Thread: Proposed Pinal County border-security funding cut to $1.7M

Proposed Pinal County border-security funding cut to $1.7M

Tim Steller, Arizona Daily Star | Posted: Friday, April 15, 2011 5:22 pm |



Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu would get $1.7 million for border-security equipment, not the $5 million originally requested, under an amendment passed Thursday by the state Senate.

The floor amendment by Senate President Russell Pearce also changes the source of the funding: It would come from a fund intended for county prosecutors and indigent-defense attorneys.

Pearce offered the amendment during floor debate Thursday, taking by surprise the group who distributes the money, the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission.

The senate's Majority Whip, Steve Pierce, opposed the amendment, and said he opposes the special appropriation to Babeu's office in general.

"Everybody's hurting, everybody needs to share in the pain," Pierce said Friday. "Who's going to prosecute the people he arrests if he gets the money?"

In the bill's original form, the $5 million was to come from fines paid by people who received photo-radar traffic tickets. But it turned out there was only $1.4 million available in that fund, and several different bills were attempting to tap it.

So Pearce turned to another target of frequent money "sweeps" by the state Legislature: The "Fill the Gap" program administered by the criminal justice commission.

That fund, created in 1999, is meant to keep the courts from becoming a criminal-justice bottleneck after increases in police staffing in the 1990s, said Mary Marshall, the commission's spokeswoman. It's funded by a surcharge on traffic tickets.

Under the amended bill, the amount that would be taken from the county attorneys, $973,600, is equivalent to the entire amount the fund distributed to all county attorneys last year - $973,592.

The amount that would be taken from indigent defense, $700,300, is much more than the amount that fund distributed for indigent defense last year - $551,800.

The amended bill must be re-heard by the House, which passed the original version.

Babeu said the $5 million he originally sought would be used on ground-based radar, a helicopter, AR-15 and M4 rifles, and armored all-terrain vehicles called Ghurkas.

http://azstarnet.com

They don't want the latinos being prosecuted and the areas where the most arrests are being made are going to get the biggest hit.