State budget countdown: 9 days left
June 21st, 2008, 11:39 pm · Post a Comment · posted by Le Templar
Gov. Janet Napolitano hands out what’s left in the state budget (original photo at www.governor.state.az.us).
Most of this week I’ve focused on what the Legislature is or isn’t doing (mostly isn’t) to adopt a state budget by the July 1 deadline. While the presence of Gov. Janet Napolitano certainly looms, the responsibility of this task falls squarely on the shoulders of lawmakers from both parties. They will have no one but themselves to blame if a significant portion of state government must be shut down in nine days for a lack of funding.
But Napolitano is making the Legislature’s task harder by continuing to push for pie-in-sky spending ideas when the budget deficit just keeps getting bigger.
Each week, Napolitano sends out a promotional email to people who have signed up through her official Web site. This week, Napolitano’s message was devoted to reviving a proposal from the three state universities to borrow $1.4 billion for construction. About one-third of the spending would be for critical building maintenance. But the rest would be for new research facilities and medical buildings.
The Tribune Editorial Board noted on April 26 that it would be a real bad idea for the Legislature to gamble that the economy will turn around fast enough for the state to make debt payments on the university plan starting in 2010. That editorial was written when the budget shortfall was projected at $1.8 billion or less. Now, it’s predicted to be up to $2.2 billion and is only likely to grow.
Tax revenues keep going down and Napolitano really thinks now is the time to add more spending to the pile?
My guess is Napolitano thinks she is laying ground work for horse trading with the Legislature when budget talks start moving again. But what she’s really doing is adding to the delay by refusing to take anything off the table, leaving lawmakers to fumble around and guess at what can be done to avoid budget vetoes.
The governor could help the Legislature by directly acknowledging that new spending wishes can’t possibly be fulfilled in the current climate, no matter who requested them.
