Frank Antenori on last night’s Arizona Illustrated made an assertion that has been all too common: that our budget woes are due to ballot initiatives that, in his words, “handcuff” the legislature.
This argument can be made in other states where voter mandates are unaccompanied by a tax or fee hike to fund them This isn’t true with the funds that the current legislature is looking to sweep.
In recent years, our state’s voter initiatives have had to have a dedicated funding source. Take, for example, First Things First, the program they hope to defund with Prop. 302. The program is funded through an 80 cent tobacco tax, and they’d love to use that tobacco tax money to plug up holes in their still out of balance budget. What Antenori and his cohorts are claiming is that the legislature is being, in another phrase he used last night, “held hostage” by not being allowed to use this money for other things (like, for example, funding yet another corporate tax break). He’s leaving a big fact out of his argument: the funds wouldn’t have existed in the first place unless people had voted for the “handcuff” of First Things First. He should be thankful: without this, he’d have to be advocating a tax hike.
(By the way, Antenori also claimed that “half of the people” who voted for “First Things First” are now dead or have left the state. He leaves out where he got this “fact,” or any details of what sort of demographic upheaval he thinks has occured since November of 2006.)
You’ll hear complaints about how voters don’t understand what they are voting for, and the long list of ballot propositions makes it impossible for them to make sound judgements about what they are deciding. If this is the case, legislators like Antenori could do a lot to fix that. There are ten propositions on the ballot this year, which makes it one of the longer ballots in our state’s history. Nine of them (including 302) were referenda put there by the legislature and only one is a citizen generated initiative. It’s all the fault of citizens though.
4 Comments
The voter passed propositions are holding the Senator hostage… and to him, the voters who pass things he doesn’t care for are as good as dead and gone.
What a great advocate for our district, eh?
Antenori had his clock cleaned in this KUAZ debate. He’s even less well-informed than I thought before watching this Antenori fudge fest. I hope a lot of voters had the chance to see him.
With a winning smile like his, how could you not vote for him?
And surely his eyes narrowed like that because he is trying to see the good in all people.
Is this is the fellow who was bragging about killing people in combat on his campaign website?
For a military veteran Antenori sure is good at blaming others – I’ll bet it was the fault of the men he led when things went badly in the field too. We need someone with the…er…chutzpah to get Arizona out of the mess we’re in – someone like Todd Camenisch.