Arizona is
in tatters. Politically, economically, and socially the state is reeling.
The
decision by Gov. Jan Brewer to sign the anti-immigrant Support Our Law
Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (SB 1070) last April put the ills of
Arizona on national display, exposing the state’s deep social and political
divides.
The attempted assassination of Cong. Gabrielle Giffords further
damaged the state’s already badly frayed reputation.
Described by Pima County Sheriff as “a mecca for
prejudice and bigotry” following the Tucson massacre, Arizona also faces one of
the nation’s most severe fiscal crises – even worse than that of California,
according to a new study by the Brookings Institution.
Facing a budget deficit of more than $2 billion,
Gov. Brewer has, with the strong backing of the Republican-dominated
legislature, proposed a new budget that severely slashes government spending,
especially for education and medical services. Spending for parks will be
zeroed out in the new budget.
The fiscal crisis has been building since 2008 when
housing prices plummeted, the sub-prime credit crisis hit, and the nation’s
Great Recession struck. Over the past couple of years, the magnitude and
severity of the state government’s fiscal woes were disguised by the influx
into the state of more than $4 billion in special federal funding from the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act (ARRA). But as this stimulus/stabilization funding comes to an
end, Arizona’s fiscal plight is raising increasing concerns about the state’s
stability.
Anxiety
about Arizona’s future arises in large part from doubts about the capacity of
the state’s political leaders to identify the fundamental problems facing the
state and chart an appropriate course forward.
Stabilization vs. Security
Last
year, Gov. Brewer began closing state parks and highway rest stops last year
and slashing social services to cover shortfalls in the 2010-2011 budgets. “Closed
for stabilization” notices are pasted on the doors of public buildings. Rows of
orange barrels block entrance to now-shuttered rest areas along the interstate
highways.
At the
same time, though, the governor, encouraged by the state’s radical Republican
leadership, was channeling federal stabilization funds into new state
border-security initiatives.
A month before signing Arizona’s
notorious papers-please anti-immigrant law, Gov. Jan Brewer burnished her
border-security credentials by dipping into the state’s ARRA funds to ply
border law enforcement agencies -- already awash in Homeland Security funding
through DHS’s Operation Stonegarden -- with another $10 million.
“A government’s principle [sic]
responsibility to its citizens is to provide safety and security. However, the
federal government has failed miserably in its obligation and moral
responsibility to its citizens regarding border security,” declared Governor
Brewer on April 22 when announcing state’s the launch of the state’s Border
Security Enhancement Program.
Brewer took a page out of Texas
Governor Rick Perry’s playbook by asserting that the federal government’s
failure to protect Arizona against illegal immigrants, border crime, and drugs
obligated the state to secure the Arizona border with Mexico – all the while
downplaying that the state’s border security program is underwritten by
stimulus funds intended for the state’s fiscal stabilization. Like Perry,
Brewer planned to ride the anti-immigrant backlash and border-security
bandwagon to victory in November 2010 gubernatorial contest.
Brewer claimed she was responding
to “murder, terror, and mayhem” as a result of the federal government’s failure
to secure the border. The stimulus funding, according to the program’s
guidelines, must be used by border law enforcement to
“combat criminal activity associated with or directly stemming from the
international border…specifically: illegal drug trafficking, human smuggling,
illegal immigration.” But FBI crime statistics told another story: steadily
declining crime rates along the border and throughout Arizona.
Brewer tapped her
office’s newly created State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, established with ARRA
funding from the U.S. Department of Education, to create her new border security
program.
The objective of the State Fiscal
Stabilization Fund is to “help stabilize state and local government budgets in
order to minimize and avoid reductions in education and other public services.”
Primarily intended to keep states from cutting their education budgets, the
stabilization fund does allow discretionary funding for “Other Government
Services.” Brewer has used this opening to plug a hole in the state’s prison
budget in addition to creating the politically motivated Border Security
Enhancement Program.
Get-tough sentencing laws and the
practice of imprisoning illegal drug users (more than half of the state’s
prison population) have created a higher-than-average incarceration rate in
Arizona, contributing substantially to the Arizona’s severe budget crisis.
Unable to pay the wages of the some 1,300 state corrections officers, Brewer
dipped into the fiscal stabilization funds for $50 million to cover the prison
payroll shortfall last year – which was her first use of “Other Government
Services” portion of the ARRA stabilization program.
Next:
Border Security Politics and Federal Funding in Cochise County.
This
series was made possible by a grant from The Nation Institute.
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