roymilleraz

The Morrison Institute never fails to come up with new ideas that will cost taxpayers more money. Their “Top-Two Proposition” is the latest attempt to pick your pocket under the guise of promoting nonpartisan elections to get more “moderate” candidates elected. Wednesday night they conducted a “reservations required” seminar at the Burton Barr Library, in conjunction with the O’Connor House, another consistently liberal promoter of more government.

This was a very heavyweight event with Justice O’Connor herself kicking things off and Horizon hero Michael Grant as MC. Panel members included Grady Gammage, Alan Maguire, and two “experts” from California. It was Gammage who let the cat out of the bag when, in response to a question, he confessed that he wanted to get the extremists out of the Arizona legislature. But the example he used of “extremism” was those lawmakers who are committed to a “no new taxes” pledge; according to Grady “no matter how much we need new revenues.”

The chairman of the Top-Two Proposition, Paul Johnson, happened to be sitting in front of me in the audience so I leaned forward and opined; “Now we know what the REAL purpose of this proposition is.”

With respect to the subject of immigration our long term goal should be to live in a world where no borders separate people. The poor of one nation would be able to go where the economic opportunities were greater and the wealthy of another nation would be able to extend opportunity to those willing to work. But that world is not attainable today. On the Mexican side of the border we find a people impoverished by generations of socialistically motivated anti-free market government regulations. Economic opportunities have been restrained within Mexico, leaving people poorer than they otherwise would be.

On the American side we have the richest nation in the world. The abundant opportunities in the United States serve as a beacon of hope to those less well-off. The more ambitious of these less well-off people undertake arduous and dangerous journeys toward this beacon.

If this were the only reason for persons to illegally cross the border into America there would be little problem. But there are other reasons that give us cause for concern. America is not only a land of abundant economic opportunity. It is also a place where excessively generous welfare payments are available. This saps the ambition of many Americans and it also serves as a magnet to attract the poor of Mexico. The ideal remedy would be to abolish welfare and open the borders. This would return America to the policy that enabled the country to prosper as no other nation before it. All, immigrants and natives alike, would be stimulated to work hard to succeed. However, too many Americans have become habituated to government handouts.

Consequently, for now, we will have to settle for a second best option. That option is to issue temporary work permits to foreigners looking for work. A well-designed work permit program would allow Mexican nationals to temporarily enter the U.S., work for a time, and then return to their families. A normalized process of entry-and-exit would reduce the incentive for illegal immigration and there would be less pressure for smuggling whole families across the border.

But, what if those with temporary work permits don’t go back to Mexico when the permit expires? This risk can be minimized by ensuring that the permits are easy to obtain and renewable. If a permit is available for the asking and can be renewed by a simple showing of current employment, there would be little reason for the holder of a work permit to break the law. As long as he is working, what objection could anyone have to his staying?

An immediate temporary work permit program would offer a compromise between the unattractive extremes of an unrestrained flood of illegals and the impenetrable barrier that many frustrated American citizens would like to erect.

Since we are seeing some personnel changes at the Arizona Corporation Commission it might be timely to revisit the issue of deregulation. The monopoly concept for dealing with public utilities never made any economic sense (it was always promoted by the utilities themselves, not the consumers) but it makes even less sense today. While it may be difficult to amend the Arizona Constitution to eliminate the regulation of utility rates and services (as we saw a couple of years ago), there is one thing that can be easily changed by the Arizona Legislature and that is to eliminate the service territory monopoly (which is not in the constitution). What would happen to prices if APS and SRP were allowed to compete along their common borders? Many are not aware that there is even an area of SRP service territory where APS provides the service and rebates money to consumers in that area when APS rates are higher than SRP. Why not just let them compete?

An Arizona Republic letter writer attempts to discredit my earlier editorial opining that the light rail looses huge amounts of taxpayer funds and will do so forever. He does this by opining that taxpayers also subsidize roads and highways; stating that “taxpayers pay almost all of the trillion-dollar costs of building and maintaining them.”

His statement is extremely misleading because those taxes he refers to are paid by USERS of the roads and highways in the form of gas tax, vehicle license tax, etc. In the case of light rail, such taxes are not paid by USERS of light rail but rather by through tax revenues unrelated to light rail.

Recently we have been given another nauseating report that transit ridership is up. This is supposed to make us feel good about our decision a couple of years ago to tax ourselves to build the light rail. However, ridership is not what we should be looking at. Rather we should be looking at profitability or return on our investment. Since the total cost of each person riding the light rail is about $13 and the fare paid by the rider is $1.75, this means that the taxpayer is continuing to subsidize huge losses. More importantly, these losses will continue and even grow as the various plans for extending the light rail come to fruition. The bottom line is that, if we simply shut down the light rail now, taxpayers would benefit.

Do not be fooled by rosy “ridership” numbers. Just reach for your wallet and continue to feed this voracious beast.

In an article from the Arizona Republic “Execs meet pair ousted from hotel,” which deals with an incident at the taxpayer owned Phoenix Sheraton, your writer makes the statement: “the city paid for its construction with $350 million in revenue bonds. Bondholders are paid back with hotel revenue, so no tax dollars are spent (emphasis added) on the deal.”

Your writer should have pointed out that this statement can only be true if the hotel is profitable. But this is clearly questionable since investors were obviously not willing to put up enough money to build the hotel. What this means is that knowledgeable investors, not city bureaucrats, realized that the hotel was a gamble and, therefore, let Phoenix taxpayers take the ultimate risk.

I recently attended another meeting that featured a panel of experts on the subject of allocating Arizona’s water supply. Each panelist reflected that tired notion that we just need to do better planning, which basically means having smart people tell other (presumably dumber) people what to do or not do. This is the solution of all who believe in central planning by government. It does not work anywhere else and it does not work very well for water either.

Isn’t it about time to try another method of allocation……the free market? We actually have no shortage of water in Arizona. What we have is not too little water but rather too much government. The web of subsidies and regulations of water use creates a false shortage. If we would just put all water, surface water and ground water, on the market and let the pricing mechanism determine water allocation, there would never be a need for another panel discussion like the one I attended this morning and there would be no shortages.

In a recent letter to the editor criticizing the implementation of the death penalty the writer asks the rhetorical question “Why do we think that killing people who kill demonstrates that killing is wrong?” What the writer apparently does not understand is that the death penalty is not a demonstration project. I actually partially agree with the ban in the sense that I also think we should eliminate the death penalty……as soon people stop committing acts for which they deserve to die. For example, how should we punish someone who brutally murders a child and then dismembers the body? Or what would we do to a person who is already serving a life sentence without possibility of parole and then commits another murder?

What about the victim’s families who must live in fear for the rest of their lives that the offender is still alive and may even escape from prison?

There is no judicial judgment that is without error, including the death penalty. Therefore, we must be as careful as possible in every sentence. But the fact is that there are some people who commit acts that are so repulsive that they cannot be allowed to live, even behind bars.

When discipline is lacking in a law enforcement department it is easy to see what happens. We need only look to Chicago or New York or various other, mostly eastern, cities where the unions have too much influence. In a police department there can only be one boss, and that must be the chief, not the unions.

In recent years the Phoenix police unions have been flexing their muscle and discipline has been undermined. I have seen this happen before. I was a member and chairman of the Phoenix Civil Service Board in the 1980s. I joined the board during a time of conservative decisions that mostly supported the Phoenix Police Department management but, during my years on the board, I saw the philosophy change and, with increasing frequency, disciplinary actions by Phoenix PD were reversed. I saw morale decline and, more importantly, respect for management decline. We should not let this happen again.

When a decision was made this time around regarding a new police chief for the City of Phoenix, an outsider was chosen, Daniel Garcia. This is a good step in the right direction. But it is not enough. The chief will need the support of the citizens. I believe we should all help Chief Garcia to make it clear that there is only one boss in the Phoenix PD.  Avoiding a corrupt police force depends on it.

Why do Valley taxpayers give Veolia transportation a monopoly on bus and rail service but then allow them to strike against the taxpayers? Veolia should either not be given a monopoly (my preference) or not allowed to strike. I remember a situation years ago where air traffic controllers attempted to strike against the public interest. President Reagan solved that problem. Maybe we should try his solution.