Byron SchlomachIn an article for the Heartland Institute, Goldwater Institute economist Byron Schlomach explains that the Brewer Tax will probably not shield K-12 from budget cuts, after all:

Education Would Get Hit

If Proposition 302 alone fails, Arizona’s general fund budget will fall short by $575 million. Of the $862 million in contingency cuts that would have been made if the sales tax increase had been rejected, $429 million were in public education.

This means even if all the other contingency cuts took place, a difficult task several months into a fiscal year, an additional $142 million in cuts would have to be found.

‘Erroneous’ Campaign

“The fact that six months out [from the Proposition 100 tax increase vote] a one billion dollar deficit needs to be closed, shows how erroneous the [Proposition 100] YES campaign was,” said Farrell Quinlan, director of Arizona’s chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB). He was active in the “Axe the Tax” effort to defeat Proposition 100.

Quinlan sees a political firestorm brewing in the possibility of public education funding cuts following a tax increase widely promoted as a way to avoid such reductions.

“Sixty-four percent of the voters were given only one side of the story, and it was not true for even six months, much less three years,” he said. “They will be justifiably angry or [feel] betrayed when asked to shoulder new taxes or cuts in programs.”

Here is the whole article:

http://www.heartland.org/budgetandtax-news.org/article/28108/Arizona_Tax...

And Schlomach offers Brewer some constructive criticism on fiscal policy in this article by the Republic's Ginger Rough:

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2010/07/24/201007...

TPJ