The Skinny

LIBRARY TROUBLE

The citizens of Oro Valley are in quite an uproar over their library
taxes.

Oro Valley remains the only town in Pima County to have its own
library; the other 26 libraries are run exclusively by the Pima County
Public Library District.

That means that Oro Valley shells out about $700,000 annually to
support their library, and Pima County, through the library district,
sends about $600,000 in matching funds to the town.

But some townsfolk are concerned, because they’re paying about $1.8
million in property taxes this year to the county’s library district
(and paid about $2.3 million last year). They want Pima County to give
them whatever it collects in library taxes and let them do their own
thing.

But Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry has an
alternative suggestion: Oro Valley can turn over their library to the
regional system, and he’ll take care of running it for them.

The county faced a similar situation a few years back, when the city
of Tucson complained that its citizens were being double-taxed, because
the city was spending about $10 million on the library, and the county
was matching that with about $10 million from the library district.

The Tucson City Council suggested that the county should essentially
double the library tax and give all the money to the city to run the
libraries. Huckelberry didn’t think that was such a hot idea. Instead,
he struck a deal for the county to take over the library system from
the city, which let the city save about $10 million. The downside: To
afford the new system, the library tax pretty much doubled. So instead
of being double-taxed, the residents of Tucson paid twice as much in
library taxes on their property-tax bill.

As regular library users, we didn’t have much of a problem with the
hike in our library taxes, which aren’t that high to begin with. And as
far as we can tell, the county is doing a fine job of running the
libraries. As Huckelberry notes in a recent report to the Board of
Supervisors, the collection budget has doubled; there are more
computers in the libraries; and the hours have expanded on evenings and
weekends.

But some folks in Oro Valley have a different take. They’re angry
that they have to pay so much in library taxes and worry that if they
were to turn over control to Pima County, the volunteers would all
quit, and Pima County would take all their good books and replace them
with ones that nobody wants.

Of perhaps larger concern to Oro Valley library employees: They’d
have to go work for Pima County instead of Oro Valley.

Huckelberry points out that Pima County contributed $3.1 million to
build the library, and that Oro Valley library patrons benefit from
being able to request books from Pima County’s collection. They also
get to use other resources created by Pima County, including the
software program that keeps track of books. And they help support other
endeavors that the library participates in, such as literacy
classes.

Oro Valley wants the state to pass a law allowing them to opt out of
the library district so they can form their own taxing authority and be
left to run their own library.

We think that’s a lousy idea. If Oro Valley really wants to avoid
double-taxation, they should do what the city of Tucson did: Hand over
the control to Pima County, and let Oro Valley residents find ways to
support their individual branch.

MO’ MONEY TROUBLES

The doomsday clock continues to tick at the state Capitol. As of
press time, Gov. Jan Brewer was still weighing whether to sign
the budget that Republicans have sent her way.

Brewer has until the end of the week to sign the budget, veto the
budget or let it become law without her signature.

The governor vetoed a similar budget in July, saying that it
“devastated schools, human services and public safety.” But after a
special session that took up most of July and August, GOP lawmakers
couldn’t rustle up the votes to put Brewer’s proposed sales-tax hike on
the ballot for voters to decide, so they passed what they could and
called it quits.

In the meantime, Brewer has started new talks with Republican and
Democratic leaders from the House and Senate. From what we hear,
though, Democrats are starting to think that Brewer isn’t very serious
about including their ideas, and is just using them to get a better
deal from the Republicans.

The state’s financial condition remains lousy, according to the
latest report from the Joint Legislature Budget Committee.

In July, the first month of our new fiscal year, tax collections
continued to come in below expectations. The state collected an
estimated $573 million in taxes, which was $33 million below the
forecast for the month, and $65.5 million below July 2008. That means
we’re off to a bad start.

For the 18th straight month, sales taxes have declined compared to
the same month one year ago—and for the ninth straight month, the
decline was in double digits, at 18.4 percent. That’s largely driven by
a continuing drop in construction taxes (off by 37 percent compared to
July 2008) and car sales (off by 14 percent). But the bean-counters
note that the Cash for Clunkers program might lift car sales in next
month’s report.

Meanwhile, income taxes dropped 11.5 percent from July 2008 and were
$29 million below the forecast for the month.

The good news: Lottery tickets sales were up by $4.1 million over
July 2008. Guess people must really be feeling lucky out there.

CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING

As regular readers of the Tucson Weekly blog know, Dan
Shearer of the Green Valley News and Sun (which, like the
Weekly, is part of Wick Communications) recently caught
Republican Jesse Kelly, who wants to unseat Democratic
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in 2010, in a bit of
technological trickery.

Kelly—who is already challenging Giffords to debates, even
though (a) the 2010 election is 14 months away, and (b) Kelly has yet
to win the nomination to be the actual GOP candidate—sliced and
diced some of my comments on Arizona Illustrated to make it
appear as though I was saying he had risen to the top of the GOP
pack.

My actual point: Kelly has risen to the top of the GOP pack because
the heavy hitters remain on the sidelines.

There’s no shortage of local Republicans who would like to be in
Congress: State Sen. Jonathan Paton, state Rep. Frank
Antenori and Republican National Committeeman Bruce Ash are
just a few of the potential GOP candidates.

The fact that they’re not in the race right now says one thing: They
don’t think Giffords is vulnerable. If she does become
vulnerable—and that may have far more to do with the national
mood at the start of 2010 than anything that Giffords
does—they’ll move in and swat Kelly aside.

In the meantime, they’re content to let him run up and down the
field, because they know he’s not scoring any touchdowns. But they’re
not going to stand aside and let him be the next congressman from the
8th Congressional District.

By the way: After Shearer busted him, Kelly took down the clip.

Find early and late-breaking Skinny at The Range, our daily dispatch.

This article appears in Sep 3-9, 2009.