PHOENIX Republican lawmakers in charge of crafting the budget unveiled deficitfixing proposals Thursday that could cut close to $900 million in state aid to education and more than $300 million for universities over the next 18 months.
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But that list of options is only slightly larger than the gap between anticipated revenues and spending. Sen. Russell Pearce, RMesa, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that could require that all of them be used.
Democrat lawmakers responded quickly by blasting the ideas and insisting there are other and better alternatives than those crafted by Pearce and Rep. John Kavanagh, RFountain Hills, his House counterpart.
Gov. Janet Napolitano will release her own plan to deal with next year's deficit today (eds: Friday).
The governor, however, already has laid out her own plan for fixing the current year gap. And that relies only slightly on spending cuts and more heavily on borrowing and various accounting maneuvers.
Those tactics were used in adopting the current budget. In fact, the only reason that budget was "balanced'' as constitutionally required was because current financial obligations were put off into future years.
Pearce, who did not support the budget pushed through by Napolitano, said that won't happen again.
"They pushed things off long enough,'' he said, saying the unwillingness to trim expenses when revenues slipped is a key reason that sharp cuts are now necessary.
In fact, he said, the fiscal patches only made the current problem worse: The borrowing is forcing the state to pay interest costs, for years, and the accounting maneuvers simply pushed paying bills off from one fiscal year to the next.
House Minority Whip Chad Campbell, DPhoenix, said he understands that borrowing simply defers the problem into future years, obligating the state to pay back the money, with interest. But he said the alternative is massive cuts to education.
"What are we going to do if we ruin our education system for the next 20 years?'' he said.
"These cuts to education will set us back competitively on the regional level and the global level,'' Campbell continued. "And when the downturn does end, and we know it's going to end soon, we will not be able to compete with any other state in West, let alone the other growing economies of the world.''
House Minority Leader David Lujan, DPhoenix, also is banking on the economy beginning to turn around soon, if not by the end of this year than early next year.
And Campbell wants lawmakers to consider things like expanding the state sales tax to include services. He said there also needs to be a review of some the tax credits now provided to various businesses and to spur things like donations to schools.
Pearce, however, said anything which hikes taxes, particularly on businesses is unacceptable. He said lower taxes provide the kind of investment Arizona needs.
"Public spending doesn't spur the economy,'' he said.
"Private investment does,'' Pearce continued. "Public investment is simply more debt for the taxpayers, stealing more of their money to pay for programs they can't afford.''
Not all of the objections are coming from Democrats.
Rep. Rich Crandall, RMesa, a member of the Mesa Unified School District board, said the prospect of cutting close to $900 million in state aid to education next year is a nonstarter, not just with him but with other party members. That amounts to close to 20 percent cut from current levels.
Under the proposals, the state university system eventually could lose about 30 percent of its state aid, though the actual cut to the schools' total budgets is less because schools also have nearly $500 million in tuition revenues.
Crandall, however, pointed out it may be impossible to immediate take money away from the universities to balance the current budget. That's because most of their funds go to faculty who already are teaching and are under contract.
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