Arizona: Carl Seel

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Senate Appropriations Committee passed the "Sham-Wow!" budget deal on a 6-3 vote Monday, setting up a crucial vote on Tuesday.

The Arizona Guardian headline today says "Do or die time for Senate budget today and its not looking good" (subscription required). "The Senate's chances for smooth passage of a budget including a sales tax referral were dimming late Monday as Sen. Carolyn Allen continued to be a no vote."

Secretary of State Ken Bennett told The Arizona Republic over the weekend that he had to have the matters to be referred to the ballot by 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday for he and county elections officials across the state to have enough time to prepare for a Nov.

by David Safier
If you poke around looking into Arizona school district bank accounts, you can find that they have saved up something like $330 million, according to Republican Rep. Carl Seel. That's because districts are allowed to hold back up to 4% of their funding. Great! Seel says. Let's take it!

Put that together with $100 from accounts set aside for school repairs and maintenance, and you come up with $430 million of free money the budget cutters can use to balance out some of their hatchet work.

But Rich Crandall, also a Republican, disagrees. His term as president of the Mesa Public Schools board must have turned him into one of those soft-on-education types.