Arizona Senate Appropriation Process -- 2012

Yesterday, the Arizona Republic's Mary Jo Pitzl reported that state Sen. Don Shooter -- chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee -- has decided he would rather not have to deal with those pesky people called citizens, advocates, and voters.

The Senate Appropriations Committee begins work Tuesday on the fiscal 2013 budget, but no public need bother to speak up.

So says committee Chairman Don Shooter, R-Yuma, who is predicting a lickety-split hearing for the hearing that begins at 2 p.m.

Shooter said he will take testimony from representatives of the two agencies that are the subject of the hearing -- the departments of Economic Security and Health Services -- but that's it.

Public comment? "I heard it last year," Shooter said.

Regular readers of the Arizona Eagletarian may remember the brash senator from Yuma giving public testimony [found in the transcript on pages 27 -- 29] at the second round public hearing conducted by the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission on October 29, 2011.

Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. Since it's readily apparent to me that you really don't care what we have to say about  redistricting, I thought I would use this time to tell you and tell the people why hopefully you will be removed next week.

You respect -- you repeatedly violated open meeting laws that got Strategic Telemetry  selected. You violated state procurement laws to select the Democratic firm that you preferred. 

You bid-rigged during that process when confronted with it. You stonewalled and shredded evidence. When asked to testify to the bid-rigging inclusion, you stonewalled investigators and  proceeded to hire six or eight attorneys at $400 an hour, which we, the taxpayers of Arizona, are paying to defend your shenanigans. This after already paying your in-house lawyer over a quarter of a million dollars. (emphasis added)

Was Shooter projecting back in October when he told AIRC commissioners he believed they did not want to hear "what we had to say?"  

Does Don Shooter represent the interests of the VOTERS of Arizona does or he represent ALEC?

Consider Don Shooter's declaration in terms of how the GOP supermajority is conducting themselves in the legislature, and about civics in general.

Would it have been any more blatant if he had simply said (hypothetically, of course), "I just don't care what the citizens of Arizona have to say about the budget for state government?"