I am sick and tired of hearing from elected officials telling me how hard it is to cut the budget. They talk endlessly about how services have been cut and how drastic the budgets of the various agencies to the bone. I would remind ever single member of our legislature that I have not seen a true cut in their budget. I do not see any examples of legislators cutting staff, cutting the salaries of their aides. I see no examples of the drastic reductions in payroll that the rest of the citizens of this state have had to suffer in the last year. We have agencies that ‘serve’ the public in this state that have bloated staff. When you could remove several floors of the Education building and not do one thing to change the status of one student in any classroom in the state you have a budget that costs too much. When you can lop off half of the staff to the governor and not change one ‘service’ that the citizens of the state receive from government you a budget that costs too much.

When these same legislators can show me concrete proof of how their staffs, the staffs of the elected members of the executive branch, etc… have been downsized or eliminated then perhaps we can have a civil conversation about the budget. Until then I’m not convinced that they take the budget seriously.

Hey Delusional Bill, check out the legislature’s performance to their budget. Last I heard they were on track to significantly underrun their budget even including all the special sessions.

Also, they cut their per diems during the special sessions. Per diems are normally reduced during special sessions but this year they also cut the days during the special session when they would be paid.

I think you’ll see that they’ve been quite frugal.

Staffs? That’s a joke. Legislators share admin (aka secretarial) support. One admin serves two or more legislators. It’s not quite like a US Representative. Or a city council person.

More than you can say for the city which has been throwing money around like the proverbial sailor on leave all year knowing full well what the score was…both their own money and the TIF money from the state. $16M overrun on one underpass. Great going guys.

And while we’re on the subject of wasting money, let’s look at Pima County. Was listening to 104.1 the other morning and the story came out that one of Pima County’s permanent speed cameras had to be removed because it was in a location (end of a hill on Valencia) that made all tickets issued invalid. How much money did Huckleberry waste on that installation?