PHOENIX — The spending plan unveiled Friday by Gov. Doug Ducey is about more than the well-being of the state’s children and university students.
It’s also about mussels, hunters and endangered species.
Buried in Ducey’s $9.5 billion spending plan are a host of odds and ends designed to solve issues, large and small. There also are some notable issues that are not addressed.
One is the decision by Ducey to ignore what, for the moment, is free money from the federal government to provide care to more of the children of the working poor.
The state’s expanded Medicaid program provides coverage for families making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.
That’s about $27,700 for a family of three.
But a separate program, known as KidsCare, covers children up to double the poverty level, or close to $41,000 a year.
With the state required to contribute, Arizona froze new enrollments in 2010 as part of a move to balance the budget. The result is that the program, which had 45,000 youngsters, now has shrunk to just 775.
Current federal law allows states to rejoin the program, with Washington picking up the entire cost.
Gubernatorial press aide Daniel Scarpinato said his boss is not interested.
He said Ducey fears that once the state takes the money, it will be obligated to continue the program once federal funding drops back to just two-thirds of the cost.
But Pati Urias, spokeswoman for the Children’s Action Alliance, said Arizona is free to drop out any time it wants, just as it did in 2010.
Other things missing in Ducey’s budget include:
- Reinstating the requirement for the state to provide aid to community colleges for new construction according to certain formulas. In fact, the net bottom line in state aid is a cut of $276,600.
- Restoring the money the state now takes from vehicle license fees and gasoline taxes that would normally go toward road construction and maintenance. Instead, Ducey increases that transfer to the Department of Public Safety to $97.2 million.
- Providing new dollars to the Department of Water Resources. While the governor has said finding and preserving the state’s water supply is a top priority, the support for the agency from the general fund is about half of what it was in 2007.
- And the governor plans no pay hike for state employees despite a recommendation from his own Department of Administration to add $10.8 million to the budget to account for the fact that salaries of state workers are 19 percent below market rates, leading to high turnover.
Still, there are things on which Ducey wants to spend more tax dollars.
There’s $320,000 in the budget for legal fees for the state Game and Fish Department to fight the federal government on issues of how best to manage threatened and endangered species. More often than not, the state and federal governments have been at odds over things like where wolves can be relocated.
There’s also $700,000 in Ducey’s budget that he said will make more than 300 square miles of the state accessible to and suitable for hunters.
And there’s $250,000 to find ways to fight invasive mussels that can choke water intake pipes.
Ducey is separately proposing to lend $10 million to take care of what the governor says are long-overdue repair and maintenance projects at state parks.
At least part of that backlog is due to the Legislature itself, which has raided the funds collected in visitor fees to balance the budget.
Less clear, though, is exactly how the Parks Board will be able to repay the loan.
The governor’s budget also includes some new money the state obligated itself to spend when it settled claims last year with the survivors of the 18 Granite Mountain hotshots who died in the 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire.
Aside from paying some cash to the families, the state committed to do a better job of not just fighting wildland fires but protecting those who fight them.
Ducey’s budget includes $387,500, including $190,000 for a vehicle to carry inmates who fight fires and $112,400 for a new fire engine.
The governor also concluded it makes no sense for the state to deny routine dental care to developmentally disabled adults in the state’s long-term-care program.
That funding was cut years ago in a budget-saving maneuver.
But in his budget message to lawmakers seeking $1.2 million, the governor said the result is routine medical conditions becoming acute and eventually requiring more expensive emergency care.
Finally, the governor wants something from lawmakers that does not cost any money at all: unilateral power to reduce the budget of any agency under his control at any time during the fiscal year.
