League of Arizona Cities and Towns endorses Governor’s budget plan

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Political Insider blog at the Arizona Republic reports:

The League of Arizona Cities and Towns is endorsing Gov. Jan Brewer's budget plan.

The unanimous backing came with praise for the governor's "strong support of local governments in this state."

"It holds cities and towns quite harmless," said Chandler Mayor Boyd Dunn, who also serves as the league's president. "It doesn't raid funds."

Those are reference to elements of legislative budget proposals — both GOP and Democratic — that would take money from the cities to help resolve the state's budget deficit.

The league also is circulating a legal memo it obtained that concludes that it would be unconstitutional for the Legislature to withhold the vehicle-license tax proceeds  that it normally would share with cities.

GOP budget plans initially called for keeping all of the car-registation dollars as a budget-balancing tool. Now it's talking about taking only half.