HOUSE SPEAKER JIM WEIERS
In what probably will be his last act as speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, Jim Weiers has decided to appoint a special blue-ribbon committee to “review Arizona’s tax policy and to make recommendations for tax reform.” Weiers added in a news release today that, “the large structural budget deficit that the state face is in part the result of an outdated tax code that creates large cyclical swings in revenue which, in turn, require difficult decisions and extreme cuts to balance the budget every time the economy slows.”
But someone already tried this less than six years ago. That group appointed by Gov. Janet Napolitano spent more than a year reviewing every nook and cranny of the tax code and came up with a list of 35 recommended changes to moderize and equalize the flow of state revenues through good and bad parts of the economic cycle. Some proposed changes would increase some taxes; other types would have been reduced. The overall impact wasn’t clear.
But when the recommendations were released, we learned a lot of people have a lot of vested interests in the existing tax code. So any serious reform would be a long shot, especially when considered in light of Proposition 108, which requires a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to raise any individual tax.
Once Arizona’s economy clearly was on the road to recovery from the 2001 recession, Napolitano pretended her blue-ribbon commission never existed. Maybe a new committee charged by a Republican speaker will have a better opportunity at being heard by a new Republican governor and a Republican-controlled Legislature. Or maybe Weiers is just trying to distract us from the fact that he’s no longer going to try to rein in the state budget deficit before he leaves the speaker’s office when the new Legislature is seated Jan. 12.
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