Budget update from Steve Farley

The House Republicans are celebrating Cinco de Mayo today by rolling out in Appropriations Committee the official bills that spell out their terrible budget.

In addition to the description I sent out in last week's Farley Report, there are a few differences:

–> It is unbalanced in every sense of the word. Their proposal is now nearly $700 million short of balancing (given the revised economic numbers that we received late last week).

–> They still seek to raid $210 million from cities consisting of funds collected from developers in the form of impact fees that were meant to build roads, parks, police, and fire stations. Only now they say that this raid is voluntary, not mandatory, as if cities will want to do this. Astonishing!

–> They still seek to raid $300 million from K-12 school districts that the districts may not even have, a move that could make us ineligible for the stimulus money the Republican budget contradictorally depends on. But they do recommend refunding $45 million of that back to the districts after taking it away.

–> Universities, health clinics and hospitals, developmentally disabled services, and many other services are still slashed, and the Department of Commerce, the Arts Commission, and Science Foundation Arizona are still eliminated.

As these bills cleared his committee on a party-line vote and headed to the floor, Rep. John Kavanagh (R-Fountain Hills), the Appropriations Chair, used his explanation of vote not to justify his budget, but to personally attack Democrats.

He launched into a vituperative tirade in which he explained to us that "Democrats are myopic. They only propose restoring programs, and they never look beyond the next year." He lectured us that we don't understand the severity of the budget problem, and we supposedly have no solution nor ideas for how to balance the budget.

It is unfortunate that Mr Kavanagh hasn't visited our House Democratic
balanced budget proposal that has been publicly available online at
http://www.StrongerArizona.com for the last two months. Our proposal
fully funds our preservation of education, healthcare, economic
development, and social services, and we actually push forward real
structural tax reform with new sources of revenues that make our
state's financial picture much stronger in the long term, and much more
resistant to economic downturns in the future.

The most interesting part of the meeting was the luncheon hosted by the Huachuca 50, a group of predominantly Republican business leaders who are dedicated to supporting and preserving the base. Several of their members, most of whom were also retired colonels, got up in front of us and repeatedly implored us to not just preserve, but also increase the amount of funding we provide for public education in Arizona.

They explained to us that the first thing the Defense Department looks at when considering the future of a mission or whether to close a base is the quality of the schools. They explained that the Fort has more than 250 high-wage positions unfilled because they cannot find Arizonans who are skilled enough to be hired, and they blame that on lack of legislative support for our education system.

Senator Al Melvin (R-Oro Valley) got up at the Q&A session and lectured us all that we are funding our schools just fine. He offered as proof that even though we are last in the country in funding, we are still 31st in the country on achievement tests. So he suggested we celebrate that fact as proof that we excel.