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Arizona's First Political Blog

E-mail Anonymous Mike at zonitics4-at-yahoo.com

By Anonymous Mike, pseudonymously.



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Monday, April 28, 2008
 
Why I Don't Care About the Suns

A couple of things first.

I understand that being a fan of professional sports can be seen from some quarters as a somewhat bizarre undertaking. Wasting one's precious time and money to follow a bunch of grown men being paid outrageous sums of money to play a game, well I cannot think of a rational way to justify it. It takes a suspension of disbelief. However I do enjoy watching professional athletics, especially baseball.

I used to be a huge NBA fan. Earlier today on ESPN they were showing some footage from one of the Lakers-Sixers Finals of the early 80s and I sat there enthralled not so much by the fact that I knew every player in the film by sight but I bet I could give you a 3 to 5 minute summary of each guy's career highlights, even Mark Landsberger.

Now I could care less. The NBA is dead to me.

How did this happen? I can think of three reasons.

First I stopped identifying with the players. It didn't occur to me this was going on until Jordan 2nd retirement in 1998 but it probably happened earlier. The players who enabled my suspension of disbelief, like Doctor J and Larry Bird, were being replaced by despicable figures such as Kenny Anderson and Shawn Kemp. It seemed that the league was hell bent on wasting the precious capital it had earned from its previous golden decade. The great Bulls teams of the 1990s, the great sportsmen like Olajuwan and Jordan only masked a deep seedy underbelly of fundamentally flawed play and too many players coasting on guaranteed contracts.

Second, the NBA started to cut its ties to the local communities. It's hard enough to develop an emotional connection to teams that seem to completely turn-over their roster every few seasons but it's impossible when you know the franchise could be just as transient as the players. It started at the beginning of the decade when the owner of the Charlotte Hornets ran the team into the ground despite having a supportive community and was allowed with the league's blessing to pick up and move the team to New Orleans. Now this year the NBA is using the Seattle as an example to other NBA cities by allowing the Sonics to move to the smaller market of Oklahoma City, all because Seattle wouldn't build the team its second publicaly financed arena in 12 years.

I could also add the example of the Grizzlies who a few years ago moved from Vancouver to Memphis and may be moving to yet another city but no one seems to care. Their example just goes to prove that the league and the owners would rip a team out of one community and place it in another as long as they could get a better arena deal

Third and the final straw was the whole Tim Donaghy affair where Donaghy was found to have ties to organized crime and helping to fix games he refereed in. The thing was, I wasn't the least surprised.

Enough

I guess for all of those reasons, I'm going to stick with juiced up baseball and football players and the greedy owners in those sports, after all there is only so much nonsense I can take. Sometime in June when the local temperature is above 110 I will turn on the TV and discover that someone won the NBA Championship. If I care to think of it, I will reminence about the days when life used to be simpler, when the NBA Finals used to be shown on tape delay and the Kings played some of their games in Nebraska.

Have fun NBA, we shared some good times but it was nice knowing you.


Wednesday, April 23, 2008
 
Pot Calling Kettle Black

Piece in tomorrow's Wall Street Journal from our very own Governor Napolitano railing on the costs that federal actions impose on the states. Just so you aren't confused on who is responsible for the largest state budget deficit in the nation that was run up on Napoltano's watch:

There are dozens more examples. Even if the federal government paid up on only a few of its debts mentioned here, Arizona would not be in deficit this year. It's that simple.

Actually if Arizona didn't increase spending beyond the rate of inflation and population growth, it would be in surplus.

I hate to break it to the Governor but the history of the feds sticking it to the states on costs is a long one, look it up under the heading "unfunded mandates, federal government." So stop trying to blame our budget problems on the feds and accept some personal responsibility. Come on there you go, take that first step.

A slowing economy is never easy. But this year, the states' fiscal crunch is being made worse. That's because misguided policies put in place by Congress and the Bush administration have either forced states to spend money or driven away tax revenue.

Before anyone in Washington seriously contemplates a second "stimulus package" aimed at reviving the economy, I would offer two succinct pieces of advice: First, take a Hippocratic Oath to do no harm to state budgets. Second, ensure that Washington "pays its bills," just as we require of everyone else.

Yeah it's a shame that the Bush Administration and Congress have decided to resolve their fiscal problems by passing costs onto the states, after all that is something that Napolitano would never do to other levels of government:

A proposal by the governor to have thousands of criminals serve time in county jails instead of state prisons could break Maricopa County's budget and fill jails beyond capacity, top administrators said Tuesday.

The move could add another 2,150 inmates yearly to Maricopa County jails and cost the county an additional $58 million in operational costs yearly, county finance officials estimated. That estimate does not include the price to build another jail or the land it would sit on.

The plan, part of Gov. Janet Napolitano's budget proposal unveiled late last week, aims at helping close a state budget shortfall that she pegs at nearly $1.3 billion next year.

Hmmm

Yes I know it was a Republican Legislature that passed those budgets that jacked up spending but the last I looked the Republic leadership was creating ways to balance the budget, not writing op-ed pieces blaming the Feds for their spending problems.


Wednesday, April 16, 2008
 
The Strong Must Protect the Sweet

Following up on 2 items of long ago...

In my quest to discover the perfect soft serve ice cream dip, I have to say I'm disappointed in the local offerings. While there is more than Dairy Queen in town, all seem to serve the same basic three flavors: cherry, chocolate, and butterscotch.

Contrast that with what can be found up in my family's ancestral lands of the southern tier of New York. There various stores abound with choices of dip flavors: grape, bubble gum, orange, lemon lime.... you haven't lived until you have had a chocolate soft serve with blue raspberry dip.

I am happy to report that on my way back through Wickenburg that the local Tastee Freeze there does a black raspberry dip that would make even the best purveyor of the cold sweet stuff proud. If you're passing through on your way to or from Vegas, stop in, order a medium cone, and tell them Anonymous Mike sent you.

However even more importantly.....

The 2008 award for "Best Discounted Easter Candy Available after Easter" goes to the Walgreens at 7th & Camelback. Any store can be deep discounting stale jelly beans and chocolate bunnies a week after Easter, however, it takes a special genius to have 75% off Russell Stover cream eggs and chocolate Peeps.

Thank you Walgreens and Tastee Freeze for making Arizona a better place to live.


Monday, April 14, 2008
 
Just a Matter of Priority

Over the past week or so, there is hardly a peep in the largest newspaper in Arizona concerning the largest state budget in the nation. So while the AZ Republic doesn't want to discuss the fact that the State will run out of money next month it does want to spill some serious ink giving voice to tenured faculty who are forecasting the end of Western Civilization.

Twice over the last 7 days the Republic has printed material involving University of Arizona professor Guy McPherson who is predicting the "post-industrial Stone Age" and that the only way that you the individual reader will be alive in 10 years is "...it will be because you've figured out how to forage locally."

Coyote Blog has a great write-up of McPherson. Personally my favorite line is:

"I am trying to inform people, not scare them. I do not benefit from peak oil or spreading the word about it. Indeed, it will cost me my 401(k), my 403(b), and the job I love, and writing about it has been costly to my so-called career."

I wasn't aware that a 401(k) or university faculty positions would be of any value after the Apocalypse. You would think he would be taking his money and investing in backyard storage tanks and ammo rather than in investment funds that have penalties for early withdrawal.

Leave him aside for the moment, why does the Republic run this crap instead of about the immediate problem of how local government is going to pay its bills? Done right, the Viewpoint section of the Republic could be one of the most important pieces of opinion real estate in the Arizona. Instead the Republic uses it to give vent to people who are better off writing the sequel to Logan's Run.


Wednesday, April 9, 2008
 
The Marty Schultz Experience

After all of these months, or is it years, of meetings and work Marty Schultz has finally reported on a statewide transportation plan.

Schultz has been working on developing a plan and a mechanism to fund it as part of some group called the "TIME Coalition" (Transportation & Infrastructure Moving AZ's Economy.) TIME and the Governor's Office have just announced that they will seek to place a plan on the state November 2008 ballot with possible funding sources including a 1-cent hike in the sales tax and increased impact fees.

Personally, I think the odds of a ballot initiative linked to a tax increase passing in this economy has about as much of a chance as the AZ Republic running a story critical of Governor Napolitano. However Mr. Schultz worked hard on this project so I have some questions for him. Note I haven't seen the actual proposal, in fact I cannot even find TIME's Web site, a free beer at Sonoran is on me to the person who can supply the goods, so I'm going on what is reported in the paper.

1) I noticed in the paper, that TIME's proposal will include funding for things like street cars in Tucson and rapid-transit buses. Why should a state-wide sales tax be imposed to pay for local transportation infrastructure?

2) As a Phoenix resident I already pay higher sales taxes to 2 jurisdictions, to Maricopa County and City of Phoenix, for increased transportation services. Those services include bus service, light rail, and highways. Will other counties and municipalities be forced to hike their local sales tax to provide a corresponding local match to any revenue generated by the state tax for similar services in their areas?

3) If the answer to question #2 is no, will you be prepared to propose that the 2004 county-wide transportation plan that Maricopa voters passed with a 1/2 cent sales tax be amended so that taxpayers like myself wouldn't be paying for projects with local tax money that other parts of Arizona are getting paid for by state taxes?

4) Your proposal seems to support light rail. I seem to remember that in 2004 when the Maricopa transportation plan was on the ballot, there were provisions that the light rail expansion component would not be implemented if the 20-miles starter line did not meet certain metrics. As light rail is still an unproven concept in any Arizona city, why does this proposal include the second expansion of an unproven system?

5) For all the faults of the 2004 Maricopa plan developed by MAAG, at least the resultant Regional Transportation Plan was developed and published almost 12 months before the November 2004 ballot. It is less than 7 months before the November 2008 and I cannot find a copy of TIME's plan or even TIME's web site anywhere. Given that this is an estimated $42 billion project, when did TIME plan on releasing details to the public? There must be a plan somewhere. I have read that TIME has contracted with a PR firm but seemingly, even in 2008, cannot even put the plan on a Web site. Is it because the proposal still remains in "flux?" Given that TIME is planning to file with the Secretary of State's Office in a few weeks and begin to gather signatures.... when will it be finalized?


Tuesday, April 8, 2008
 
Sprawl My Love

I was most pleased the other day to read that the inestimable James Lileks was in town last week. This is the time of year for a late blizzard to hit Lileks' home state of Minnesota and for him to consider, yet again, whether it's time to move to Phoenix. I remain doubtful whether he will actually come here, but it's nice to read some one in the newspaper business who actually likes Phoenix:

I love Phoenix. It’s a 21st Century American City. You want the future? Here you go...

....It’s new. It’s rich. It’s poor. It’s low and flat, it’s high and barren. It has broad new freeways rising high over barren canals, great empty stretches punctuated by high-tech office buildings holding dozens of incubating companies. It remakes itself with a speed that makes LA look like Paris. This is the future, but somehow when people want to capture the soul of America they go to Cleveland and film a shoelace factory that closed in 1982.

Wow that's refreshing.

When people say they love it here, they usually mean the climate or the natural wonders outside of the Valley; they aren't referring to the metro area itself. In fact, you would be hard pressed to go more than a week without picking up a news paper or magazine decrying how much we have made a mess of things here in the Valley or what a soulless wasteland we inhabit. When we encounter people from out-of-state, it seems the words out of our mouth are implicitly apologizing for what we have here

There's a word for such behavior and that is pathetic.

We live in a unique section of the country, very different from not just the Northeast or Midwest but also from neighbors in California and New Mexico. There are a million stories out here and a vitality in the Sprawl that you'll find nowhere else. Those who don't like it can either stay to change it or move to Seattle, but to stay and bad mouth it reflects the smallness of their soul


Thursday, April 3, 2008
 
Dazed and Confused

Well the City of Phoenix won its court case over City North so that project may continue. The case involved the City providing about $100 million to the developers in the form of rebates on city sales tax collected from City North. The Goldwater Institute filed suit on the behalf of a number of plaintiffs arguing that the rebate violates both the Gift Clause and the Special Law and Equal Privileges and Immunities clauses of the Arizona Constitution.

Leave aside the latter clauses and focus on the Gift Clause which in Article 9, Section 7 states:

Neither the state, nor any county, city, town, municipality, or other subdivision of the state shall ever give or loan its credit in the aid of, or make any donation or grant, by subsidy or otherwise, to any individual, association, or corporation, or become a subscriber to, or a shareholder in, any company or corporation, or become a joint owner with any person, company, or corporation, except as to such ownerships as may accrue to the state by operation or provision of law or as authorized by law solely for investment of the monies in the various funds of the state.

Judge Miles stated that due to precedent, transactions under the Gift Clause must be analyzed under 2 criteria to determine whether they meet a public purpose. First, does the transaction meet a public purpose and second does the public receive equal value paid.

As to the first criteria, Judge Miles accepted the City's claims that the subsidy would spur economic development thus creating jobs and sales tax revenue for the City of Phoenix in addition to creating an urban core that will reduce congestion and pollution. Furthermore, the Judge accepted the City's claims that through the subsidy it secured 3,000 public parking spaces including 200 parking spaces for a park and ride facility. Let's look at each of these claims separately.

First, there is no analysis by Judge Miles of the claim that developing an urban core would, ipso facto, reduce congestion and pollution. If that was the case, then some of our most developed cores, like mid-town Manhattan, would be congestion and pollution-free. There probably is an argument there somewhere but the mere act of concentrating people and retail does not seem to me to automatically reduce pollution and congestion.

Second, Judge Miles does not accept (or perhaps Goldwater did not make) the case that Phoenix would have reaped substantial economic activity in the absence of the sales tax subsidy. The area that City North will be located in is considered to have the most commercial potential of anywhere in the Valley. It is inevitable that in the absence of City North, that somebody would commercially develop the land without any public subsidy. The question, therefore, is City North with all of its tax breaks a better use of the land for the City of Phoenix than an unsubsidized development? That would seem to me to be a better test of Judge Miles' second criteria but his ruling makes no further analysis of the claim.

Third, the parking places which the City has claims to have secured as a public benefit. Under what terms are the parking spaces public? When I go to a shopping mall in the Valley, I expect to receive free public parking so public spaces secured by the City at City North are of no extra value to me if I go shopping there; it's what I expect. While City North sits on attractive real estate, there are few if any other attractions in the general area that I may want to visit; unlike say downtown Phoenix where I may want to go to dinner at one location and a sporting event at another. In other words, if I'm going to park at City North it's because I'm going to City North period. So that leaves the 200 park and ride spaces.

In fact those 200 park and ride spaces are about the only definite public benefit in the whole project. Given that light rail isn't planned for the area, that means the City of Phoenix expects the residents of one of the most affluent areas of the Valley to be parking at City North in order to ride the bus. As ridiculous as that sounds, that is the most plausible claim in the whole case.

So I'm left with two conclusions.

The courts will be of little help in trying to stop public subsidies of corporations. This whole ruling leaves loopholes so large you can march of an army of lawyers through, which is what the City of Phoenix did. Phoenix's claim that any money given to corporations that results in any amount of tax revenue being returned is "public" is the same logic that drove the municipal abuse of eminent domain. If you remember it took a ballot initiative, not the Legislature or the courts, to put a stop to that.

The second conclusion is, despite what Laurie Roberts may think, the City of Phoenix sure got it's money worth out of the Fennimore Craig lawyers..