This, I think, is a brand new acronym: NIMB: Not In My Budget. It’s when politicians admit, yes, we may need to spend money to fund necessary government services, but it’s not coming from our coffers. “Not In My Budget. You’ll have to find the money somewhere else.” It explains so much about what’s going on in Phoenix these days.
The original acronym, of course, is NIMBY: Not In My Back Yard. It’s when people agree that, sure, we may need a homeless women’s shelter or a nursing home or a landfill or a chemical plant, just not anywhere near where I live. Put it in someone else’s neighborhood, not mine.
I remember a moment in the presidential race between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter back in 1980. Reagan had just finished a stump speech and was taking questions from the press. A journalist asked Reagan, who was campaigning on lower taxes and smaller government, about his plan to lump federal funding to states into block grants which he said would give states the freedom to spend the money as they saw fit rather than having to comply with all kinds of federal rules and regulations. The journalist pointed out that the block grants Reagan proposed were smaller than the total funding they replaced. With a “Gotcha!” glint in his eye, the journalist asked how Reagan expected the states to fund the existing programs with less money.
Reagan answered simply, “They can raise taxes.”
I was dumbfounded, amazed, awe struck. It was so simple. Reagan planned to make government smaller and lower taxes at the federal level, which is where he planned to live when he was elected. If that meant more money was needed at the state or local levels, well, that’s their problem, not his. Let them raise taxes. It was classic NIMB. Not In My Budget.
Today’s Star has a story about a judicial ruling that the state of Arizona illegally shifted $7.4 million [according to Pima County, the figure should be $15.8 million. I regret the error.] worth of funding obligations to Pima County. The state has to pick up the cost, according to the judge. In 1980 voters passed a measure which said, if property taxes are higher than one percent of the property’s value, the state has to make up the difference. Last year, the legislative majority decided it didn’t want to follow the voter mandate. “NIMB!” they shouted. “Not In My Budget!” So they passed SB 1476 which said the state is only responsible for a million dollars per county. That shifted $7.4 million $15.8 million from the state to Pima County. Voila! The state cuts its budget and someone else picks up the tab.
Since 2009, Arizona counties and cities have been scrambling to find money to cover costs dumped on them when the draconian cuts to the state budget began. Some needs have gone unmet. Others have been covered by raising local taxes and passing bond measures. Meanwhile, the state balanced its budget, with enough left over to lower taxes for the governor’s wealthy friends, but the budget was balanced on the backs of our children whose education funding was cut and not replaced, and on the backs of city and county governments which have to figure out how to make up for funding the state withheld.
The most recent NIMB maneuver is Prop 123. When the courts demanded that the state increase its education budget, the Republicans crossed their arms across their chests and said, “Not In My Budget!” They found money outside of the budget, in the state land trust, to pay part of their legal obligation. Don’t hold your breath waiting for them to dig into their own budgetary funds to cover the rest of what they owe, let alone increase our bottom-of-the-barrel per student spending. It’s not in their NIMB-ish natures.
Science hasn’t found a definitive answer to the question: Are NIMB-ish politicians that way due to nature, nurture or a combination of the two? No matter the answer, the urge to cut budgets and pass the problems onto others appears to be hard-wired, and it’s difficult if not impossible to correct. The only sure way to deal with NIMB politicians is, VOTE them out.
This article appears in May 19-25, 2016.
It’s $15.8 million. The Star got the amount wrong in the headline.
Thanks for this simple lens through which to view Arizona and even TUSD financial politics. It’s a shell game and the details can be mind-numbing, (as attempts are made to get desegregation funds to pay for everything from football fields to additional behavior supports in the schools) but the basic foundation is NIMB.
Plenty of millions and billions in the buidget for illegals. For Americans and legal residents, not so much.
That’s right, Betts Putnam-Hidalgo. Keep bringing the focus back where it belongs.
TUSD, a masterful practitioner of “NIMB” sleights of hand and dishonest cover-ups thereof, cuts the magnet school budgets and tries to give the public the impression that the deseg authority and plaintiffs are at fault. TUSD voluntarily reduces deseg levies, has HT Sanchez give more than $3 million back to the taxpayers and brag about it in his “state of the district” address, leaving things that should be covered in TUSD schools by deseg funding with no funding source while the parent community is hit up for donations to cover these targets.
It’s very similar to what happened with Prop 123, where TUSD governance and admin promoted this plan put together by Ducey & co. to pull funding for the schools from the “IRA” the schools own — the land trust — so ALEC-inspired legislators and their “shh!-don’t-tell-anyone-but-I’m-a-Republican-in-disguise” friend from Texas could continue conspiring to cut taxes and shrink / dismantle the public sector in this state.
But the puzzling thing is that these are David Safier’s friends and allies, these folks in TUSD who were instrumental in sliding this latest NIMB atrocity through:
http://threesonorans.com/2016/05/17/vote-no-prop-123-kristel-foster-cannot-defend-rationally-radio-interview-video/
So why does David continue to try to represent himself as a devoted foe of all this? It should be increasingly clear to anyone who pays the slightest bit of attention that while he may oppose NIMB in THEORY, in PRACTICE his friends engage in it locally and both he and his friends have just abetted it at the state level.
Wonder when we can expect David’s endorsement of Foster and Juarez for the TUSD Board to be published? I’ll be watching for it…
After watching Channel 9 last night regarding TUSD under reporting criminal activity on their campuses, it is very clear. These people are lying, cheating and stealing to accomplish their goals.
Want the truth about TUSD? Ask a realtor.
If I had kids where should I buy my home? Wait until you hear their responses.
Shame on us for letting this happen.