Public transit cutbacks begin today
The Light Rail blog has some advice and details about a press conference on the cutbacks happening this a.m..
Metro’s complete list of changeshere
AZ Republic story here:
The transit cuts are prompted by declining sales-tax revenue and the Legislature taking all $22 million in annual Arizona Lottery money dedicated to transit service and using it to balance the state’s books.
Cities said they staved off deeper cuts with budget moves. Phoenix passed a 2-cents-per-dollar sales tax on food. Tempe dipped into transit-fund reserves. Scottsdale got City Council support to spend other funds on bus operations, and Glendale found federal grants. Mesa took funds from regional routes to salvage local runs.
The storiy details some of the effects the cuts will have on the disabled:
Katie Griffith of Gilbert says when the city gets rid of Sunday Dial-a-Ride, it will wipe out her means of getting around. Griffith is 24, has cerebral palsy and relies on shuttles to get to church in Gilbert, which she described as a critical part of her life. She says she has no choice but to stop attending.
“It’s like taking away part of my freedom to do things like everybody else,” she said.
David Carey, a 40-year-old Tempe man, gets around on a wheelchair, light rail and city bus service to get to work at the Arizona Bridge to Independent Living at Washington and 50th streets.
Starting today, the Route 1 bus will run only every 45 minutes, which Carey said could add an hour to his trip.
7:14 AM
Arizona to the poor: Screw You
From a story in yesterday’s Republic:
Arizona grocery prices inched up in the second quarter for the second straight quarter, following more than a year of declines.
The Arizona Farm Bureau Federation’s non-scientific Market Basket Survey found that Arizona consumers paid $2.88, or 6 percent, more for a hypothetical basket of groceries in the second quarter of this year than they did in the first.
The increase in Arizona was more than the $1.66, or 4 percent, increase seen nationwide.
What did the state legislature do, with a big assist from Jan Brewer and the voters themselves?
Increase the state sales tax by one percentage point.
… bringing the total hit for a working poor family to seven percent.
Since working people spend just about all their money—and these, days, in fact, are going into debt—that translates to seven percent less food for their kids….or seven percent more debt.
Update: Dylan Smith of the Tucson Sentinel writes in to say that Arizona doesn’t charge sales tax on food. I was confused at first—I specifically recalled discussions on food sales taxes.
Turns out I was remembering articles about the city of Phoenix, which recently instituted a two percent food sales tax. I was wrong about Arizona, and shouldn’t have used food as an example.
The large point stands, however: Since working folks spend most of their earnings, they will be buying their kids six percent less food—and, thanks to Brewer & Co., seven one percent less clothes, toys and entertainment.
10:14 AM
Everything that's wrong with Arizona, encapsulated in a quote from one Barbara McGovern
From a front-page feature in the Republic this a.m.:
Five times a week, Barbara McGovern leaves her east Phoenix home to make the 15-minute drive to Piestewa Peak, the mountain she has loved climbing for a decade.
But, in the coming weeks, as she pulls into a parking space, it will be with a bit of resentment. Because starting Aug. 1, it’s going to cost McGovern and anyone else who parks at one of the Phoenix mountain parks or preserves up to $5 a day.
“I’m kind of flabbergasted,” McGovern said Friday, upon hearing about the new fee system Phoenix Parks and Recreation board members approved Thursday. “It seems like we’re getting taxed right and left. They shouldn’t be charging for this. It’s going to be a financial burden for some people.”
It’s possible McGovern isn’t what she seems to be: a classic Arizona Republican, one of those who’ve been electing, year after year, the destructive and clownish folks in the state legislature and then stand around whining when reality intrudes.
If she isn’t, well, then, she’s that other species of local resident, the Arizonicus boobicus—someone not entirely clear on the concept.
Parks cost money. Either you get taxed for them … or you pay directly for them.
I’m pretty sure that, between the short-sighted local statehouse and the nutty Bush tax cuts, “east Phoenix residents” like her have been treated very solicitously by the IRS over the last decade.
It’s intellectually coherent to say, “Why should we be taxed for parks? Let the people who use them pay for them.”
Or to say, “Parks are a public trust that should be paid out of public funds for the benefits of rich and poor alike.”
But neither? Does McGovern think money for parks grows on trees?
p.s.: Indeed—does the Republic? A nonsensical person like McGovern should not have been quoted that high up in the story. It gives it an imprimatur of coherence it obviously doesn’t deserve.
8:42 AM
2PHXations—Tuesday, June 1
Brewer, Obama to meet on immigration
President Obama intends to meet with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on Thursday, a White House official told FoxNews.com, after criticism mounted over reports the president wouldn’t be able to meet her while she is in Washington this week.
More on FOXNews.com
Arizonans to vote on medical marijuana:
A statewide measure allowing for medical marijuana clinics to be opened in Arizona has qualified for the November ballot.
The Arizona Medical Marijuana Project said Tuesday the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office confirmed the necessary 153,365 voter signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot. If approved, the Arizona Department Health Services would regulate medical marijuana clinics in state. Patients suffering from conditions or diseases such as Parkinson’s, cancer, multiple sclerosis and HIV/AIDS would be able to buy pot for medical and pain alleviating uses.
A different legislature? One can only dream.
Even if all of the incumbents running for the state Legislature win their bids for re-election on Nov. 2, the Capitol will be a very different place next year.
Twenty-four lawmakers have reached the end of their four consecutive two-year term limit and cannot run for their same seat; another 15 have announced they will not be seeking re-election.
Alas, I’m not holding my breath. In Arizona politics it seems that the more things change, the more they say the same…
Courts rejects Goldwater Institute… again
The U.S. Supreme Court on June 1 refused to block the distribution of so-called “matching funds” to candidates running for office under Arizona’s Clean Elections law.
The court denial of the request filed by the Goldwater Institute and some candidates left the door open for a full appeal of a lower court decision.
That April 21 decision upheld the parts of the law that provide extra taxpayer support for publicly funded candidates who are outspent by privately funded opponents or independent groups.
Let’s give it credit: The Arizona Republic covers dog news as well as any paper in America.
Dogs on Twitter, dogs on Facebook, “Posh pads for pampered pooches” …
Today, the lede story in the Living section story about a doggie named Gabriel who … (sniff) died.
The hedline is “Gabriel gets his wings.”
The web hedline is “Gabriel’s Angels therapy dog left indelible paw prints on children’s hearts.”
The story says that, since he died, Gabriel has gained 1000 new followers on Twitter.
It’s been three years since noble Bandit was left in a Chandler cop car, which the Valley’s media outlets scrambled the jets to cover over a period of what seemed like months.
Arizona’s new one percent sales tax goes into effect today.
As we drive around in our Hummers and SUVs to this Starbucks or that Whole Foods, let’s remember that poor and working people will be buying their kids one percent less food, taking their families out for one percent less fun, and come fall, spending one percent less on back-to-school clothes.
But it’s just one percent. It’s not like these folk weren’t already under enormous pressure living in an economically backwards state whose jobs base, spurred by an unsustainable housing bubble and nothing else, wasn’t already in the toilet.
Oh, wait …
5:34 PM
All you need to know about the upcoming AZ tax debates, in one picture
It’s from the legislature, and it’s the state’s projected revenues-v.expenditures chart, three years out:
The upcoming sale tax vote will raise in the neighborhood of $900 million a year.
It’s an evil and stupid way of raising money. A sales tax is regressive and unfair. It makes the life of the poor and working people worse, and doesn’t affect middle class and rich folks at all.
But it says something about the current political climate in Arizona that it’s not even the worst menace on the horizon.
The real menace is moves by the radical anti-tax right in the legislature actually to cut taxes further, making the deficit even worse.
They say this will help the economy in the long term by creating jobs.
Coincidentally, this proposal will cut taxes for business and rich folks.
The following is from a budget analysis by Dave Wells, who teaches public policy at ASU and writes columns for the Republic occasionally. I found it through the Democratic Diva blog. HB2250 is the tax-cutting bill’s number:
HB2250 has an associated annual cost of over $900 billion when fully phased in during FY 2017 according to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee. While it is purported to be a jobs bill, it largely follows a plan of tax reductions aimed at corporations while also expanding income tax cuts to individuals. Corporate property tax assessments are slashed 25 percent and the corporate income tax rate drops nearly 30 percent, while expanding lenient sales factor rules for determining multistate corporate taxes moves to 100 percent among other changes.
Emphasis added.
In other words, even as a tax increase is on the ballot, the legislature is trying to nullify it via new tax reductions.
… with a side effect of making the state’s tax system even more regressive, by shifting the burden of the taxes away from people who have money to people who don’t.
… and icing of doing nothing to close the state’s gynormous deficit, which will soon work to futher lower the state’s credit rating (agencies don’t like institutions that aren’t doing anything to solve their problems), which will make the financial picture even more difficult.
There’s a committee hearing on the bill Monday. More details here.
7:43 AM
How bad is Arizona's financial situation?
Here’re some details from the Tucson Weekly, which is crunching state budget numbers:
• The total tax take for the month was $681 million, which was more than $90 million below forecast.
• In the first six months of the fiscal year, tax collections have shrunk 16.7 percent compared to the previous year.
• Sales taxes were off by 10 percent in December. Merchants can be happy that the retail sector was only off by 3 percent, but construction workers lost out as contracting taxes dropped by more than 36 percent. Sales tax collections, by the way, have been shrinking for 23 months.
:
7:09 PM
Mayor Gordon floats the idea of a temporary sales tax
So reports the Republic. The mayor calls it a “emergency economic surcharge.”
The city is facing another huge budget gap—approaching $100 million, after the council already cut more than $250 million this year.
A good part of the story is given over to Republican officials nattering on against the idea of raising taxes.
No one says the what to me is the most salient aspect of the plan—that sales taxes are the most regressive type of levy, one that places a disproportionate burden on the poor and working class.
The coverage was similarly incomplete when the governor proposed her sales-tax plan during the state’s budget crisis this summer.
This is why sales taxes are unfair:
The poor and working class spend most of their income each year. Rent comes first, of course, and then after that, by definition, the vast majority of their money is spent on necessities—food, clothes for the kids, etc.
I say “by definition” because if you’re not spending what money you have on necessities, then you have discretionary income. Which means you’re probably middle class. Even if you exempt some necessities, the fact remains that poorer people spend all their money each year.
Every percentage increase in the sales tax creates a corresponding percentage decrease in the living standards of a poor or working-class family.
A one-percent tax on food is one percent less food for your family. And with an 8 percent sales tax already in effect in Phoenix, that’s a huge piece of a working family’s income.
Again, by definition, your higher-income families spend money on a lot of other things, things you wouldn’t call necessities. They save and invest relatively large percentages as well.
And let’s remember that the state’s fat cats have been doing swell the last few years, surfing a wave of real estate money and parading around in their tubby SUVs. (They also got an enormous slate of tax cuts from the Bush administration earlier this decade, a gift that keeps on giving, year after year*.)
Now, you don’t have to agree with this contention, though it is based on facts, is a widely accepted analysis of taxation, and contains a strong moral component.
But shouldn’t it be part of the debate? Couldn’t the Republic at least have mentioned it?
- From the NYT:
Those cuts will have saved individuals, and cost the government, $2.34 trillion, according to calculations the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan research institute, made for The New York Times. The Bush and Obama administrations have called the center’s past calculations reliable. Interest on the money borrowed to finance those tax cuts equals a month worth of income taxes paid to the government by individuals.
Emphasis added. In other words, almost a tenth of the money you pay the U.S. government each year goes to pay off merely the interest of the Bush tax cuts to rich folks.
12:00 AM