Apparently our GOP legislative leaders are back at it. Every year they hold a closed door session, locking out Democrats to produce a budget. It's always one with draconian cuts. Then they either fail to get it passed as some Republicans see the cuts as too drastic, or they pass it and get it vetoed by Governor Napolitano. And every year she makes them look like fools (otherwise explain why her disapproval rating in a poll last year was an astronomically low 9%-- exceptionally low especially for a politician who has made her feelings known by vetoing record number of bills.) Then they have to slap something together in June that they can actually get passed and signed, and it looks like something slapped together at the last minute.
So here they are in their closed room preparing to come back with another sham budget and be made to look like fools again. Which would be humorous, except that this year the state faces real and very serious budget problems-- so the old political gamesmanship, just by virtue of the less time they will have to work on a real budget, is itself going to cost the state a lot of money and be damaging for some citizens.
Time to vote out these clowns and elect a legislature which believes in making use of every day the legislature is in session to seriously address the state's problems.
Showing posts with label legislature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label legislature. Show all posts
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Thursday, April 17, 2008
What part of 'temporary' don't they understand?
Yesterday Governor Napolitano vetoed a bill passed by the legislature which would have made permanent a temporary property tax cut that was passed in 2006 and is due to expire in 2009.
As the Governor noted, economic conditions have deteriorated in Arizona sharply since 2006. Arizona's economy is much more tied to the housing industry than most, so the mortgage meltdown has had severe repercussions here. We face a combined $3 billion state budget deficit over the next two years, so adding another quarter billion to that next year by extending the property tax cut would be, as she noted, "the height of fiscal irresponsibility." Over-reliance on the sales tax has compounded the problem-- in a recession people spend less so sales tax revenues are down (whereas, for example, a property tax tends to be a much more reliable and stable source of revenue.)
Advocates for the Republicans in the legislature and some in the business community (who were the beneficiaries of the tax cut) have howled that she is 'raising taxes.'
That is a competely stupid argument.
If a supermarket sells a bottle of pop for $1.39, but runs a managers special in which they announce, "THIS WEEK ONLY-- $.99" for the bottle of pop, then they are doing their customers a favor for a week. If the sale ends on schedule and the price returns to $1.39 (the normal price of the pop) it would be ridiculous to storm up to the store manager and claim that by ending the sale on the day they said they would, they are raising prices. Yet that is what advocates of extending the tax cut are doing. Instead of being grateful for the three years they don't have to pay their property tax, they are instead complaining that when it expires on schedule, they will see a 'tax increase.' Maybe they would be happier if it hadn't ever been passed at all, I suppose.
This argument, of equating the scheduled end of a temporary reduction in taxes with a 'tax increase' is breathtaking in its stupidity. But we will hear exactly the same argument nationally over the next couple of years as the Bush tax cuts (you know, the ones that were supposed to give us such a great economic success story this decade) expire.
As the Governor noted, economic conditions have deteriorated in Arizona sharply since 2006. Arizona's economy is much more tied to the housing industry than most, so the mortgage meltdown has had severe repercussions here. We face a combined $3 billion state budget deficit over the next two years, so adding another quarter billion to that next year by extending the property tax cut would be, as she noted, "the height of fiscal irresponsibility." Over-reliance on the sales tax has compounded the problem-- in a recession people spend less so sales tax revenues are down (whereas, for example, a property tax tends to be a much more reliable and stable source of revenue.)
Advocates for the Republicans in the legislature and some in the business community (who were the beneficiaries of the tax cut) have howled that she is 'raising taxes.'
That is a competely stupid argument.
If a supermarket sells a bottle of pop for $1.39, but runs a managers special in which they announce, "THIS WEEK ONLY-- $.99" for the bottle of pop, then they are doing their customers a favor for a week. If the sale ends on schedule and the price returns to $1.39 (the normal price of the pop) it would be ridiculous to storm up to the store manager and claim that by ending the sale on the day they said they would, they are raising prices. Yet that is what advocates of extending the tax cut are doing. Instead of being grateful for the three years they don't have to pay their property tax, they are instead complaining that when it expires on schedule, they will see a 'tax increase.' Maybe they would be happier if it hadn't ever been passed at all, I suppose.
This argument, of equating the scheduled end of a temporary reduction in taxes with a 'tax increase' is breathtaking in its stupidity. But we will hear exactly the same argument nationally over the next couple of years as the Bush tax cuts (you know, the ones that were supposed to give us such a great economic success story this decade) expire.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Governor's move was brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
A little while ago, I blogged on Governor Napolitano's decision to sign the very tough employer sanctions bill that the legislature passed after it was pushed primarily by hardcore anti-immigration GOP hardliners. I briefly alluded to the political impact of her decision, but as I've thought about it, I've realized how truly brilliant her move was, and how it warrants another post.
In Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan, Mr. Chekov and companion are surprised to meet Khan on a world they thought was deserted. Though Khan has not seen anyone from outside for years, he thinks at first that Chekov may have come to his world by intent. But then he realizes that they landed on the wrong planet, and he says, in an excited but subdued voice, strengthened by sudden realization of discovery and advantage, "You didn't expect to find me!"
And so it is here. I could almost hear the Governor saying with a feeling of victory under her breath as she read the sanctions bill, 'Ah, I see... you didn't expect me to sign this bill.'
After vetoing scores of the legislature's most draconian bills since taking office in 2002 (and making every single one of those vetoes stand) the Governor has largely muzzled the legislature's conservative leaders. They still try to pass a lot of bills that have veto-bait written all over them, mostly to embarrass the Governor or perhaps to get her on record (a record they can distort) for 2010 in the event that she runs for the Senate.
And I believe that was the case here. Governor Napolitano has said before that the way to deal with immigration is to get tough on people who hire undocumented workers. So the legislature decided to call her bluff and pass this piece of legislation so she'd veto it and then they could cite it when they went after her on immigration sometime in the future. Her past defense of vetoing immigration bills has been that it is a Federal responsibility (which is true, in fact.) But after last week's defeat of the Federal immigration bill they would be able to hit her with the failure of the Federal government to act.
Only, they were sure that she would veto it. After all, she invariably vetos any bill that is this draconian in its effects and she has always maintained decent relations with the business community in the state. So when they wrote the bill they didn't bother to exempt anyone who has a business license. They wrote in some ridiculous figures-- $100,000 to maintain a statewide database AND cover statewide enforcement of the law, and $70,000 to educate employers all over the state about it. County attorneys get $2.5 million-- spread among all 16 counties in the state-- which is supposed to cover the cost of hiring people to investigate and prosecute these cases. In other words they didn't think much through. Why waste time working very hard on a bill that is going to be vetoed anyway?
So they thought.
Then she signed it. And announced that she is likely to call a special session to deal with the glitches. So much for the 'part time legislature.' They will be back in August or September for what could be a very rocky session.
And she holds all the cards. In exempting infrastructure, there is little they can argue. They don't really want their constituents to freeze in the dark this winter when the electric company closes up shop. They don't want to be closing hospitals.
They will of course want to exempt private schools (at least those which are run as for profit businesses) so they don't have to comply with a law that the public schools won't have to worry about the consequences of. But right now, the private schools will be hit with the new law, and I have a feeling the Governor will demand a stiff price for exempting them (wonder how much of a split that one is causing in the GOP caucus, since some members are very committed to private schools and 'educational choice,' and are probably furious at their own leaders for getting them to vote for this package which has now come back and gored their own ox.) Getting rid of the flawed database requirement and going back to Social Security cards may be one price that she demands.
The funding is the other big issue here. $170,000 might pay for the computers the database is to be maintained from. It certainly won't cover the employees or resources necessary to educate and then enforce the law on employers statewide. For $2.5 million total, the county attorneys won't be able to investigate and prosecute more than a few really egregious cases. Only, the state budget has already been passed for this year. And at that, the slump in the housing market (to say nothing of what this bill will do-- certainly not cause a short term economic boom) is likely to bring revenue projections down. So she holds all the cards again-- she can simply insist that the legislature leave the already approved budget for this year alone, and find their own funding sources. In other words, they can choose between in effect gutting their own law (essentially keeping it on paper with no one out there enforcing it) or raising the revenue to fund it. She can point out the disaster that happened in the early 2000's when the state took money out of the rainy day fund, and the prospect of a near-term slowdown and refuse to accept that as a source of revenue. Bonds, as have been used in the past to finance things like school construction are generally backed by real assets, so she can refuse to allow the legislature to borrow by way of bonding for that reason. The Governor, who ran in 2002 on a pledge to ask for tax increases only as a last resort, has not once in five years asked for one. And she won't need to now. But she can close all the other doors and in effect force the GOP hardliners who control the legislature to either fail to enforce their own pet bill or raise taxes to pay for it.
On top of that, business leaders, while maintaining a cordial relationship with the Governor, have given Republicans-- even hard core loonies like Pearce-- their support, including their financial support. Of course the Governor has always protected them from some of the more ridiculous bills they passed, such as the law which she vetoed this week which would have required all businesses to buy storage lockers for customers to store their guns. In their Republican pipe dream, they can think about how great having a GOP legislature is while they shovel money at them without having to worry about some of the most odious requirement that they pass on to businesses. If it's too bad, Janet will take care of it. Only this time she didn't. Wonder how much they will donate to Pearce next time around? This bill drives a wedge between Republicans in the legislature and some of their most reliable supporters.
Certainly, had the Federal bill passed last week, Governor Napolitano would have had all the cover she needed to veto the bill. But since she didn't, she has dealt a blow to private schools, is forcing the business community to realize the true cost of supporting some legislators who represent the fringes, and may force Republicans to be the ones to raise taxes.
Not a bad political payout for a day's work.
In Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan, Mr. Chekov and companion are surprised to meet Khan on a world they thought was deserted. Though Khan has not seen anyone from outside for years, he thinks at first that Chekov may have come to his world by intent. But then he realizes that they landed on the wrong planet, and he says, in an excited but subdued voice, strengthened by sudden realization of discovery and advantage, "You didn't expect to find me!"
And so it is here. I could almost hear the Governor saying with a feeling of victory under her breath as she read the sanctions bill, 'Ah, I see... you didn't expect me to sign this bill.'
After vetoing scores of the legislature's most draconian bills since taking office in 2002 (and making every single one of those vetoes stand) the Governor has largely muzzled the legislature's conservative leaders. They still try to pass a lot of bills that have veto-bait written all over them, mostly to embarrass the Governor or perhaps to get her on record (a record they can distort) for 2010 in the event that she runs for the Senate.
And I believe that was the case here. Governor Napolitano has said before that the way to deal with immigration is to get tough on people who hire undocumented workers. So the legislature decided to call her bluff and pass this piece of legislation so she'd veto it and then they could cite it when they went after her on immigration sometime in the future. Her past defense of vetoing immigration bills has been that it is a Federal responsibility (which is true, in fact.) But after last week's defeat of the Federal immigration bill they would be able to hit her with the failure of the Federal government to act.
Only, they were sure that she would veto it. After all, she invariably vetos any bill that is this draconian in its effects and she has always maintained decent relations with the business community in the state. So when they wrote the bill they didn't bother to exempt anyone who has a business license. They wrote in some ridiculous figures-- $100,000 to maintain a statewide database AND cover statewide enforcement of the law, and $70,000 to educate employers all over the state about it. County attorneys get $2.5 million-- spread among all 16 counties in the state-- which is supposed to cover the cost of hiring people to investigate and prosecute these cases. In other words they didn't think much through. Why waste time working very hard on a bill that is going to be vetoed anyway?
So they thought.
Then she signed it. And announced that she is likely to call a special session to deal with the glitches. So much for the 'part time legislature.' They will be back in August or September for what could be a very rocky session.
And she holds all the cards. In exempting infrastructure, there is little they can argue. They don't really want their constituents to freeze in the dark this winter when the electric company closes up shop. They don't want to be closing hospitals.
They will of course want to exempt private schools (at least those which are run as for profit businesses) so they don't have to comply with a law that the public schools won't have to worry about the consequences of. But right now, the private schools will be hit with the new law, and I have a feeling the Governor will demand a stiff price for exempting them (wonder how much of a split that one is causing in the GOP caucus, since some members are very committed to private schools and 'educational choice,' and are probably furious at their own leaders for getting them to vote for this package which has now come back and gored their own ox.) Getting rid of the flawed database requirement and going back to Social Security cards may be one price that she demands.
The funding is the other big issue here. $170,000 might pay for the computers the database is to be maintained from. It certainly won't cover the employees or resources necessary to educate and then enforce the law on employers statewide. For $2.5 million total, the county attorneys won't be able to investigate and prosecute more than a few really egregious cases. Only, the state budget has already been passed for this year. And at that, the slump in the housing market (to say nothing of what this bill will do-- certainly not cause a short term economic boom) is likely to bring revenue projections down. So she holds all the cards again-- she can simply insist that the legislature leave the already approved budget for this year alone, and find their own funding sources. In other words, they can choose between in effect gutting their own law (essentially keeping it on paper with no one out there enforcing it) or raising the revenue to fund it. She can point out the disaster that happened in the early 2000's when the state took money out of the rainy day fund, and the prospect of a near-term slowdown and refuse to accept that as a source of revenue. Bonds, as have been used in the past to finance things like school construction are generally backed by real assets, so she can refuse to allow the legislature to borrow by way of bonding for that reason. The Governor, who ran in 2002 on a pledge to ask for tax increases only as a last resort, has not once in five years asked for one. And she won't need to now. But she can close all the other doors and in effect force the GOP hardliners who control the legislature to either fail to enforce their own pet bill or raise taxes to pay for it.
On top of that, business leaders, while maintaining a cordial relationship with the Governor, have given Republicans-- even hard core loonies like Pearce-- their support, including their financial support. Of course the Governor has always protected them from some of the more ridiculous bills they passed, such as the law which she vetoed this week which would have required all businesses to buy storage lockers for customers to store their guns. In their Republican pipe dream, they can think about how great having a GOP legislature is while they shovel money at them without having to worry about some of the most odious requirement that they pass on to businesses. If it's too bad, Janet will take care of it. Only this time she didn't. Wonder how much they will donate to Pearce next time around? This bill drives a wedge between Republicans in the legislature and some of their most reliable supporters.
Certainly, had the Federal bill passed last week, Governor Napolitano would have had all the cover she needed to veto the bill. But since she didn't, she has dealt a blow to private schools, is forcing the business community to realize the true cost of supporting some legislators who represent the fringes, and may force Republicans to be the ones to raise taxes.
Not a bad political payout for a day's work.
Governor surprises legislature, signs tough employer-sanctions bill
This week, Governor Napolitano citing the failure of the Federal government to address the issue, signed the new employer sanctions bill (House Bill 2779), which makes Arizona the toughest state in the nation against employers who hire undocumented workers. Employers will be mandated, starting in January, to check job applicants against an existing database which contains the names of workers authorized to work legally in Arizona. If a business hires someone illegally then the new law would put a business on probation for a first offense and permanently revoke their business license for a second offense.
On balance, I agree with the Governor. I've always said that the problem is not the undocumented aliens themselves, the large majority of whom after all have only done what generations of American pioneers have always done, and come looking for opportunity-- and the argument that they are 'illegal' could be reversed in a few minutes with the stroke of a pen adjusting the numbers of legal immigrants to something bearing a resemblance to the market based reality that we now see, with hundreds of thousands of Arizonans here illegally but also working. Rather the problem is with illegal employment, in that employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers often do so in order to gain a competitive advantage by exploiting laborers who cannot complain (for fear of deportation) about abusive work standards, below minimum wage pay, sexual harrassment and other types of exploitation. The new bill goes a long way towards protecting workers against that kind of stuff by putting those who engage in it at risk of losing their business.
There are some problems with the bill though. The Governor also cited the need to call a special legislative session in her signing message in which she identified five problems with the legislation. There is also one other that conservatives will certainly try to address, once they realize what they've just done to one of their own pet causes, private schools.
The first issue cited by the Governor is that there is no exemption for utilities, hospitals, nursing homes and other businesses critical to infrastructure. Clearly such an exemption will have to be written into the law since if a single mistake is made, it could, in a worst case scenario lead to large numbers of people going without electricity, gas or water for extended periods of time (though one benefit is it might make people understand a little better how life is for other Americans who still don't have basic utilities courtesy of fiscal conservatism, specifically when Ronald Reagan shut down the Rural Electrification Administration beginning in 1986 in order to save a few bucks.) Another result of this oversight, if it is not corrected is that it could cause hospitals to shut down with patients presumably being forced to walk out of there and go to other hospitals. One other area that the Governor did not specifically recommend but which needs to be dealt with-- state contractors. Though the state itself does not have a business license and so is effectively immune from making bad decisions under the law, if a state contractor, say providing prison guards or working on a state highway project were suddenly shut down by this provision the results could still be disastrous.
On the other hand, it appears that the proponents of the bill (led by anti-immigrant Godfather Russell Pearce who wrote the legislation) probably expected a veto, because it also doesn't exempt private schools, many of which do have a business license. This added requirement on private schools will help level the playing field (since the state presently makes public schools jump through all kinds of hoops that many private schools do not have to jump through.) And you can be sure that there are advocates of public schools, especially teachers unions, who will now have and will certainly use this as a weapon to bludgeon private schools with and maybe put some out of business.
Her fourth point is my second one: the concern that the law could be discriminatory. Certainly it is true that employers are less likely to take a chance on people whose names suggest they might be immigrants from parts of the world where that is controversial (especially Latin America, the Middle East and China.) And this is a legitimate concern. There are many legitimate workers, legal immigrants, or people who were in fact born right here in the good ol' U.S. of A. named Pedro or Mohammed. But most businesses are still more likely now to want to hire Peter and Moe. True, the supply of jobs is large enough that there will still be some openings when the supply of Peters and Moes is used up (in fact that is why we have so many undocumented immigrants in the first place) but asking that Pedro and Mohammed move to the back of the line means that they are still less likely to be hired, and if they are they will be hired for the jobs that Peter and Moe turned down in favor of a better one that is no longer available.
Further, the database that employers are supposed to check prospective hires against is unreliable. This week, the Arizona Republic reported that there is a 4% error rate in the database. This means that tens of thousands of legal workers, even U.S. citizens, may discover all of a sudden that they can't work in Arizona. This represents 1 out of every 25 legal workers in the state (think of it this way-- if you work at, say, a small to midsized company that employs 200 people, what would you think if eight of them were suddenly told they were fired and could not even get another job in the state, because a computer someplace didn't list them as authorized to work? Heck, you might even be one of the eight.
Clearly this database is flawed. My own suggestion would be to throw it out and go back to the traditional way of checking eligibility-- with social security cards, etc. Yes, this is subject to fraud, and yes some errors will still be made, but the documented error rate of the present system in the past is actually less than in the state database, and continuing to use the present system will be no more discriminatory than it is today. The main thrust of the bill was the employer sanctions, and getting rid of the database and continuing to require verification of documents as grounds for deciding who to hire would have nothing to do with that. In any case, it appears as though opponents of the database plan to take it to court, so even if the legislature doesn't fix this one, I'd be really surprised (and dismayed) if the database was used next January 1 as scheduled.
Another problem that the Governor cited had to do with the fact that a single bad hiring decision at one location could put a business with multiple locations out of business. Personally, I am not all that upset about this-- if only because as regular readers of this blog know, I don't think much of the way Wal-Mart, in particular conducts its business, and having been guilty of hiring illegal aliens in the past, this law may have its intended effect and limit the ability of Wal-Mart to knowingly exploit its workers in a major way. The prospect of having to shutter every store in the state should be sufficient to make Wal-Mart comply with the law (protecting its own, as well as its competitor's employees). However, I'd think that the prospect of even having to close them one at a time would be good enough to make Wal-Mart comply with the law. And I would agree, that to force for example, a statewide chain (or a national chain with many outlets in Arizona) to close all its locations because the manager at one of them screwed up is a bit Draconian. I have to admit though, that the thought of Wal-Mart not only being forced to close every store in Arizona, and then never being able to open another one, almost made 'Draconian' sound good (though clearly if that happened tens of thousands of people would be thrown out of work in a day, so I still don't favor it covering all locations.)
A third problem that the Governor cited (the fourth one I am addressing) is simply the lack of funding. Again, it appears that the authors of the bill expected a veto, so they put only token amounts into it to cover enforcement and education for the whole state. So during the special session the Governor will ask them to pony up the funds. And here is an interesting twist: She now has the high ground on the issue, and may insist that the funds be provided without taking them from elsewhere in the state budget (which has already been allocated.) She might even force the legislature to raise taxes for the first time in years-- and without even specifically calling for a tax increase, just in effect telling them they need to find a way to fund it.
The fifth change she recommended had to do with an incorrect citation of Federal law, and I doubt if changing it will be controversial.
As I said, looking at the private school issue and the funding issue, I am sure that Pearce and the GOP legislature expected the Governor to veto this bill (as she vetoed a record 43 bills last year, and could be expected to veto pretty much anything that Russell Pearce wrote,) presumably so they could use it against her in the future. Instead it seems as though she played chicken with them and won, so it will be interesting to see during the special session that she calls how they plan to address these and the other issues that she raised.
On balance, I agree with the Governor. I've always said that the problem is not the undocumented aliens themselves, the large majority of whom after all have only done what generations of American pioneers have always done, and come looking for opportunity-- and the argument that they are 'illegal' could be reversed in a few minutes with the stroke of a pen adjusting the numbers of legal immigrants to something bearing a resemblance to the market based reality that we now see, with hundreds of thousands of Arizonans here illegally but also working. Rather the problem is with illegal employment, in that employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers often do so in order to gain a competitive advantage by exploiting laborers who cannot complain (for fear of deportation) about abusive work standards, below minimum wage pay, sexual harrassment and other types of exploitation. The new bill goes a long way towards protecting workers against that kind of stuff by putting those who engage in it at risk of losing their business.
There are some problems with the bill though. The Governor also cited the need to call a special legislative session in her signing message in which she identified five problems with the legislation. There is also one other that conservatives will certainly try to address, once they realize what they've just done to one of their own pet causes, private schools.
The first issue cited by the Governor is that there is no exemption for utilities, hospitals, nursing homes and other businesses critical to infrastructure. Clearly such an exemption will have to be written into the law since if a single mistake is made, it could, in a worst case scenario lead to large numbers of people going without electricity, gas or water for extended periods of time (though one benefit is it might make people understand a little better how life is for other Americans who still don't have basic utilities courtesy of fiscal conservatism, specifically when Ronald Reagan shut down the Rural Electrification Administration beginning in 1986 in order to save a few bucks.) Another result of this oversight, if it is not corrected is that it could cause hospitals to shut down with patients presumably being forced to walk out of there and go to other hospitals. One other area that the Governor did not specifically recommend but which needs to be dealt with-- state contractors. Though the state itself does not have a business license and so is effectively immune from making bad decisions under the law, if a state contractor, say providing prison guards or working on a state highway project were suddenly shut down by this provision the results could still be disastrous.
On the other hand, it appears that the proponents of the bill (led by anti-immigrant Godfather Russell Pearce who wrote the legislation) probably expected a veto, because it also doesn't exempt private schools, many of which do have a business license. This added requirement on private schools will help level the playing field (since the state presently makes public schools jump through all kinds of hoops that many private schools do not have to jump through.) And you can be sure that there are advocates of public schools, especially teachers unions, who will now have and will certainly use this as a weapon to bludgeon private schools with and maybe put some out of business.
Her fourth point is my second one: the concern that the law could be discriminatory. Certainly it is true that employers are less likely to take a chance on people whose names suggest they might be immigrants from parts of the world where that is controversial (especially Latin America, the Middle East and China.) And this is a legitimate concern. There are many legitimate workers, legal immigrants, or people who were in fact born right here in the good ol' U.S. of A. named Pedro or Mohammed. But most businesses are still more likely now to want to hire Peter and Moe. True, the supply of jobs is large enough that there will still be some openings when the supply of Peters and Moes is used up (in fact that is why we have so many undocumented immigrants in the first place) but asking that Pedro and Mohammed move to the back of the line means that they are still less likely to be hired, and if they are they will be hired for the jobs that Peter and Moe turned down in favor of a better one that is no longer available.
Further, the database that employers are supposed to check prospective hires against is unreliable. This week, the Arizona Republic reported that there is a 4% error rate in the database. This means that tens of thousands of legal workers, even U.S. citizens, may discover all of a sudden that they can't work in Arizona. This represents 1 out of every 25 legal workers in the state (think of it this way-- if you work at, say, a small to midsized company that employs 200 people, what would you think if eight of them were suddenly told they were fired and could not even get another job in the state, because a computer someplace didn't list them as authorized to work? Heck, you might even be one of the eight.
Clearly this database is flawed. My own suggestion would be to throw it out and go back to the traditional way of checking eligibility-- with social security cards, etc. Yes, this is subject to fraud, and yes some errors will still be made, but the documented error rate of the present system in the past is actually less than in the state database, and continuing to use the present system will be no more discriminatory than it is today. The main thrust of the bill was the employer sanctions, and getting rid of the database and continuing to require verification of documents as grounds for deciding who to hire would have nothing to do with that. In any case, it appears as though opponents of the database plan to take it to court, so even if the legislature doesn't fix this one, I'd be really surprised (and dismayed) if the database was used next January 1 as scheduled.
Another problem that the Governor cited had to do with the fact that a single bad hiring decision at one location could put a business with multiple locations out of business. Personally, I am not all that upset about this-- if only because as regular readers of this blog know, I don't think much of the way Wal-Mart, in particular conducts its business, and having been guilty of hiring illegal aliens in the past, this law may have its intended effect and limit the ability of Wal-Mart to knowingly exploit its workers in a major way. The prospect of having to shutter every store in the state should be sufficient to make Wal-Mart comply with the law (protecting its own, as well as its competitor's employees). However, I'd think that the prospect of even having to close them one at a time would be good enough to make Wal-Mart comply with the law. And I would agree, that to force for example, a statewide chain (or a national chain with many outlets in Arizona) to close all its locations because the manager at one of them screwed up is a bit Draconian. I have to admit though, that the thought of Wal-Mart not only being forced to close every store in Arizona, and then never being able to open another one, almost made 'Draconian' sound good (though clearly if that happened tens of thousands of people would be thrown out of work in a day, so I still don't favor it covering all locations.)
A third problem that the Governor cited (the fourth one I am addressing) is simply the lack of funding. Again, it appears that the authors of the bill expected a veto, so they put only token amounts into it to cover enforcement and education for the whole state. So during the special session the Governor will ask them to pony up the funds. And here is an interesting twist: She now has the high ground on the issue, and may insist that the funds be provided without taking them from elsewhere in the state budget (which has already been allocated.) She might even force the legislature to raise taxes for the first time in years-- and without even specifically calling for a tax increase, just in effect telling them they need to find a way to fund it.
The fifth change she recommended had to do with an incorrect citation of Federal law, and I doubt if changing it will be controversial.
As I said, looking at the private school issue and the funding issue, I am sure that Pearce and the GOP legislature expected the Governor to veto this bill (as she vetoed a record 43 bills last year, and could be expected to veto pretty much anything that Russell Pearce wrote,) presumably so they could use it against her in the future. Instead it seems as though she played chicken with them and won, so it will be interesting to see during the special session that she calls how they plan to address these and the other issues that she raised.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Global studies bill killed by dummies.
In today's highly competitive and globalized world of business, it is important for Americans to understand and be able to work with people from other cultures, speak other languages or conduct business in other countries. Only don't tell that to a handful of idiots on the Arizona legislature.
Businesses need people skilled in world languages and economics. The government has gaping holes in diplomacy and intelligence. Universities are begging for more students with sophisticated learning.
It all gives credence to a bill in the Arizona Legislature to create international schools to help make students globally competitive.
But, in the end, the bill died. As its supporters learned, "international" is a dirty word among some at the Capitol.
Key leaders there suggested the bill was un-American and part of a slippery slope to a U.N. takeover and the end of U.S. sovereignty.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Mark Anderson, R-Mesa, would have put three K-12 schools in the northern, central and southern parts of the state, where kids would begin a second language in kindergarten, and set up new international programs at seven high schools. Big business and universities pledged to partner with the schools. First-year costs would have been $2.3 million, or less than 0.02 percent of the proposed state budget...
• Some Arizona legislators were so opposed to the bill that supporters changed the name from international schools to American competitiveness project schools to appease them.
That didn't sway Sen. Ron Gould, a Lake Havasu City Republican.
"What I'm assuming is that they changed the name, trying to get us to be less objectionable, as if, you know, a rose by any other name is not as sweet," said Gould, a member of the Senate's K-12 Education Committee. "There's a lot of us here who are not internationalists. These schools actually have kind of a United Nations flavor to them, and we're actually into educating Americans into Americanism, not internationalism."
I guess that would be the same Ron Gould who proudly flies a Confederate battle flag in front of his Lake Havasu city home.
• Sen. Karen Johnson, a Mesa Republican and chairwoman of the K-12 Education Committee, never let the proposal out of committee. Johnson instead brought in a professor from Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato, Minn., to educate lawmakers on the dangers of a popular international studies program, the International Baccalaureate....
"The International Baccalaureate is un-American," Allen Quist, who served in the Minnesota Legislature in the 1980s and ran for Minnesota governor as a Republican in 1994, said in a phone interview. He said that International Baccalaureate's links to the United Nations are disturbing and that its sense of right and wrong is ambiguous.
That would be the same Karen Johnson, four times divorced, who likes to lecture others about 'family values.'
To get around Johnson, supporters took the proposal to the Senate's Higher Education Committee. The proposal eventually reached the House Appropriations Committee, which helps decide what bills get funded and how much. There, it ran into Rep. Russell Pearce, a Mesa Republican. Pearce recalled this week that his research on international schools in general found them to be dangerous, and he suggested their agenda was tied to the U.N., not America.
"Our schools ought to be focusing on education that we, as Americans, espouse," Pearce said. "We ought to concentrate on United States history and United States heroes."
Ah, yes. Russell Pearce. The same Russell Pearce who has led the anti-immigrant charge in Arizona and who not so long ago praised (and refused to apologize for praising), "operation wetback," a 1950's program in which millions of men, women and children were rounded up, sometimes violently, and forcibly deported en masse.
So Arizona's schoolchildren will lose out on an opportunity and the state itself will either miss out on the next generation of global trade or have the money made from it sent someplace else (in China, kids are taught English at an early age, for example).
This bill, you will note had a Republican sponsor. But with Republicans like Gould, Johnson and Pearce in the legislature it is no wonder that we still have the reputation nationally as being 'ignoramusville.' I guess they are shooting for internationally too.
Businesses need people skilled in world languages and economics. The government has gaping holes in diplomacy and intelligence. Universities are begging for more students with sophisticated learning.
It all gives credence to a bill in the Arizona Legislature to create international schools to help make students globally competitive.
But, in the end, the bill died. As its supporters learned, "international" is a dirty word among some at the Capitol.
Key leaders there suggested the bill was un-American and part of a slippery slope to a U.N. takeover and the end of U.S. sovereignty.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Mark Anderson, R-Mesa, would have put three K-12 schools in the northern, central and southern parts of the state, where kids would begin a second language in kindergarten, and set up new international programs at seven high schools. Big business and universities pledged to partner with the schools. First-year costs would have been $2.3 million, or less than 0.02 percent of the proposed state budget...
• Some Arizona legislators were so opposed to the bill that supporters changed the name from international schools to American competitiveness project schools to appease them.
That didn't sway Sen. Ron Gould, a Lake Havasu City Republican.
"What I'm assuming is that they changed the name, trying to get us to be less objectionable, as if, you know, a rose by any other name is not as sweet," said Gould, a member of the Senate's K-12 Education Committee. "There's a lot of us here who are not internationalists. These schools actually have kind of a United Nations flavor to them, and we're actually into educating Americans into Americanism, not internationalism."
I guess that would be the same Ron Gould who proudly flies a Confederate battle flag in front of his Lake Havasu city home.
• Sen. Karen Johnson, a Mesa Republican and chairwoman of the K-12 Education Committee, never let the proposal out of committee. Johnson instead brought in a professor from Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato, Minn., to educate lawmakers on the dangers of a popular international studies program, the International Baccalaureate....
"The International Baccalaureate is un-American," Allen Quist, who served in the Minnesota Legislature in the 1980s and ran for Minnesota governor as a Republican in 1994, said in a phone interview. He said that International Baccalaureate's links to the United Nations are disturbing and that its sense of right and wrong is ambiguous.
That would be the same Karen Johnson, four times divorced, who likes to lecture others about 'family values.'
To get around Johnson, supporters took the proposal to the Senate's Higher Education Committee. The proposal eventually reached the House Appropriations Committee, which helps decide what bills get funded and how much. There, it ran into Rep. Russell Pearce, a Mesa Republican. Pearce recalled this week that his research on international schools in general found them to be dangerous, and he suggested their agenda was tied to the U.N., not America.
"Our schools ought to be focusing on education that we, as Americans, espouse," Pearce said. "We ought to concentrate on United States history and United States heroes."
Ah, yes. Russell Pearce. The same Russell Pearce who has led the anti-immigrant charge in Arizona and who not so long ago praised (and refused to apologize for praising), "operation wetback," a 1950's program in which millions of men, women and children were rounded up, sometimes violently, and forcibly deported en masse.
So Arizona's schoolchildren will lose out on an opportunity and the state itself will either miss out on the next generation of global trade or have the money made from it sent someplace else (in China, kids are taught English at an early age, for example).
This bill, you will note had a Republican sponsor. But with Republicans like Gould, Johnson and Pearce in the legislature it is no wonder that we still have the reputation nationally as being 'ignoramusville.' I guess they are shooting for internationally too.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
What loopholes do you see affecting people around you?
I will be gone for most of the next two weeks on vacation, so (as I do every June) I will leave a post that is worth chewing over:
Many years ago, I was a student at a small engineering college in Socorro, New Mexico. One year it rained a great deal, so the grass and all the grounds were lush and green. One day in late June I was walking along and saw the sprinkler system running full blast, with everything flooded and underwater. I said something about it to one of the groundskeepers and he told me that they had to use their water allocation by the end of that week, or it would be cut the next year, when it would be dry and they might need it. Apparently that was the way the system was set up by people who thought that even the weather could be made to comply with their red tape. Millions of gallons of water (a precious resource in the desert southwest) were being wasted instead of stored where they could be used to protect against a drought in the next year, all out of fear of a drought in the next year.
I've been thinking a lot about how legislation, while well meaning often results in unintended consequences, which were either not imagined by those crafting it, which were contemplated but dismissed as unlikely or negligible in their impact, or in rare cases were in fact the reason the law was crafted in the first place, and sold to a well-meaning but gullible public or legislature.
A prime example of the last on the list was the ballot proposition passed last year (last year's prop 207) and sold under the guise of protecting people against 'eminent domain,' in which municipalities were ordered to pay for any changes in property value as a result of zoning changes. This includes things like sign ordinances, and has as a result hamstrung the ability of cities and counties to control the urban environment and plan responsible growth (which is in fact what the writers, mainly developers, wanted all along but they claimed it was about eminent domain.) Under the text of a proposition, any individual landowner may sue any time there is a change in zoning, claiming (rightly or wrongly) that it has affected their property value, and this fact has already prevented cities from making changes in zoning to manage growth.
Another prime example from last year's legislative propositions (last year's prop 101) limits property tax hikes by any county, city, town or community college district to 2%. While I might not agree with the intended consequences (forcing these entities to hold down taxes and hence limiting tax investment) I can respect that this was the intent of the voters. However, by basing it on current rates, the unintended consequence has been to disproportionately punish counties and other entities which have been fiscally conservative in the past and held taxes down while keeping their taxing ability in abeyance, while in effect rewarding those who in the past have raised taxes the most, by giving the most room to raise them even further in the future.
As a matter of fact, another example (this time of a law which was not passed) is last year's prop 302, relating to the salaries of elected state legislators. Now, let me say right up front that I can certainly why most people voted against this one. Given the underfunding of our schools, police departments, counties and other entities that we've seen by this group of tax-cut happy legislators, I know why a lot of people felt they don't deserve a raise. And I'd agree fully that they don't deserve a raise. Let them try to make it on $24,000 a year, just like ordinary people in the state. The problem though is that not raising legislative salaries (as has not been done in many years) virtually guarantees that we will have a legislature full of people who are anything but ordinary, in fact are disproportionately rich. Keeping legislative salaries where they are in effect rewards people who can afford to serve for $24,000 (in fact many of them could probably afford to serve for nothing) while poor or middle class people can't afford to even take the time off from work to run for the legislature, let alone serve. I've heard the argument that serving in the legislature is a half-time job, so it should only pay a half-time salary; the fallacy here is that it only applies to legislators who can take half a year off of work and still have their jobs back when they get done, and with an uncertain start date. The irony is that by keeping legislative salaries low Arizona has in effect created the professional legislature that its opponents sought to prevent.
Let's get away from last year's ballot propositions. What about actual laws?
Here is one that always seems to get ignored. Included among all the anti-smoking laws is one which makes it a crime for adults to purchase cigarettes for children. I fully support this law. It does not however make an exemption for parents. In fact, no parent (and I am one) wants their kids to smoke (and if a parent does push smoking on their kids then that would constitute child abuse and could be dealt with in other ways). But by tying the hands of parents (who could otherwise use the opportunity to monitor their kids habits and talk to them about quitting while they are still young enough to do so relatively easily) we in effect open a whole new clientele up to drug dealers, who might otherwise never have a way to meet these kids. I know this happens (and where I first started thinking this might be a poorly written law) because of a kid telling another one in my presence that she didn't have any cigarettes because 'my friend got busted for meth.' So we in effect have made tobacco the new entry drug, and after spending some time getting to know the kids by buying cigarettes for them, it isn't too long before, 'smoke this one,' comes up. And heck, let's forget the drug dealers for a moment-- what a golden key we've just handed child molesters with this law. In effect, by trying to protect our children from the evils of tobacco, we've gotten to the point of taking what little authority parents still have on the issue away and letting it fall into the hands of people who may actually be out to harm these teens and pre-teens.
Another one which I was forced to confront lately is related to the law exempting groceries from sales tax (which I also fully support). Lately I've noticed (and my kids insist on making me notice) that people who make cheap toys that they sell in convenience stores have started including a mixture of toys and candy. I've not seen this in states that don't charge sales tax differentially for toys and food, so apparently this concoction was whomped up just for Arizona. The candy probably costs them less than a dime, so they can put it in a package with a $1.59 toy and raise the price to $1.69 (tax free). They end up making more money that way, the price ends up costing the consumer less and who loses? Well, the state budget and every teacher, every police officer, and every project which depends on state funding loses. So do the kids, since most of this candy is hard candy (like suckers) which are loaded with sugar and are the worst for their teeth. I don't think that the legislature had this in mind when they passed the exemption for groceries but it is an example of how people who shouldn't be covered by a law will find a loophole and crawl through it (simple solution: quit exempting candy from sales tax; Maybe then they will at least package the toys with jerky or with dried vegetables or something which would at least be nutritious.)
Those are a few of my most observed loopholes. What are yours?
Many years ago, I was a student at a small engineering college in Socorro, New Mexico. One year it rained a great deal, so the grass and all the grounds were lush and green. One day in late June I was walking along and saw the sprinkler system running full blast, with everything flooded and underwater. I said something about it to one of the groundskeepers and he told me that they had to use their water allocation by the end of that week, or it would be cut the next year, when it would be dry and they might need it. Apparently that was the way the system was set up by people who thought that even the weather could be made to comply with their red tape. Millions of gallons of water (a precious resource in the desert southwest) were being wasted instead of stored where they could be used to protect against a drought in the next year, all out of fear of a drought in the next year.
I've been thinking a lot about how legislation, while well meaning often results in unintended consequences, which were either not imagined by those crafting it, which were contemplated but dismissed as unlikely or negligible in their impact, or in rare cases were in fact the reason the law was crafted in the first place, and sold to a well-meaning but gullible public or legislature.
A prime example of the last on the list was the ballot proposition passed last year (last year's prop 207) and sold under the guise of protecting people against 'eminent domain,' in which municipalities were ordered to pay for any changes in property value as a result of zoning changes. This includes things like sign ordinances, and has as a result hamstrung the ability of cities and counties to control the urban environment and plan responsible growth (which is in fact what the writers, mainly developers, wanted all along but they claimed it was about eminent domain.) Under the text of a proposition, any individual landowner may sue any time there is a change in zoning, claiming (rightly or wrongly) that it has affected their property value, and this fact has already prevented cities from making changes in zoning to manage growth.
Another prime example from last year's legislative propositions (last year's prop 101) limits property tax hikes by any county, city, town or community college district to 2%. While I might not agree with the intended consequences (forcing these entities to hold down taxes and hence limiting tax investment) I can respect that this was the intent of the voters. However, by basing it on current rates, the unintended consequence has been to disproportionately punish counties and other entities which have been fiscally conservative in the past and held taxes down while keeping their taxing ability in abeyance, while in effect rewarding those who in the past have raised taxes the most, by giving the most room to raise them even further in the future.
As a matter of fact, another example (this time of a law which was not passed) is last year's prop 302, relating to the salaries of elected state legislators. Now, let me say right up front that I can certainly why most people voted against this one. Given the underfunding of our schools, police departments, counties and other entities that we've seen by this group of tax-cut happy legislators, I know why a lot of people felt they don't deserve a raise. And I'd agree fully that they don't deserve a raise. Let them try to make it on $24,000 a year, just like ordinary people in the state. The problem though is that not raising legislative salaries (as has not been done in many years) virtually guarantees that we will have a legislature full of people who are anything but ordinary, in fact are disproportionately rich. Keeping legislative salaries where they are in effect rewards people who can afford to serve for $24,000 (in fact many of them could probably afford to serve for nothing) while poor or middle class people can't afford to even take the time off from work to run for the legislature, let alone serve. I've heard the argument that serving in the legislature is a half-time job, so it should only pay a half-time salary; the fallacy here is that it only applies to legislators who can take half a year off of work and still have their jobs back when they get done, and with an uncertain start date. The irony is that by keeping legislative salaries low Arizona has in effect created the professional legislature that its opponents sought to prevent.
Let's get away from last year's ballot propositions. What about actual laws?
Here is one that always seems to get ignored. Included among all the anti-smoking laws is one which makes it a crime for adults to purchase cigarettes for children. I fully support this law. It does not however make an exemption for parents. In fact, no parent (and I am one) wants their kids to smoke (and if a parent does push smoking on their kids then that would constitute child abuse and could be dealt with in other ways). But by tying the hands of parents (who could otherwise use the opportunity to monitor their kids habits and talk to them about quitting while they are still young enough to do so relatively easily) we in effect open a whole new clientele up to drug dealers, who might otherwise never have a way to meet these kids. I know this happens (and where I first started thinking this might be a poorly written law) because of a kid telling another one in my presence that she didn't have any cigarettes because 'my friend got busted for meth.' So we in effect have made tobacco the new entry drug, and after spending some time getting to know the kids by buying cigarettes for them, it isn't too long before, 'smoke this one,' comes up. And heck, let's forget the drug dealers for a moment-- what a golden key we've just handed child molesters with this law. In effect, by trying to protect our children from the evils of tobacco, we've gotten to the point of taking what little authority parents still have on the issue away and letting it fall into the hands of people who may actually be out to harm these teens and pre-teens.
Another one which I was forced to confront lately is related to the law exempting groceries from sales tax (which I also fully support). Lately I've noticed (and my kids insist on making me notice) that people who make cheap toys that they sell in convenience stores have started including a mixture of toys and candy. I've not seen this in states that don't charge sales tax differentially for toys and food, so apparently this concoction was whomped up just for Arizona. The candy probably costs them less than a dime, so they can put it in a package with a $1.59 toy and raise the price to $1.69 (tax free). They end up making more money that way, the price ends up costing the consumer less and who loses? Well, the state budget and every teacher, every police officer, and every project which depends on state funding loses. So do the kids, since most of this candy is hard candy (like suckers) which are loaded with sugar and are the worst for their teeth. I don't think that the legislature had this in mind when they passed the exemption for groceries but it is an example of how people who shouldn't be covered by a law will find a loophole and crawl through it (simple solution: quit exempting candy from sales tax; Maybe then they will at least package the toys with jerky or with dried vegetables or something which would at least be nutritious.)
Those are a few of my most observed loopholes. What are yours?
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
What else can they do to make it easy pickings for fraud?
What would you think of a law that makes pensions both more opaque and reduces the requirement for who can manage them? In the old days, that usually meant that organized crime had a hand in the till.
Maybe things haven't changed all that much. The Arizona legislature, in its infinite wisdom, is set to pass HR 2147, which among other things will 1) reduce the minimum requirements for who can manage employee pension funds, and 2) makes it clear that proprietary commercial information on Arizona State Retirement System (ASRS) investments are not to be made a matter of public record.
So in a nutshell, they are arranging it so that people who didn't used to be qualified to handle pension investments, can do so now, and they can do it in the dark.
And this from the legislature that only four years ago brought you the alt-fuels scandal. And we are expected to trust this crew?
Maybe things haven't changed all that much. The Arizona legislature, in its infinite wisdom, is set to pass HR 2147, which among other things will 1) reduce the minimum requirements for who can manage employee pension funds, and 2) makes it clear that proprietary commercial information on Arizona State Retirement System (ASRS) investments are not to be made a matter of public record.
So in a nutshell, they are arranging it so that people who didn't used to be qualified to handle pension investments, can do so now, and they can do it in the dark.
And this from the legislature that only four years ago brought you the alt-fuels scandal. And we are expected to trust this crew?
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