The Arizona Legislature values many things. The public welfare is not one of them.
According to the Arizona Education Network, the state has cut $875.5 million from the budget for K-12 schools, community colleges and universities over the past two years. This means that key developmental activities such as all-day kindergarten, arts, physical education and more have been downsized or cut, while an individual’s cost to attaining a higher education has dramatically increased.
In addition, last October, Gov. Jan Brewer cut organ transplant coverage for people on state Medicaid. This has already resulted in the deaths of two patients who lacked the means to afford a transplant procedure.
While the cuts will save the state $5.3 million in 2011, Arizona will in turn lose over $20 million in federal matching funds, according to The Arizona Republic.
This year, Brewer also plans to cut KidsCare, Medicaid for childless adults and Medicaid for 5,200 mentally ill individuals, resulting in $621.3 million in cuts. That’s right — after the massacre in Tucson, the governor thinks it is wise to no longer care for the mentally ill.
So WTF? Where’s the funding?
According to ABC15, Brewer distributed $78 million of the $185 million stimulus funds to public safety (mostly corrections) and a mere $6.6 million to education and $55 million to health care.
According to the Tucson Citizen, in total, the three in-state universities now only receive $702 million while corrections receives $957 million (nearly a billion dollars), an interesting observation given the deep connections between the private prison industry, which seeks to incarcerate as many people as possible for profit, and Brewer and state Senate President Russell Pearce, R-Mesa.
According to the Prison Sentencing Project, for every 100,000 people in Arizona in 2005, 3,294 blacks and 1,075 Latinos were incarcerated, compared to only 590 whites. Between 2008 and 2009, the total people incarcerated increased by 2.4 percent, shown in a report by the Council of State Governments Justice Center.
Sadly, these numbers reflect a pre-SB 1070 Arizona, which deliberately makes civil infractions into criminal offenses in order to increase incarceration.
Case in point: the Tucson Citizen reported that the governor could close $10 billion in tax loopholes designed for special interests, but chooses massive cuts instead, including a recent proposal to cut $170 million from Arizona’s three state universities this year.
Meanwhile, the Arizona Legislature is trying to pass HB 2537, a law that would give the Legislature indefinite funds to file or defend lawsuits related to SB 1070.
The state is deliberately denying its residents access to education, thus creating a stable and robust pipeline into the jails through its incarceration and deportation policies.
Instead of rising up against these cuts, the Arizona Board of Regents continues down the path of cowardice by not holding the state accountable to its constitutional duty to ensure that education is as near to free as possible.
ABOR is forcing university students to fund the state’s bigotry through symbolically making the surcharge fee — originally promised to be a temporary fee increase — a permanent part of tuition, in addition to hiking tuition in general and adding massive fees.
In light of the state’s active marginalization of all of Arizona’s most vulnerable communities, all student governing bodies and the Arizona Students’ Association must take a firm stand against any tuition increases, as such proposals are downright offensive.
Any other action by student leaders is a betrayal to their constituents.
Reach Athena at asalman3@asu.edu
