With the Obamacare decision out today, the Supreme Court has just handful of decision left to release.
One of them is Arizona Legislature v. AIRC, which will decide if Arizona voters are allowed to give an independent panel the power to draw congressional district boundaries or whether state lawmakers have that exclusive power.
While awaiting the decision, Mitch Martinson of Arizona’s Politics has run the numbers on how much has been spent in the legal battle over the Independent Redistricting Commission:
To come up with our revised post-redistricting, partisan litigation number of $3.65M+, we removed the $1.2M in “General” legal fees, the $578K incurred in fighting then-Attorney General Tom Horne’s challenge of the AIRC’s open meetings, and the $182K expended to fight then-Governor Jan Brewer’s action for removal. We then added the $360K paid by the Arizona Legislature to local law firm Davis Miles and U.S. Supreme Court expert Paul Clement, as part of the case that Arizona (and several other states) are anxiously awaiting a decision from the Justices (within the next couple of weeks).
There are presently three live cases against the AIRC, all from either Republican lawmakers, or Republican-philic interests. Surprisingly, the AIRC has spent THE LEAST in outside legal expenses on the Arizona Legislature v. AIRC case about to be decided by the Supreme Court.
This is partly because it is a Constitutional challenge that did not require much time-intensive (costly) discovery, and partly because the U.S. Supreme Court expert Seth Waxman surprisingly agreed to represent the Redistricting Commission pro bono. That saved Arizona taxpayers somewhere between $300-500,000.***
This article appears in Jun 25 – Jul 1, 2015.
Arizona legislature to voters, “go to hell!” Their arrogance knows no bounds and now they have a governor with the same attitude. Don’t even think about challenging our one party dictatorship.
$3.6 million is chump change to the lawyer liar community. So what. The Author’s only only issue is how to turn the state over to the Dems. Hopefully this will never happen. We don’t need our state ruined by California and Obama/Hillary Values! Perhaps we may draw the line in the sand for a change and hold the line at the socialist republics of Oregon, Washington, parts of Nevada and here in Tucson already ruined by these values!
Joe, do you not understand that this state has already been ruined by the Republicans and their corporate handlers? As for values, the only values pushed by the Legislature and Governor of this state are those dictated to them and espoused by the Koch brothers and Cathi Herrod, neither of which mean well for anyone in Arizona.
Arizona has had Republican leadership since the early 1980s. When Janet Napolitano was governor, she had a red congress. Now, what I can’t figure out is why the people in this state don’t get that this political party and their platform doesn’t work. Their continual large cuts in taxes for corporations , and the massive cuts that have been made to Arizona education have not worked. So now, 2015, Arizona has a 42.9 billion debt which is both state and local.
There is ample evidence of how well their leadership does not work. Those of you who consider yourself true conservatives, I hope you look at these numbers posted by Arizona Central . If the massive cuts had shown that we were getting out of debt, I could see an argument but we are not. The price the education of our children is paying seems like a crime to me. Note even in the address, this appears to Arizona Central like progress because it is stable. That is very sad to me. I believe and there is evidence to prove this, that if we stopped the unnecessary cuts to corporations at such a high rate, we would have money for education and begin to pay our debt down.
http://www.azcentral.com/story/money/busin…