Janet Napolitano won’t be around for the coming battle over Arizona’s budget crisis. But in her seventh and final State of the State address, the outgoing governor left the 49th Legislature with words of advice in how to deal with the fiscal problems.
Napolitano is slated to join President-elect Barack Obama’s Cabinet as secretary of Homeland Security, and her speech was replete with the reminiscences of a governor who has one foot out the door. But with the other foot planted firmly on the Ninth Floor — at least for the next week or so — she urged caution in making budget cuts that would jeopardize her achievements of the past six years while laying out an ambitious agenda for post-Napolitano Arizona.
“For this Legislature, your call to serve will demand that you make decisions that are difficult in the short run but that need to be wise in the long run. Your task is to make Arizona safer, stronger and more prosperous than ever before,” Napolitano said in her Jan. 12 address, just days before her confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee.
The Legislature should be especially wary, Napolitano said, of making cuts to education and health care for children and seniors. While touting accomplishments of her six-year tenure as governor, such as all-day kindergarten and higher teacher pay, she urged new initiatives, including an expansion of public charter schools and in-state tuition for all veterans in Arizona. She called for a greater proportion of the state’s education dollars to be spent in the classroom, and said teacher pay must continue to improve.
“Today’s short-term budget decisions must not harm the long-term future of Arizona’s children. If this Legislature cuts classroom spending, the people of Arizona will recognize such a cut for what it is — not a budget necessity, but a willful and unwise choice,” she said.
Legislative Republicans, however, warn that the budget situation is dire, and some of the needed cuts will be painful. In a press conference following the State of the State, Senate President Bob Burns and House Speaker Kirk Adams said all options are on the table. A decline in state revenue caused by the ongoing recession has left this year’s $9.9 billion budget short by more than $1.2 billion, and the upcoming fiscal year is expected to be worse.
“I think everything’s at risk. I think everything in this budget is at risk. When you have a 25-percent deficit, I think you have to look at everything. You can’t take things off the shelf,” Burns said.
Adams said, “I imagine that there will be some pain and some difficultly in nearly every area of the budget. It’s not a matter of ideology. It’s just a matter of mathematics.”
Burns said it would “counterproductive” to spend time critiquing the State of the State, which many legislative Republicans referred to as Napolitano’s farewell speech. But others were less hesitant to comment on the substance.
“The governor seems to be in fiscal denial,” said Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills. “To suggest that we can expand government programs when we can’t pay our bills does a great disservice to those of us who she’s left behind to clean up the fiscal mess. I think it was more wishful thinking than fiscally sound policy.”
Democrats, on the other hand, were a bit more optimistic that Napolitano’s vision for Arizona’s future could be borne out after she leaves. House Minority Leader David Lujan agreed that the budget could be balanced while protecting priorities such as education and health care.
“We take a very schizophrenic approach to things we value in Arizona,” the Phoenix Democrat said. “When times are good, we value things like all-day kindergarten and health care for those who need it, but when times are bad we tend to want to cut from those things. If we are going to value those things, we need to value them at all times. I don’t expect that (legislative Republicans) will heed her advice. I think they have already been making comments that they will make significant cuts to education. I think that is unfortunate.”
Rep. David Gowan, a Sierra Vista Republican, said, “I kind of wish Jan Brewer was up there giving the speech. She’s the one we need to hear from.”
As secretary of state, Brewer will become governor if and when Napolitano departs for Washington, D.C. But Brewer spent the speech listening from the front row, and declined to comment afterward.
“Today is Governor Janet Napolitano’s day,” Brewer stated in a press release.
Warnings over the budget notwithstanding, some parts of Napolitano’s speech drew applause from both sides of the aisle. The governor’s praise for members of the Arizona National Guard who have served in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere was popular with both parties, as was her call for reform in the ballot initiative and referendum processes.
Napolitano, who saw two ballot initiatives go down in flames over signature requirements during the 2008 election cycle, urged changes in the system that would require fewer signatures to put initiatives on the ballot, while raising the number of signatures that must be examined to combat fraud. That part of Napolitano’s speech drew applause three times in less than a minute.
But Rep. Nancy Young Wright, a Tucson Democrat, was bothered that the applause was “rather partisan.”
“When we talked about veterans, I saw applause kind of coming from everywhere,” she said. “But when we talked about protecting services to vulnerable populations like seniors and students and health care, I didn’t get a real sense that there was a real warm reception to some of that.”
Sen. Jack Harper, a Republican from Surprise, was troubled by partisanship as well.
“While the end of the speech might have been a bit sentimental, the body of the speech was very partisan. The governor attempted to convince the electorate that we do not have a problem with our budget. In fact, we have a huge budget crisis that the governor chooses to ignore, which is very indicative of the six years she has been here. She has wanted to balance the budget on paper with accounting gimmicks and bonding,” Harper said.
Much as she has for the past six years, Napolitano focused heavily on education in the State of the State. But she also elaborated on other themes that have been constant during her tenure as governor, including illegal immigration and the environment. Napolitano urged further participation in the Western Climate Initiative and a commitment to renewable energy, especially solar.
“The entire nation is going in this direction — and Arizona has much to gain by being a leader,” Napolitano said.
Napolitano called for the state to increase its efforts in combating the illegal flow of drugs and undocumented aliens across the border — an issue that will likely take up a great deal of her time at the Department of Homeland Security — and announced that she will submit a bill to the Legislature that would broaden Arizona’s human-trafficking laws.
“We have to keep up this intense pressure on the border criminals who use violence and fraud to smuggle people and drugs into our country,” she said.
At the start of the address, Napolitano talked of the mixed emotions she felt over leaving Arizona, and she became nostalgic as the speech drew to a close.
“I hope one day to return to this state that I love, but in the meantime there is much that I will miss. I will miss early mornings on my balcony, smelling orange blossoms as I read the paper. I will miss spring training. I will even miss the dry heat. Above all, I will miss the wonderful people of this state. I grew up in the West and have lived here nearl
y all my life. I am a Westerner. Arizona is my home,” she said.
Napolitano’s nostalgia was shared by many of her fellow Democrats, who will be left without their “backstop” in the Governor’s Office. Assistant House Minority Leader Kyrsten Sinema, a Phoenix Democrat, said the end of the State of the State was difficult for her.
“It was hard to think about her actually leaving. It’s sad. But I think she is going to serve our country honorably,” Sinema said.