Archive for the ‘Currents/The Skinny’ Category
February 4th, 2010
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Author: As the state teeters toward bankruptcy; ANtenori to Star editorial page: Drop Dead; The District 30 dominoes
by Jim Nintzel
AS THE STATE TEETERS TOWARD BANKRUPTCY Reality has finally sunk in for Gov. Jan Brewer, who has given up hope of getting lawmakers to temporarily increase the sales tax by one penny per dollar. The tax hike would require approval from two-thirds of both the House and Senate, so we all knew that was never going to happen. Instead, Brewer is back to asking lawmakers to put the question to voters. She’s been trying that for about a year with…
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by Jim Nintzel
CHRISTMAS CRASH It’s not often that a budget briefing brings hundreds of people down to a City Council meeting on a Tuesday afternoon. Then again, it’s not often that the city is discussing how to plug a massive hole in the budget with only six months left in the fiscal year. Worried after headlines announced that the city was considering cuts of 15 percent to all city departments, supporters of the police and fire departments came out in force to…
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by Jim Nintzel
FORECAST: ECONOMIC TSUNAMI AHEAD UA economist Marshall Vest became the latest Cassandra to warn about the state government’s impending financial collapse. Vest and fellow Eller School big-brain Gerald Swanson delivered their annual financial forecast last week. Guess what? The news is not good. Although the private sector is creeping toward recovery (at least at the national level), in Arizona, “It’s especially grim for the public sector,” says Vest. That’s because, as we’ve been noting all year, the state’s tax collections…
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by Jim Nintzel
AS OUR ECONOMIC MELTDOWN CONTINUES … State Treasurer Dean Martin, who may or may not be challenging troubled Gov. Jan Brewer in next year’s Republican primary, shouted out a warning last week: The state has blown through its $700 million dollar credit line and had to dig into some internal accounts for another $73 million. By the way, Martin has already tapped $1.6 billion in other state funds, so we’re running out of options as the state continues spending more…
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by Jim Nintzel
MEET THE NEW BOSS—AND HIS STAFF Democrat Nina Trasoff’s term as the midtown Ward 6 councilwoman comes to an end next Monday, Dec. 7, as Republican Steve Kozachik is sworn in. Kozachik, who doesn’t plan to quit his day job—managing the facilities over at the UA Athletics Department—says a prime focus will be the city’s ailing budget, which is continuing to spiral into deeper trouble. Last week, City Manager Mike Letcher delivered the bad news that weak sales-tax collections and…
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by Jim Nintzel
A CITY DIVIDED We’ve been poring over the ward-by-ward breakdown of the Tucson City Council election and have a few takeaways to share. • The most obvious: We live in a divided city. As we suspected as the results came in, Republican Steve Kozachik pulled off his upset of Democratic incumbent Nina Trasoff by driving up turnout on the eastside, while Democrats failed to get their voters out on the westside and southside. That’s been the formula for GOP success…
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by Jim Nintzel
CLEAN ELECTIONS UPDATE Attorney John Munger, who is challenging Gov. Jan Brewer in next year’s GOP primary, blasted the state’s Clean Elections program last week. “Giving taxpayer funds to career politicians at a time when we’re cutting government is an abomination,” Munger declared in a press release. We don’t know if we’d go as far as “abomination,” but we’re not fans of Clean Elections, either, mostly because we think it helped radicalize the Legislature by helping social conservatives knock out…
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by Jim Nintzel
CLOUDS OVER SOLAR CULTURE? More than two decades ago, artist Steven Eye first opened the doors to an abandoned downtown produce warehouse on Toole Avenue that he had rented for the princely sum of $300 a month from the Arizona Department of Transportation. That warehouse, which had been acquired by the state and was slated for destruction to make way for a Barraza-Aviation Parkway extension that was never built, has blossomed into Solar Culture, which is part art gallery, part…
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by Jim Nintzel
EARLY NOTICE Election Day hasn’t yet arrived, but nearly 24,000 Tucsonans had already cast their ballots as of Monday, Oct. 26. Early ballots promise to be a huge factor in this year’s city election. In previous city elections, voters had to ask for a mail-in ballot; in this election, more than 62,000 early ballots went out automatically to city voters on Pima County’s permanent early-voter list when early voting started on Oct. 8. By early this week, more than 68,000…
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by Jim Nintzel
THAT DIAMOND TOUCH When new campaign finance reports get turned in at the end of this week, we hear that there will be some interesting names from the business community handing out contributions to Don’t Handcuff Tucson, the political committee battling against the Public Safety First Initiative. Among the expected contributors: legendary land speculator Don Diamond and Humberto “Bert” Lopez, the local apartment-building magnate. Neither one has much love for the Democrats on the City Council; Lopez is even planting…
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