Lucia

de Vernai

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January 7, 2009

States Need Federal Money, But Did They Get in Line Too Late?

It’s common knowledge that when money gets tight and tough decisions are inevitable, the first thing that gets the ax is the extraneous fluff we know we don’t actually need to make it. For personal budgets, it may be weekly outings to the movies and eating out. For government budgets, their teachers pay. Granted, it’s only about $30,000 a year, but it adds up.

The state of Arizona is, as House Speaker-elect Kirk Adams captured eloquently, “broke.” The state is expected to be in the negative by March or April, but there is good reason to believe that we’ll be $50 million in the hole by February. And the state has to find $600 million for payment to public schools in March. What shall they do?

There is always the option of following in the footsteps of Maryland’s Fayette County, which suggested that its teachers return the 2.5 percent bonus they received voluntarily. Keeping your employer afloat is certainly an incentive, but the $4 million in bonuses the county’s 1,800 employees received probably had a destination and were spent long before the school board had second thoughts.

That’s no problem. The county doesn’t want their cash, just lots and lots of free hours. And they wonder why public school teachers are so hard to find. Another Maryland county school district decided to forgo the promised 5.3 percent pay raise promised them . . . in 2010. Fayette County teachers may be asked to start working for free – voluntarily, of course – right away. The approach seems to be working out here in Phoenix, where the mayor works a day a month for free, although I’m fairly sure he makes more than $8.25 an hour like the average cafeteria worker.

While it’s nice to see the guys at the top making an effort, it’s hard to believe that “we’re all in this together” is their main motivation, given that the Goldwater Institute said it would sue if the state exceeded its constitutional debt limit of $350,000. If a similar story repeats itself in other states, 44 states facing budget shortfalls will have serious legal trouble, police and firefighting forces with hands tied behind their backs and classrooms run amok as teachers leave for professions that give them more financial stability.

Meanwhile, politicians sheepishly repeat that what can really solve California’s predicted $13.8 billion deficit, Tennessee’s $884 million deficit or Massachusetts’s $2.1 billion deficit is a federal stimulus package. State and federal governments knew well that budgets from Nevada to Vermont would not be enough to meet the needs to their constituents.

The time to line up for money from the feds was before GM and Fannie Mae did. Of course, it is common knowledge that it is much easier for a sixth grade teacher to find a job with decent benefits than it is for CEOs with accounts in the Cayman Islands to do the same. Without argument, the bailouts were necessary to save our economy – campaigns were suspended, CNN was buzzing with excitement and Congress came running.

It’s a shame that preserving our physical and social infrastructure is not nearly as urgent to Capitol Hill.

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