The turquoise-blue Arizona sky hasn’t fallen yet, though we wait for the occasional asteroid to hit the ground. The governor has called the legislature back into a special session, in hopes of getting something more like her way in the fight over the budget. Meanwhile, most state agencies (what remains of them) were open for business today.
An Arizona Republic reporter passes along something amazing, however. If the state fails to pay our salaries tomorrow, we’ll get a nice bonus:
A shutdown would harm the state’s credit rating, making it more expensive for Arizona to borrow money in the future, [State Treasurer Dean] Martin said. And if the state can’t make its $85 million biweekly payroll Thursday, federal law says the state could have to pay triple the amount, up to $255 million, to state workers as a penalty.
Well, in the case of university employees, nonpayment is unlikely to come to pass. Our college’s business manager says this week’s payroll has already been processed. If direct deposit is automated, as it almost certainly is, we should see our paychecks sometime tomorrow.
Besides, if the legislature (and governor) stink like dead fish now, just imagine the effect they’ll have on taxpayers when the state has to shell out $170 million dollars more than is actually owed to its workers! It won’t just be state employees and July 4 vacationers turned out of campgrounds who’ll be trying to vote the rascals out of office. Although the parks reopened this morning, most campers were rousted out yesterday afternoon.
It’s quite an Independence Day spectacle. More fireworks are on the way.
I know it’s borrowing troubleand there’s no point in thinking about this, but being a little funny about money I can’t help laying out some plans in the face of the possible shutdown of my employer, the Arizona state government. It will happen this week if our craven legislature can’t quit playing political games by tomorrow.
After going through the credit union accounts, I see I have a substantial amount of unused cash laying around, enough to stave off having to raid retirement savings for a little over five months. Monthly savings, which doubles as an emergency fund and a source of cash for indulgences, currently has $10,578. Of that, $2,500 is set aside to cover COBRA between the Canning Date and my 65th birthday, when I’ll be eligible for Medicare, and another $1,200 is earmarked for my car’s 90,000 mile service, which needs to be done very soon.
There are cushions of $663 in the account that holds money budgeted for charge card expenses, $1,635 for regular monthly expenses (such as utilities), and $4,891 in the “pool” from which funds are drawn for the savings, charge card, and recurring expense piggybanks. All told, available savings plus the cushions come to $14,067. My regular expenses, especially at this time of year when utility bills are astronomical, run about $2471. Assuming I’ll have to go onto COBRA, adding another $170 a month to costs if Arizona employees can get the stimulus discount, that’s enough to sustain me for 5.32 months.
Problem is, this is all money I figured I would fall back on when the university cans me in December. Every extra dollar I have to use now is a dollar I won’t have when I’m permanently unemployed retired. Because I won’t have enough to make ends meet during the months when I’m not teaching part-time at the community college (that will be about four months out of every twelve), I will need that money to survive. The suffering may be deferred, but it will come.
Every unpaid day is $82.36 I’ll have to raid from savings to live on now instead of after I’m unemployed—assuming no major expenses arise. It’s $97.86 of take-home pay that disappears from my wallet.
(Kind of shocking to realize how little I earn, isn’t it?)
Clearly, even with my minimalist income I can get by for a few days. But they’re talking about closing down state government for as long as 30 days. If this absurdity continues for a week or more, my boat is going to start to take on water.
If our august leaders don’t get their act together by tomorrow afternoon, I’ll need to take the following steps:
• Cancel all automatic transfers and electronic payments to creditors • Stop charging day-to-day expenses • Obtain enough cash to get by for a week or so, and pay expenses in cash only • Pay off the amount I’ve charged on AMEX so far in this billing cycle
Two of these—canceling EFTs and withdrawing cash for living expenses—will need to be done quickly, because the credit union branches within driving distance occupy buildings on the university campuses. If the university closes its buildings, obviously the credit union will have to close those branches. From what I can gather, if the budget isn’t passed on Tuesday, most government entities will close on Thursday. So that gives one day to fly to the credit union, where the lines no doubt will go out the door.
How much longer, Lord, before we can vote these clowns out of office? Can an entire legislature be impeached?
Every year, Arizona’s political leadership engages in a frenzy of grandstanding around the state budget. And every year we’re told to be scared, be very scared, because if the budget isn’t passed by the end of the fiscal year, the state government will shut down.
And every year, up until this one, it’s been so much stürm und drang.
This year, though, things look a little more dire. In the first place, we have an out-of-control legislature filled with right-wing demagogues who, deep in their hearts, would just as soon see the state government shut down. In the second, the state is in the middle of a real-life perfect financial storm; it’s not something a bunch of dunderheads can deal with, as we’re seeing by our elected representatives’ mulish and self-serving actions. And third: we’re not a week or two from the deadline. We’re hours away from it.
What the fools are doing is using the crisis to force through pet schemes that they couldn’t begin to faze past voters or a governor under normal circumstances. They’ve engaged the governor, who herself is very far to the right, in an idiotic showdown, refusing until the last minute to send her a budget they passed over two weeks ago, so as to circumvent her veto. They have no intention of putting their budget before the governor until the 30th, the last possible moment before the government closes down. Their outrageous scheme includes a provision for a flat income tax and a plan to put a one-cent sales tax before the voters, who are guaranteed to turn it down. It’s a pretend budget because it relies on a tax that will not fly, and it’s a doctrinaire end run to pass a regressive income tax that will weigh most heavily on the tens of thousands of Arizonans who have lost their jobs and the hundreds of thousands of Arizonans who live on substandard wages.
While the governor probably is not prohibited from vetoing the budget if it arrives on her desk that late, they’re just daring her to veto it and shut down the government. She actually sued the legislature—a body dominated by members of her own party!—asking the state supreme court to find their actions unconstitutional and force them to get off the dime. The court agreed their actions are unconstitutional but declined to rule that they must play nice.
The characters in the legislature are so extreme, such right-wing wackos, that they make Governor Jan Brewer look moderate. That is quite an accomplishment.
If the budget is not passed by Tuesday, then none of us state employees will get our paychecks on Thursday. And one wonders whether we’ll be covered by health and dental insurance, since our premiums also will be in arrears.
One thing you have to say for Arizona politics: it’s always a spectacle!
