consistent with its ruling. You may recall that attempts to work out a settlement of the case faltered because our Tea-Publican lawless legislature failed to negotiate in good faith. Our lawless legislature lost in court, now it’s fighting a settlement that saves taxpayers money.

The case was back in front of Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Katherine Cooper on Friday. Attorney William Richards for our Tea-Publican lawless legislature argued the court can only tell the Legislature what the law is, and if lawmakers decide not to follow it, then voters can kick them out of office.

Howard Fischer reports, Lawmaker’s lawyer argues court can’t order them to give more to schools:

The attorney for state lawmakers told a judge Friday there’s no basis for her to order his clients to give as much as $2.9 billion in withheld state aid to public schools.

Bill Richards said if his clients wanted to — and he’s not saying they would — they could reject any order from her to hand over any amount of new funds as a violation of the constitutional separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches.

Richards said any mandate to come up with the money would require an order on lawmakers to increase taxes, something he said courts cannot do. He said all judges can do is tell lawmakers they were wrong.

“The court’s not allowed to say, ‘Tomorrow, you have to disburse $300 million,’” he told Cooper. The only remedy for schools that successfully sued the Legislature for illegally withholding the cash would be to ask voters to kick the offending lawmakers out of office, he said.

The argument drew a surprised reaction from Don Peters, the attorney who got the Arizona Supreme Court to rule last year that lawmakers ignored a 2000 voter mandate to increase state aid each year to account for inflation.

The justices said that refusal violated the Voter Protection Act, a constitutional provision prohibiting legislative tinkering with anything approved at the ballot.

Peters said this isn’t a question of judges treading on lawmakers’ turf. Instead it is a case where the Legislature violated the constitutional right of the people to enact their own laws — and the court has to step in to restore the rightful power of the people.

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Judge Cooper noted the Supreme Court did rule lawmakers broke the law and sent the case back to her to come up with a final order of what the schools are due.

And that, Cooper said, requires her to act.

There’s a lot of cash hanging in the balance.

First is the question of how much is owed going forward. After losing in court, lawmakers agreed to add about $80 million in state aid to public schools this year and a similar amount for the coming year.

Peters, however, said that’s not enough.

At the very least, he said the formula for setting the annual inflation increase should be adjusted to what it would have been had lawmakers not ignored the voter-mandated requirement for three years. Peters said that amounts to more than $316 million immediately, with future adjustments computed off that new base.

But Peters also contends the schools should get the nearly $1.3 billion in inflation dollars they were denied. All totaled, the extra funding would come to nearly $2.9 billion over five years.

“We’re here because the Arizona Legislature ignored the advice of the attorney general and violated the law, not once but several years in a row,” Peters said. “A large number of students across Arizona have been injured by that and continue to be injured by that.”

But in his legal arguments Friday, Richards asserted [our lawless legislature] legally owe nothing at all to public schools — including the extra millions they just agreed to provide.

This case is symptomatic of numerous other instances in which our Tea-Publican lawless legislature has violated the law and/or the Constitution, a violation of their oath of office and sufficient grounds for their removal from office. Voters should take them up on their arrogant challenge and kick ’em all out of office! Remember in November.