Rss@dailykos.com (mother Mags) · Monday, May 02, 2016, 8:50 pm
As of last Friday morning, Arizona’s legislature was still negotiating a budget for fiscal year 2017. They’re doing all kinds of fun stuff, like increasing corporate tax cuts, because the $4 billion hole we’re in due to years of GOP tax cuts isn’t deep enough; whacking away at public education even more, although Arizona has cut education more than any other state, and every poll says people want more money for schools; and adding $5 million for three conservative university “freedom schools” that were seeded with Koch cash, even though the universities did not ask for the money or the right-wing think tanks.
Here’s another stinker that’s not getting much airplay:
The state budget being debated by the Legislature would take $6 million from court accounts and provide more money only if a bill adding two justices to the Arizona Supreme Court passes.
The proposed cuts would affect jury pay, substance abuse treatment, sex offender and drug treatment programs, and treatment for abused children. Here’s the deal: The judiciary can get the money and other requested funds if the Republican-controlled legislature adds two seats to the five-person Arizona Supreme Court, and Gov. Doug Ducey gets to appoint the new justices.
Arizonans got a taste of the kind of justice Gov. Ducey is looking for when he made his first appointment to the Supreme Court in January: Clint Bolick has worked at the libertarian Goldwater Institute since 2007, where he has filed numerous cases against the state—mostly because elected officials wanted to spend money on children, sick people, and the poor.
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