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
Everything you wanted to know about Arizona's budget problems ...
… except who was responsible.
From the Republic:
Debt has been a quick but uneasy solution to budget pressures.
As state tax collections lagged and demand for state services grew, lawmakers and Gov. Jan Brewer scrambled for ways to balance the budget. They drained the state’s “rainy-day fund,” cut spending and delayed big-dollar payments to schools. It wasn’t enough.
They anguished for more than a year before sending Brewer’s temporary 1-cent-per-dollar sales-tax increase to the ballot, where voters last month passed it.
Meanwhile, lawmakers borrowed to patch over the holes in the budget….
Arizona’s legislature is of course dominated by the GOP and has been; aside from one elliptical reference to the legislature’s being “conservative,” the story doesn’t dwell on that fact at all.
7:24 AM
PHXations—Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Brewer seems to be be getting use to the politician thing. She can bend the truth with the best of them:
Gov. Jan Brewer said in a recent interview that her father died fighting Nazis in Germany. In fact, the death of Wilford Drinkwine came 10 years after World War II had ended. During the war, Drinkwine worked as a civilian supervisor for a naval munitions depot in Hawthorne, Nev. He died of lung disease in 1955 in California. Brewer made the comment to The Arizona Republic while talking about the criticism she has taken since signing SB 1070, the new immigration law that makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally.
“Knowing that my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany, that I lost him when I was 11 because of that… and then to have them call me Hitler’s daughter. It hurts. It’s ugliness beyond anything I’ve ever experienced,” Brewer said in the story, published Tuesday.
Officials with the governor’s administration said her statement should not be taken to mean that she was claiming her father was a soldier in Germany during the Nazi regime.
(/yaa)
Why should speculators have all the real estate fun?
More state buildings go up for sale next week as Arizona officials hope to raise $300 million and help close the budget deficit.
It’s the second time this year that the state has sold off buildings in a sale-leaseback plan. The first one in January raised $735.4 million and that prompted Arizona lawmakers to authorize a second sale.
The sale will be conducted June 8 and investors will be required to make purchases in $5,000 installments. Investors must work through a list of underwriters provided by the state.
The sale-leaseback comes on the heels of last week’s action in which the state borrowed $450 million against the proceeds of future state Lottery revenues.
(/yaa)
The city of Tucson is joining a suit against SB 1070, another sign of the ferocious divisions the law has engendered in the state.
The suit is the one by the Latino Tucson cop who was one of the first to attack the law legally.
From KGUN-TV in Tucson:
In the cross-claim, the city agrees with Escobar that SB 1070 will violate the United States Constitution. Specifically, the cross-claim states that the new Arizona law conflicts with the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution and also with the federal Immigration and Naturalization Act. The city’s filing asks the federal court to intervene to stop implementation. The cross-claim names the State of Arizona and Governor Jan Brewer as defendants.
(N.B.: PHXations are posted by various PHXated contributors throughout the day).
4:35 PM
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.
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7:09 PM