Rep. Vic Williams has a post up on his blog decrying the “sweeps” of HURF money. This fund is largely funded through gasoline taxes and mostly goes to local governments for transportation needs.
The legislature has been “sweeping” this money for years, using it for other programs or to keep the budget in balance while they keep cutting other taxes.
Well, Williams is having none of that:
As a fiscal conservative, I believe legislation to halt these raids on Arizona highway spending is needed to provide a guarantee to state citizens that money is spent as intended. Whether it is at the federal, state or local level, taxpayers are sick and tired of politicians displacing tax dollars from the purposes for which they were meant to other non-related programs.
That’s nice, except he voted for the budgets that included these sweeps, and according to legislators I talked to, didn’t raise any hackles about this issue at the time.
His sudden concern about the needs of local government might seem less convenient if it coincide with his “exploratory” race for county supervisor.
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But Vic Williams is an honorable man (or so said Mark Anthony back in the day, or something like that). He wouldn’t be stabbing his fellow Republican legislators in the back just to score supervisor points, would he?
And, who could forget this meeting? http://www.kold.com/story/14673332/pima-county-taxpayers-dig-deep-to-pay-for-state-cuts
AND this: http://www.kold.com/story/14666017/state-lawmaker-calls-tucson-a-corpse
Thanks, Lennie. Very informative links.
Williams is to Pima County politics what Mitt Romney is to the national scene. He will say anything, contradict himself and screw over anyone to stay in power. His own party knows this, which is why he will face more than one opponent in his primary for supervisor.
I seem to remember a previous Supervisor in the same district who would vote with the board majority and then run to the media to criticize the very policy he supported just minutes before. These guys should thank God for the Star. A vigilant newspaper would never let them have it both ways like this.