Gov. Janet Napolitano, left, and Capitol Media Services’ Howard Fischer (original photo at cronkite.asu.edu)
Gov. Janet Napolitano has a secret plan to keep essential state services in operation if she and the Legislature can’t agree on a new state budget within the next 12 days.
I call Napolitano’s plan secret because, as Capitol Media Services reported today, the governor says she has a strategy but she won’t discuss where she gets the legal authority or how she will fund it without a state budget.
If you’ve been following this countdown, you know the state constitution requires the adoption of a state budget by July 1 every year. But Napolitano and state lawmakers still have not come together, and no one knows what will happen if July 1 goes by and no budget deal is inked. Some people are predicting a real nightmare because the state’s largest and most important agencies won’t have permission to spend any money, and even if they did, there would be no one at the state Treasurer’s office or the Department of Administration to write the checks.
But Napolitano believes she can avert a total government shutdown, and she’s ready to keep the prison guards, state troopers and other key state employees on the job. Perhaps by July 1, she might even explain to the public how she expects to pull that off.
Meanwhile, Capitol Media Services also reported Sen. Bob Burns, R-Peoria and chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, is writing bills for a temporary one-month budget — just in case. But Burns is promising a bare-bones approach that funds only “critical” services, which means tens of thousands of state employees still would be temporarily laid off and agencies not covered would be out of business for up to 30 days. The biggest agency most likely to feel the pinch would be the state Department of Education, which hands out the funding for all public K-12 schools. This will be a real crisis for those districts, such as Chandler Unified, that usually start school in early August.
Burns thinks a stripped-down temporary budget would put enormous pressure on lawmakers and Napolitano to finally find a way to erase a predicted $2.2 billion shortfall in the state General Fund for the next fiscal year.
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Sen. Burns and Rep Pearce are the ones who are creating this problem. seems they are determined to provoke a crisis much like Gingrich did with Clinton. The legislature under the constitution has really only one responsibility in a session, that is to pass a balanced budget.This legislature has failed so far to do that one thing.
It is time for the President and the Speaker to stand up and get a budget passed that the governor can sign and move on. It is interesting that while the conservatives resist passing a budget with the financing of school buildings, an enormous bonding bill is being pushed, which would be funded through incurring debt.
It is unfair to put the Governor, the democratic representatives, or the moderate republicans within this mess. The conservatives are not talking to any of the preceding people in budget negotiations. Hopefully, people will remember this come November. I predict the wingers will propose a draconian budget on June 26th. They will come in late on that Thursday and force everyone else into a three day showdown over everyone else’s future. A true abdication of civic duty by the far right.
Stephens, you are nothing more than a shill for the Napolitano administration. I would say that everyone shares the blame in this debacle, republicans and democrats (napolitano included) together.