July 3rd, 2009
Why I’m Not Celebrating the Vetoes, And You Shouldn’t Be Either
So, we are supposed to be slapping Jan Brewer on the back for line item vetoing portions of the budget and calling the legislature into special session to fix all the damage they’ve done.
Sorry man, not me.
She vetoed several line items, including state aid for K-12 education. Because of the way education is funded, there is money in the pipeline for a few weeks (as long as Dean Martin continues to sign the warrants). However, if no legislation is passed in the meantime to restore this funding, our state’s schools will be without millions of dollars just in time for teachers to be returning to work to plan for the year.
I suppose you could call this hardball. I’d rather she didn’t play this sort of game when it puts the fate of our school system in jeopardy. As if using our students and teachers as an ante in a game of political hardball wasn’t bad enough, she hasn’t demonstrated much skill at political hardball. Maybe wiffle ball or t-ball is more her game.
Now, we have a special session to look forward to where everything will be fixed. Already, we are seeing a lack of leadership on her part. First, her call for special session is relatively vague, meaning that legislators are given room for all sorts of mischief. Next, last I checked, she hasn’t put forward anything specific and hasn’t met with legislative leaders of either party. She’s got three days over a holiday weekend to do so, and she hasn’t built a reputation of one that burns the midnight oil.
I’m not sure how talks with party leaders in the legislature would go right now anyway. She’s demonstrated no willingness to seriously meet with the Democrats, and has made disingenuous claims about the Democrats lack of willingness to do so. Tlatoani Kirk Adams felt blindsided by Brewer’s vetoes, and Marszałek Senatu Bob Burns went so far as to call Brewer “incompetent.”
I’ve said this before, but I need to say it again: Brewer got us into this situation by refusing to engage this discussion for months without anything except platitudes. Democratic leaders have a budget plan, and Republican leaders have a budget plan (yes, it sucks, but it is a plan). Brewer had “five points.” Bullet points do not a plan make, and don’t ask me to give any credit when she, at the last minute, when things are in a verge of collapse, decides to finally weigh in with at best, a poorly thought out measure.
NB - Yes, I mixed a metaphor. Deal with it.
