When Doug Ducey was first elected governor, the State Press Editorial Board posed a question: Would Ducey truly be a “governor of all?” With two months, his inauguration and first State of the State address under his belt, the original question remains unanswered while new concerns have been brought to light.
Following Ducey’s State of the State address, we’re sure of one thing — he’s a man with a plan. While we’re not sure what the plan is, we know that he must have some kind of idea of what he’d like to accomplish over the next four years. It’s the lack of specific details that has left us perplexed. Aside from power words like “fiscal responsibility,” and a heavy emphasis on education reform, there has been no clarification by Ducey on how he will achieve the goals he laid out as his “Arizona Roadmap” while on the campaign trail last fall.
In fact, many pressing issues listed on the “roadmap” have not been publicly addressed by Ducey. He has failed to address or tiptoed around topics like immigration, LGBT rights and the DREAM Act, which were important issues he spoke on during campaign season. Based on the fact that Ducey’s views on these matters are largely opposed, we would argue that this is because it’s the beginning of Ducey’s first term and he’s still trying to keep Arizonans on his side.
Read the full version of Gov. Ducey’s State of the State address here.
Balancing the budget, fast-tracking a bill that would enact a civics test requirement for Arizona high school students and reforming education are the only plans that Ducey has attempted expanding on. He’ll be closing Arizona’s office in Washington, D.C. and eliminating the lobbyist position. He’s announced that state government jobs — leaving aside child safety and public safety — will be frozen and a newly created inspector general will be “mandated to find more areas of savings – and where corruption exists, shine a light on it.” While these announcements are a respectable start, it’s hard to imagine that investigating the budget, cutting one position and making small cuts throughout Arizona Legislature will account for the $1 billion gap between revenue and spending.
While Ducey’s plans for education reform are noble, we cannot see them working out as planned. Most of his plan seems to come from money that does not exist or cutting spending where it is not useful. In order for the funds lacking in Arizona’s education system, there needs to be an increase in taxes — decreasing already lower than national average administrative funds will not provide sufficient money to boost education. This especially will not happen if the government will be settling the Education Lawsuit rather than paying back the money owed to the education system.
We can only hope that when Gov. Ducey officially releases his budget on Friday that we’ll get real facts and figures with an in-depth description of his plans. Until then, Ducey continues to be a real vanilla man — unable to take risks, capitalize on tough issues or show any signs of breaking from Arizona’s current status quo.
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