The county community college district continues to brace for further budget cuts. Enrollment is up 11 percent, since people tend to go back to school when they’re out of work. But that notwithstanding, the state and the counties don’t have enough money to fund basic services. Like education.
By way of enlightenment, we are told by the college’s interim president:
Since FY07 sales tax collections have declined 22%, and personal income tax collections have declined 38%. And since 2004, 144,000 new students have entered the K – 12 system and 475,000 new members have joined AHCCS. On top of this, since 2007, the State has lost 280,000 jobs.
AHCSS is Arizona’s answer to Medicaid; you have to be destitute to qualify. Think of that: well over a quarter of a million jobs lost; almost half a million newly poor.
The state government lives largely on sales tax, which adds about 10 percent to every purchase you make, except for most foods. And except for gasoline and booze: those are even more heavily taxed. Income taxes here are relatively low, but when you add up all the small bites that come from all directions, taxation in general is fairly high. Thus when sales taxes drop by a fifth, that takes away a substantial part of the state’s operating budget, and the loss of almost three hundred thousand salaries since 2007 sure doesn’t help.
About $45 million of the Maricopa County Community College District’s funding comes from the state; that’s about 8 percent. At this point, no one knows what the effect on the district will be. The interim president, who has been attending talks on this issue for the past several days, reports:
Over the last three days, I’ve learned of a range of possibilities including: the district being held harmless (in terms of any reductions) for FY10 and FY11 to the other extreme that if new revenue is not generated (through the planned special election in May), MCCD’s reduction could be as much as $22.5 million.
The “planned special election” asks voters to decide whether taxes should be temporarily increased. Well…all very nice, but if no one has an income and no one’s buying anything, there’s nothing to tax. Also, of course, Arizonans like all Americans know there’s no such thing as a “temporary” tax increase. Once a new tax is in place, it will stay in place. So it’s highly unlikely that this referendum will succeed. They’re also talking about putting a sales tax on food, which apparently does not require a vote of the citizens; that will jack up everyone’s basic survival budget, a politick move, indeed, with hundreds of thousands of people out of work.
So…IMHO, it remains to be seen whether this part-time job I’ve picked up, teaching adjunct at the community colleges, is going to last. Although something like 80 percent of the district’s faculty is part-time, most full-time faculty are tenured. It’s difficult to get rid of tenured full-timers; nothing to get rid of adjuncts. A huge budget cut will result in cuts in the number of classes, increases in class size, and elimination of part-time positions.
The stock market, if no one has noticed, has entered another slow slide. We’re headed back into the 9000s, from what I can tell. If the market doesn’t stay above 10,000 and continue to climb modestly through 2010, my chances of recovering a respectable amount of the money lost in the Bush crash are nil.
It doesn’t bode well.