Arizona State Budget

Viewpoint: Don’t tolerate the closing of state parks

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[Source: Roxanne Cary Cheney, Eastern Arizona Courier, 3-17-2010] — I want to commend Diane Saunders for her March 7 article about the potential closure of Roper Lake.  However, I need to clarify some of the data.  Roper Lake is budgeted for four full-time employees.  If Roper Lake closes, it will cost Graham County about $5 million in lost revenue and about 70-80 jobs.  That loss cannot be tolerated!  Do the legislators and governor hope to make a ghost town out of our fair community?

Additionally, the governor has now stolen the Heritage Funds and directed them toward her bottomless pit (of a) mismanaged budget.  The Arizona State Parks Board Heritage Fund was established in November 1990 by voter initiative and provides up to $10 million annually to Arizona State Parks from Arizona Lottery proceeds (A.R.S. §41-503).  Another $10 million annually goes to the Department of Game and Fish to conserve natural resources and protect endangered species.  This portends the ultimate lifeline for State Parks.  Do our state administrators have any answers for the one lucrative revenue source they are killing?  Yes, they will let private companies manage a few of the parks, as it works so well in California State Parks.  This is NOT true.  Californians can pay up to $70 for the luxury of going to a mismanaged and dirty state park that is now managed through a concessionaries contract.  Do not let this happen. Flood your legislators with letters or phone calls.

Please call your legislators today and let them know you will not tolerate the elimination of the state parks as we know them today.  If you would like to be a part of the ongoing fight to save our state parks, please join the Friends for Roper Lake.  You can contact me at 775-230-2225 or Roxi1b@yahoo.com.

Viewpoint: Put a state-park-funding plan on the ballot

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[Source: Kathleen Ingley, Arizona Republic] — After taking British visitors on a day trip from Phoenix, I started thinking of wonderful places for their next visit.  Jerome and the Douglas Mansion’s mining displays.  Gorgeous Red Rock State Park. Fort Verde for a taste of the Old West.  But they’re closing.  Legislators drained state-park funding.  They must at least let voters consider restoring it through license fees.

Viewpoint: Holding up vote on state park license fee an abuse of power

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[Source: Arizona Daily Sun editorial, 3-10-2010] — Now we know at the state level what the exercise of personal privilege in the U.S. Senate feels like.  State Rep. John Kavanagh is Arizona’s equivalent of Jim Bunning, the North Carolina senator who held up the recent jobs bill for several days by refusing to join in “unanimous consent” to let the bill proceed to a vote without a filibuster.  Kavanagh, a Fountain Hills Republican, doesn’t like a bill that proposes to fund state parks with a vehicle license surcharge.  The $12-per-plate fee would raise tens of millions of dollars a year, and in return any vehicle with an Arizona license plate gains free entrance to a state park.  Also, the extra money would be used to help ADOT reopen some of the highway rest areas closed for lack of funds.

“It’s a tax increase, which isn’t consistent with the Republican program,” Kavanagh told Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services.  That’s a debatable point — fees that pay for a specific user benefit are usually not considered taxes.  But even if Kavanagh were correct, he is still making his point in a profoundly anti-democratic way.  He is refusing as the appointed chair of the House Appropriations Committee to hold a hearing on the bill.  And without a hearing and a vote in committee, the bill can’t move forward to the floor.  [Note: To read the full editorial, click here.]

Funding proposal for state parks hits roadblock: 1 legislator

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[Source: Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services, 3-8-2010] — A single legislator is blocking a plan to ask voters to permanently fund the state parks system with a surcharge on vehicle license fees.  Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, refuses to schedule a hearing on HCR 2040 in the Appropriations Committee, which he chairs, and will not agree to have the measure withdrawn from his committee.  That effectively keeps the plan from going to the full House, where Rep. Russ Jones, R-Yuma, said he has the votes for approval.

The parks system is being stymied on two fronts in its efforts to minimize closures.  A second bill, HB 2060, would provide a $40 million loan over the next two years to the parks.  But it is stalled because it needs a supermajority — 45 of 60 House votes and 23 of 30 Senate votes — because the money would come from the Growing Smarter fund, approved by voters more than a decade ago to buy or lease state trust land for open space. [Note: To read the full article, click here.]