Gusse: Dear Rep. Smith, please explain the cost of your proposed legislation

Rep. (Adam) Kwasman, thank you for your attendance and state legislative update presentation at last night’s council meeting. It is inspiring to see a junior representative take the time and passion to represent their constituents in such important legislation such as the Transaction Privilege Tax (TPT) and the Global Water rate increase issue. I also want to thank you for your public statement in recognizing the huge efforts our Mayor (Christian) Price is making to assure the TPT bill does not financially devastate our city. Lastly, thank you for addressing my question regarding your priorities while in office: “Stopping Obamacare and lowering taxes.”

Rep. (Steve) Smith, thank you for your support and I am sorry you were unable to attend our council meeting. I had some concerns and questions that I had hoped to address you with at the council meeting. My concerns are with the bills you are sponsoring.

In a recent article you state that immigration and tenant notifications are your priority. Sir, in my opinion, the Tenant Notification would have been excellent legislation at the peak of the foreclosure market. I’m a licensed Realtor and all reports indicate that foreclosures have been on a decline. This Tenant Notification Bill will unfortunately benefit very few and I’m afraid that it will create more state government regulations and surely more paperwork. Your intentions when you ran for office were geared towards “less government,” but this contradicts your ideology.

Moving onto the bills regarding immigration – what you refer to as “data collection bills.”

You indicated these bills “neither deport anyone, neither denies education nor health care to anyone.” Furthermore, you state that the purpose of this data collection is to determine how much money is being spent by the state on illegal immigrants.

Illegal immigration is a real issue of huge concern to many of us. What would a bill identifying and gathering this data prove? Will it prove the obvious… that we are spending significant funds on these students/patients? Isn’t this just another unnecessary use of state funds and not to mention the addition of more government in our schools and hospitals? Please, let us not forget the horrific past when individuals were rounded up and data was collected on them – the purpose of that data collection was for the extermination of a race.

I question the purpose of identifying these minors in our schools. How do you suppose this will help our school district/MUSD? Will MUSD get more funds for providing an education to all its registered students; regardless of their race, ethnicity or legal status? Or will schools be penalized and scrutinized for providing an education to all their registered students?

These “data collection bills” are identical to AZ SB1097 sponsored by ousted Arizona Sen. (Russell) Pearce. Furthermore, I do have a birth certificate that aligns with the proposed birther bill law – in case anyone starts questioning my status. Although, I will tell you that I was born in this country from immigrant parents and also served my country honorably in the United States Air Force (I have the medals to support this fact).