Editorial: Legislature needs one more big push for ballot effort
Related News
- 01/20/10 — Legislator targets public employees for pay cuts in constitutional amendment
- 01/18/10 — Earnings tax in St. Louis, Kansas City could be challenged in statewide ballot initiative
- 12/07/09 — N.J. voters to decide ballot question restricting tax dollars
- 12/05/09 — Two measures for ballot
- 11/24/09 — Experts Debunk Claim That Tax Measures Would Cost Jobs
- More Fiscal/Budget Issues news
Arizona Republic: One last push at the Legislature will put Arizona's budget on firmer ground. One strong bipartisan effort will let Arizona voters have a say in how to fix a multiyear gap between revenue and expenditures. Democratic lawmakers should join Republicans in supporting a ballot measure for a three-year, one-penny-per-dollar increase in the sales tax. Neither side of the aisle likes the idea. And no one welcomes a tax hike during a recession. But Arizona will be in terrible shape without it. Plunging revenue has put the state budget into crisis. Recovery is several years away, federal stimulus money will soon evaporate and we've used up virtually all the gimmicks. To get through this tough stretch, Arizona needs an income boost, as Gov. Jan Brewer recognizes. The only practical, politically feasible way to raise a lot of cash quickly is through a sales tax. But a sales-tax ballot proposal isn't in the budget package that the Legislature sent to Brewer last week. In the drive for an all-GOP budget, it couldn't get through the Senate.
To read more, click here.
Comments
There are no comments for this entry.
