$1 billion rainy day fund not a big deal

From the political notebook:

Gov. Doug Ducey will be digging in his heels for his top budget priority of boosting the rainy day fund from $460 million to a cool billion dollars.

Now, Ducey is very much a PR governor. I suspect his political brand managers really like the symmetry of having inherited a billion-dollar deficit and leaving office with a billion dollars in the bank.

Regardless of motive, the proposal does raise the question: How much of a difference would it make when the next recession hits?

Based on the state’s experience with the last recession, the answer is: Not much.

When the recession hit in 2008, there was $677 million in the rainy day fund. That was drained by 2010.

To cope with the effect of the recession, the state had to do $9 billion of other stuff: federal stimulus money, borrowing, a temporary sales tax increase, and deferring payments.

Even that wasn’t enough to avoid deep spending cuts which the state still hasn’t fully restored.

In 2008, if the state had $1 billion in the rainy day fund, rather than $677 million, it wouldn’t have made a material difference in the fiscal challenge Gov. Jan Brewer and the Legislature had to cope with.

Now, the 2008 recession hit government revenues unusually hard, particularly in Arizona. In coping with a milder recession, obviously the more money in the bank the better.

That, however, assumes that the money will still be there, and not be otherwise encumbered, when the recession hits.

I’ve always been skeptical about rainy day funds, since politicians just don’t have the discipline to leave a large stash of cash stored away unmolested. The temptation to tap it for some politically favored project ultimately is irresistible.

That’s been the experience with Arizona’s.

In non-recessionary times, it has been tapped to provide funding for the arts, parks, wildland fires, assistance to rural schools, construction at the Arizona State Hospital, the Department of Child Safety and the Department of Economic Security. Right now, the Department of Public Safety is borrowing from it.

Many of these depletions took the form of loans to be paid back. But the larger the stash, the bigger the political temptation to raid it, temporarily or otherwise.

A bigger rainy day fund is better. But the entire state budget shouldn’t revolve around getting it to an even billion dollars.

Legislative Democrats generally oppose Republican efforts to put additional requirements on ballot propositions. But they seem particularly peeved at one proposed change, and not without reason.

Senate Bill 1451, as it currently stands, would give the attorney general the final say on ballot language.

Republicans are being disingenuous in claiming that this is simply a clarification.

The current law says that the secretary of state comes up with the ballot language, subject to the approval of the AG. So, the language has to reflect a consensus between the two officials.

SB 1451 would give the AG clear authority to change whatever the secretary proposes, irrespective of what the secretary thinks about the changes. No consensus required.

It is reasonable to presume a partisan motivation behind the change. The secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, is now a Democrat. The AG, Mark Brnovich, is a Republican. Legislative Republicans would prefer that one of their own craft the ballot language.

But here is a larger question to be pondered, and an opportunity to revive one of my quixotic proposals: Why are politicians involved in the administration of our elections to begin with?

There is nothing in the administration of an election that requires political judgment. It should be a purely technocrat activity. Make it easy to cast a ballot and hard to cheat. Count the votes accurately.

In fact, injecting political judgment is, in all cases, a negative. There is reason to believe that a Democratic politician would tilt ballot language, consciously or just instinctively, in a liberal direction. And that a Republican politician would tilt it in the other direction.

The administration of elections should be entrusted to a nonpartisan technocrat at least partially insulated from political pressure.

An independent agency should be established for that purpose. The director would be nominated by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate. But by a two-thirds vote, to ensure concurrence by the minority party. The director would serve a term that straddles the gubernatorial cycle, say six years. And be removable only by the impeachment process.

There would be technical requirements for the job, including no history of partisan election participation for a period of time. And that same restriction would apply to all staff members.

Have the politicians on the ballot. Not running the election.