Response to Marty Hermanson’s InMaricopa.com article

InMaricopa.com runs, on a regular basis, opinion pieces submitted by community members. The following article is the opinion of the author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of InMaricopa.com.

Marty Hermanson, chairman of the Pinal County Republican Party, states that elected officials are playing games with the taxpayers’ money (click here to read Hermanson opinion piece).

Let’s set the record straight. The Republican Legislature passed without a single Democrat vote, a law that most high school civics classes would have found to be in violation of the Arizona Constitution in several areas. That is the reason former Gov. Janet Napolitano vetoed it when it was sent to her in 2002.

The Arizona Constitution is clear that the legislature cannot pass a law specific to only one county. The Arizona Constitution also clearly states that County Supervisors are to be elected to four-year terms.

Arizona is under a continuing order by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) that all of our Legislative Districts including County Supervisor Districts must conform to certain standards relating to population distribution and ethnic representation. There is no question that the “new” districts spelled out in the legislation currently do not meet the DOJ standards. In order to draw new district lines that would conform to the DOJ, Pinal County would have to (using taxpayer dollars) complete a new census. The county would then have to draw new lines and submit those lines to the DOJ for their approval.

With the requirement that the Federal Government must complete a census at their expense next year, it makes absolutely no fiscal sense for Pinal County to squander our tax dollars for something that must be done all over again in 2010.

The Pinal County Board hired a qualified person to ensure that our Supervisor Districts meet the requirements of the DOJ. That makes perfect sense. That decision more than likely saved the county thousands and maybe millions of dollars from law suits from disenfranchised groups if the county were to go ahead with the law and face the consequences later.

Hermanson and the Pinal County Republicans could better serve the citizens of Pinal County by urging their friends in the legislature to work on the many problems facing Arizona rather than getting them to pass “power grabbing” laws that by design will spend more of our tax dollars.

Joe Robison is the chairman of the Pinal County Democrats and was a plaintiff in the case that overturned the law creating the new districts.

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