Monday, January 5, 2009

Legislature dithers while Arizona burns

RRR has a nice post about how even State Treasurer Dean Martin is acknowledging that the Republican legislature's delay in addressing the state's budget deficit just  compounds the crisis.

Arizona's fiscal mess rivals California's in relative scale, yet the legislature turned down Gov. Napolitano's request for a special session last month and instead wants to wait for Jan Brewer to take over. What I don't understand is why Brewer is willing to be responsible for over $1 billion in cuts, when Napolitano was prepared to offer up cuts equal to at least half the gap. 

Brewer will make things very difficult for herself if she rolls over for the ideologues leading the Republican legislative caucuses.