Last week Democrats in the House of Representatives put Congressional earmarks back on the front burner when they voted to ban them for for-profit companies.

Earmarks are the primary way Senators and Representatives bring home the pork, tucking into budget bills special spending designations for projects in their states or districts.

They’ve been assailed by budget hawks as the primary evil in runaway federal spending and by ethics hawks as the primary example of Congressional corruption.

But in the current budget year, there are only about $16 billion in earmarks in a $3.5 trillion budget. They account for less than half of one percent of total federal spending this year. Big deal.

True budget hawks should be more concerned with the $1.4 trillion, or 41 percent of the budget, that we will spend on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid this year.

Or the $664 billion, about 19 percent of the budget, we will spend on the military.

This year, we’ll spend 75 percent of our budget on the old, the poor (if you include housing and education programs in addition to Medicaid) the disabled, the military, military veterans and interest on the national debt.

All told, that’s about $300 billion more than this year’s expected revenue of $2.4 trillion. So, if you kept all these programs and eliminated the rest of the federal government – national parks, FBI, Border Patrol, NASA and so forth – the federal budget would still be running a deficit.

Yeah, earmarks are the problem.

Goodbye Major League Baseball. In a week or so the Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks will begin wrapping up their spring training stints here, bringing to an end  a 63-year tradition of big league baseball in Tucson as the two teams will train in Phoenix next year.

We’re sad to see you go but we understand, money talks and (what comes out of the south end of a northbound bull) walks.

Don’t expect any tears. We’re sad about the end of tradition and the loss of revenue, but not about the maltreatment the past few years as you tried to extort from us glitzy new stadiums that your billionaire owners didn’t want to pay for themselves.

In fact, you may have done us a huge favor. Now, rather than argue about whether to tax ourselves so that we can fight stadium wars with Phoenix, we’ve been given a couple of huge blank slates, fields actually, upon which we can create new traditions and revenues.

The county Board of Supervisors resurrected the Pima County Sports and Tourism Authority in 2008 in a last-ditch effort to save spring training. But now that the effort has failed, the authority has the opportunity to market the huge Kino Sports Complex and the smaller Hi Corbett Field to youth leagues.

Youth sports tournaments are a billion-dollar industry. Just one week-long tournament already here, the Fort Lowell Soccer Shootout, generates about $3 million every January for the local economy. That’s about 10 percent of the $30 million MLB spring training generated in two months each year.

That tournament is named after the park where it started but it quickly outgrew Fort Lowell Park and is now held all over town, causing headaches for teams and parents as they shuttle across the city looking for their assigned fields each day.

Kino and Corbett could host the whole thing and be a marketing boon to an already huge tournament.

Just a handful of soccer, baseball, softball and football youth tournaments each year could equal or surpass the economic impact of spring training.

One of the handicaps of having spring training was the restriction the leagues put on using “their” fields during the 10 months they weren’t in town. The billionaire owners didn’t want their millionaire athletes tearing an Achilles tendon on a heavily used field. That’s over. We can use OUR fields as we see fit.

Of course, the city and the county will need to cooperate in this effort since the city owns Hi Corbett and the county Kino. Each facility will need some updating and improvements to turn them into multiuse facilities.

And the Sports Authority needs to drop the silly deal it’s negotiating with Japanese pro baseball in a last gasp effort to keep some tenuous grip on MLB spring training in Tucson.

And voters will need to give the authority a couple of bucks through a tax district that the Legislature will need to create, so that the money is there to develop the facilities and market them.

But those obstacles are easily overcome assuming our regional leaders are wise enough to recognize the opportunity they’ve been given.

The MLB’s departure may turn out to be the best thing pro baseball has ever done for Tucson.

So long fellas, it was fun while it lasted. Don’t let the door hit you in the (south end of a northbound baseball player) on the way out of Tucson.

Poor Mike Letcher. The Tucson city manager keeps trying to balance the city’s budget but the city council keeps hiding under the covers and telling him to try again.

Oh, sure, the council has cut millions out of the budget the past two years, mostly by nickel-and-diming the city staff with pay freezes, pay cuts, furloughs and a handful of layoffs.

But that hasn’t been enough, next year’s budget is still out of whack by more than $30 million.

It didn’t have to be this way. The last city manager, Mike Hein, the guy the council fired, predicted these tough times back in 2008 and gave the council some bitter pills to swallow, among them the elimination of numerous city programs, closing some city facilities and reductions in staff.

The layoffs were the key because the city charter requires public votes on significant tax increases and voters are in no mood to up their taxes. The overwhelming majority of the city’s general operating budget goes to staff salaries. If the council had significantly pared city services and staff back then, it would still be realizing those savings now.

There would still be a large budget hole to fill, thanks to shortsighted voters yanking $20 million out of this year’s budget by failing to pass the Home Rule option in November. But if the council had taken its medicine back in early 2009, it could cover the Home Rule hole with some of the piddly stuff that they’ve been doing in the past year, rather than still facing the yawning gap that menaces the fiscal 2011 budget.

Letcher has managed to trim some city staff, but the council in January told him they don’t want any more layoffs, especially not from the public safety agencies, which account for two thirds of city discretionary spending.

So Letcher, his hands tied, is trying again. This week he proposed several budget balancing measures, most of them awful, some more so than others.

The worst is proposing to add food to the sales tax list. In a city where the majority of residents have household incomes hovering around the federal poverty line, taxing food is a horrendous idea.

So is eliminating the bus fare subsidies given to nonprofit agencies that serve the poor, disabled or otherwise disadvantaged. Stickin’ it to the poor and disabled is a terrible way to balance a budget.

Mortgaging city hall, a page torn out of the discredited state Legislature’s playbook, is also a dumb idea. Why should Tucson taxpayers of 2030 have to pay the interest on a loan taken out in 2010 by a city council too chicken to make tough budget decisions?

Other ideas, though, aren’t bad, such as creating a jail-tax district. The city pays the county about $8 million a year for jail services. A special taxing district would raise the money to cover that, thereby relieving the general fund of the burden.

The tax would have the added benefit of forcing taxpayers to pay attention to criminal justice issues. Lock-‘em-up-and-throw-away-the-key policies are expensive. A tax directly connected to those policies would drive that point home.

Privatizing the golf courses and adding UA student purchases to the sales tax list (why weren’t they taxed in the first place?) are also decent ideas.

But the good ideas don’t balance the budget. Neither do the bad ones. The city will need them all, or nearly all, to close the gap.

It’s a sure bet some or all of these proposals will bring out the angry mobs, just as the last batch of budget-balancing proposals did. And that means a parade of people at council public hearings taking their three minutes at the podium to tell the council members they suck.

But the council can’t keep caving in to constituent pressure in which one constituency wants the budget balanced on the backs of some other constituency.

There are no easy, painless ways to balance the city budget. The city needs to look to itself to solve its budget problem. The council needs to buck up and cut city spending. That means eliminating programs and laying off staff – cops and firefighters included.

From there, it can relax and take its time rebuilding the budget from the ruins. That means going to voters with charter revisions to improve the city’s budgeting process and diversify its income so it’s not constantly at the mercy of the economy.

CORRECTED VERSION:

Tucson Mayor Robert Walkup has had trains on his brain for four years.

Ever since voters created the Regional Transportation Authority in 2006 the ever-optimistic Walkup has been tooting the horn of the modern streetcar.

He has said he believes the streetcar will be a “game changer” for downtown redevelopment.

It was hard to take him seriously, what with all the rotten Rio Nuevo news the past few years.

But darned if he wasn’t right.

The streetcar will connect the university area to downtown and the downtown to the West Side, a connection riven long ago by Interstate 10.

The RTA, which is supported by a half-cent sales tax, will pay for half of the streetcar’s estimated $150 million construction cost. The city was supposed to supply the rest and has been hoping for a federal appropriation to cover it.

Last week the feds ponied up the city’s half. Well, almost half, about $63 million, but it was enough for the RTA to announce that it will release its half now.

Which means construction can start this year and be done by the end of 2012.

But is it a “game changer?” It sure looks that way. Several developers have plans for significant commercial developments west of I-10 in the Rio Nuevo district, but their agreements with the city have been contingent upon completion of the streetcar. Walkup has said that he has commitments from developers for more than $500 million (yes, half a billion) in new development on the West Side.

The streetcar will make it easy for downtown visitors, especially conventioneers, to cross I-10 to visit their planned shops and restaurants.

Plus, the streetcar will travel what is developing into the city’s primary dining, nightlife and entertainment corridor: Congress Street downtown, Fourth Avenue, the UA’s Main Gate Square bordering University Boulevard, and to a lesser extent, Speedway north of the UA.

Besides the West Side developments, as soon as the U.S. Department of Transportation announced the $63 million for the streetcar, the Arizona Board of Regents issued a statement touting the streetcar and its importance to the UA and its intentions to put student housing downtown, which would be a further boon to downtown shops and restaurants.

And most importantly, if the streetcar spurs these commercial developments, the taxes collected from them will benefit Rio Nuevo, giving it more money to complete several stalled projects, among them the West Side museums, parks and historic gardens.

But while there were back pats all around Thursday at the ceremonial check presentation to the city, significant obstacles remain before any game gets changed downtown.

The RTA and fed money doesn’t pay for a vital bridge across the Santa Cruz River and if there’s no bridge, there’s no streetcar connection to the West Side. Rio Nuevo and the city need to pay for that and right now there’s a question as to whether Rio Nuevo has the money.

The state has taken over Rio Nuevo but has yet to appoint a new board to run the Multi Facilities District. And the state is requiring all Rio Nuevo funds be used to expand the Tucson Convention Center and build a connected hotel first before spending money on other projects.

And there’s a funding gap. Government construction bids have been coming in lately 20 and 30 percent below estimates, which means there’s a chance the streetcar can be built for less than the $150 million estimated in 2006. If not, the city or Rio Nuevo will need to come up with the money but the city’s broke.

All of these obstacles can be overcome, though. The city has the chance to finally turn Rio Nuevo around and put more than a decade of mismanagement and millions of wasted dollars behind it and achieve what it has wanted since the beginning – a revitalized downtown.

Success is within reach, Tucson. Don’t #@%& it up.

Imagine going to the doctor and he gives you the bad news that you have cancer but adds that it’s curable with surgery.

He gives you three options: 1) Do nothing and die; 2) pay a little bit of money and have him remove one-third of the tumor and hope the remainder magically goes away; 3) pay him to remove the whole tumor.

If Arizona’s looming budget shortfall was a cancer, our state Legislature just chose option 2. Or rather, it’s left option 2 up to you, the voter. If you choose not to choose option 2, then option 1 becomes the de facto option.

Ain’t our legislators grand?

After some last minute political gamesmanship, the Legislature this week ended its fifth special session to balance this year’s budget. They didn’t balance it, but they almost did. Sigh.

And rather than increasing taxes themselves to solve our budget problem, which they have the power to do without going to voters, or referring to voters a budget reform package asking them to relieve the state budget of voter-imposed spending mandates, they instead only referred to voters a one-cent per dollar sales tax increase.

Based on current economic activity, the sales tax increase, if approved in May, will generate about $1 billion next fiscal year. It won’t generate shucks this fiscal year, which ends June 30.

Next year’s budget hole is $3 billion, not counting the millions from this fiscal year the chicken Legislature rolls over into next year.

So we’re still $2 billion short.

Without relief from voter spending mandates there is no way to cut $2 billion from the budget without shutting down state government, other than schools and Medicaid.

A $2 billion budget hole is about what the Legislature has been trying to resolve this year to no avail. The spending mandates and lack of revenue left it with no option but borrowing, and they’ve been doing that in bucketfuls, the interest upon which we’ll be paying for decades. How’s that for fiscal responsibility?

So now what?

As lame as it is, we need voters to pass the sales tax increase. It’s an all-hands-on deck moment; the entire Legislature and the governor must put their full political will behind this measure.

Yeah, right.

Most Republicans held their noses and voted aye, as did a few Democrats. But no one wants to nurture this tar baby. In fact, some in the Legislature, especially those who voted no, will campaign against it.

Who will be for this tax, other than the governor? Will a political committee form to raise money to buy ads and host town halls to trumpet this one-third-of-the-problem solution? Who would donate time or money to that committee?

And if voters don’t pass it, which is likely, then what do we do?

Cross our fingers and hope everything gets better? Hide under the covers? Move to a saner state with better government? Elect smarter, more reasonable legislators?

That last option sounds like a good one. And, perhaps, our only hope.

Remember when there was a crisis on the border? You know, all the way back in 2007 when all anyone talked about was how to stop the invading horde and expel from the country the millions of pernicious illegal immigrant freeloaders?

Few public officials, other than Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and state Sen. Russell Pearce, even bother to bring it up any more, or hold town halls or issue shrill campaign press releases clamoring about all of the “illegals” destroying the country.

In President Obama’s recently released federal budget proposal, funding for border security stays roughly the same, the first time in years that it hasn’t significantly increased over the previous year.

He also will reduce the number of Border Patrol agents, albeit only by 180, or about 0.8 percent. But that’s the first time since 1993 that there won’t be more Border Patrol agents than the previous year.

And no further border fencing will be erected, the first time in at least three years the miles of border fencing won’t increase.

His budget might lead one to think the border crisis is over.

Hardly.

In the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, which includes every Arizona county except Yuma, La Paz and Mohave, agents apprehended nearly 250,000 illegal immigrants in fiscal year 2009, which ended Sept. 30. That was about half the total apprehensions made in all of the Mexican border sectors last year.

That’s a far cry from the peak of the crisis in 2006 when 1.1 million illegal immigrants were apprehended along the border, nearly 500,000 of them in Arizona.

But a quarter-million souls caught trying to get into the country through Arizona does not represent a solved problem; it’s still an enormous economic, environmental and humanitarian crisis, especially for Arizona.

The desert south of Tucson has been destroyed. Millions of pounds of trash litter the desert, most concentrated in a few dozen arroyos where immigrants hunker down to hide from the Border Patrol or wait for vehicles to smuggle them to other parts of the country.

In federal fiscal year 2008 the Bureau of Land Management picked up 184,000 pounds of trash and hauled away 70 abandoned vehicles. It barely made a dent in the amount of debris strewn across our public lands.

The BLM estimates that each entrant leaves behind about eight pounds of trash. Since 2006, more than 1 million illegal immigrants have been apprehended in the Tucson Sector. There is no way to know how many more got through, but using the conservative estimate of one getting away for every one caught, that means that in just the past three years an estimated 8 million to 16 million tons of trash has been left by immigrants to foul our desert. That’s the equivalent of driving 350 to 700 trash trucks into the desert and dumping them.

Camping, hiking or biking in the desert surrounding Tucson remains a dangerous affair as coyotes have become increasingly violent in the increasingly lucrative human-smuggling trade.

And the humanitarian toll has only worsened. Despite the recent drop in apprehensions, the number of bodies found in the desert by the Border Patrol hit a record high last year: 208.

The rotten economy, the banking crisis, the housing crisis, two wars and the health care reform political fiasco have obviously consumed the majority of Obama’s attention during his first year in office.

But that’s why we have a Congress. We hope that Arizona’s two senators and eight representatives have not turned their back on the terrible toll illegal immigration is taking on this state and that they set about amending Obama’s ill-considered border security budget.

The crisis continues. Either do more to seal the border or pass comprehensive immigration reform, or both. Doing the same or less than last year is not the answer.

In a blog post last week, which also ran in the Arizona Daily Star today, I said the Tucson Gem & Mineral Society was unhappy with the city and the progress (or lack of it) in renovations to the Tucson Convention Center, but I got my shows wrong.

It’s the American Gem Trade Association, which has a huge wholesale show at the TCC the week before the TGMS main show at the TCC, that’s unhappy and talking about moving.

Big mistake, but it doesn’t necessarily change the premise of my argument, which is that politicians and others have been saying Tucson “could lose the gem show” if improvements aren’t made to the TCC. That leads people to think the whole shebang, all 40 some shows including the TGMS main show, might leave. And that’s just not going to happen.

But I should have correctly stated who’s unhappy. Mea Culpa.

It’s a further example at just how complicated this amalgamation of shows has become. Perhaps we should train ourselves to call it the Tucson Gem Shows, with emphasis on the plural. (Others have tried to create a name to offset “Tucson Gem Show” and demonstrate how big it is, but  “Tucson Gem, Mineral & Fossil Showcase” has never really caught on, it’s too long).

Below is the text of an e-mail I got from the MTCVB, correcting my post.

Hi Mark,

I just read your blog post on the Gem Show.  I am especially impressed with the accuracy and discussion of the number of shows in Tucson.  Unfortunately, many Tucsonans still think that the “Gem Show” is one single show at the TCC when the Gem, Fossil & Mineral Showcase is, as you’ve pointed out, 44 shows in 42 locations around the city. We at the MTCVB certainly agree with you and support the idea that Tucson must be supportive of this event in every way to make attendees feel welcome and appreciated in our city.

I do believe that there is a misunderstanding on which show organizers are voicing concerns about Tucson’s Convention Center space and downtown offerings.  You state that the TGMS show (Tucson Gem & Mineral Society show Feb 11-14) organizers are unhappy with the TCC. To our knowledge, the AGTA Gem fair, the wholesale show (Feb 2-7) owners/representatives have been most vocal about issues with the TCC.

I have personally spoken with members of the Tucson Gem & Mineral Society, the group that began the Gem Shows 52 years ago, and they have stated that they don’t plan on ever moving the TGMS show from Tucson.

The TGMS and AGTA shows are the two largest shows of the showcase and both at the Convention Center.  Perhaps this fact has caused some confusion.

I hope to help clear up any misunderstandings that may have existed about the gem shows.  Please also know that if your readers need one place to go for information on the entire showcase, they can visit www.visittcson.org/gemshow <http://www.visittcson.org/gemshow> or call our Information line at 800-638-8350.

Thank you for taking the time to make corrections and clarifications.

Kimberly Schmitz
Director of Communications & PR
Metropolitan Tucson Convention & Visitors Bureau
100 S. Church Ave
Tucson, AZ 85701
Visit us at www.visitTucson.org <http://www.visitTucson.org>
Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KSinTucson <http://twitter.com/KSinTucson>
Find us on FB. Become a fan of Tucson Will Surprise You <http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tucson-Will-Surprise-You/84160305904> .

[CORRECTED VERSION]

This weekend more than three-dozen gem shows will get underway around town. The thousands of rock, gem, mineral and fossil dealers who flock to Tucson for the first two weeks of every February comprise the largest annual gathering of such dealers in the world.

In this undated Tucson Citizen file photo, Phil Scalisi from Boston looking over the Kristalle Minerals & Gold Specimens display at the gem show inside the TCC. Phil said that he has been coming to the gem show in Tucson for the past 30 years.

Colloquially known as the Tucson Gem Show, it has been an economic boon to Tucson for more than 50 years with some analyses claiming it generates more than $100 million annually for the metropolitan area.

But for the past couple of years there has been a lot of speculation and hand wringing about the future of the gem show in Tucson. The American Gem Trade Association, which hosts one of the largest wholesale shows, is unhappy.

The AGTA has been hosting its wholesale show at the Tucson Convention Center since the early 1990s but it has outgrown the space. The AGTA and others have been promised a renovated and expanded convention center for more than a decade but improvements to TCC became embroiled in the Rio Nuevo debacle. It’s unlikely improvements to the TCC will be completed within the next five years.

Frustrated, the AGTA show organizer has suggested the show might leave Tucson for a more accommodating city and better facilities.

That suggestion has caused some local politicians to whip the community into a panicky lather in an attempt to force action on the TCC. They have claimed that the TCC must be improved now or we risk losing the gem show.

But there is no monolithic show. There are more than 40 shows spread around town. While the TGMS main show used to be the sun in which all the other satellite shows revolved, it is now just one of many and the only one that’s affected by the TCC.

It is the biggest and most important, to be sure, but it is unlikely if not improbable that if the AGTA were to leave for Phoenix or Las Vegas, or wherever, that the 40 or so other show producers and the more than 5,000 dealers they represent would pack up and follow.

What is likely is that an attempt to move the gem show as it is now composed would result in killing the expo as competing show producers and dealers bicker over where to go or even whether to go. You could end up with some shows in one or more other cities and some shows still here.

Expanding and improving the TCC is in this community’s best interest, not just to make the gem show people happy, but also to attract larger and more frequent convention business to town.

What’s more, we should be just as concerned with the happiness of the 40 or more other show producers and the quality of their venues.

So as the shows get underway this week, lets dial back the “We could lose the gem show” rhetoric and instead work together to solve our common problem without making threats that no one wants, nor probably intends to keep.

A federal bench trial got under way this week that could end up as one of the two or three most significant civil rights cases in American history.

Perry v. Schwarzenegger, a civil rights lawsuit that seeks to overturn California Proposition 8, is expected to last three weeks but if you want to know what’s going on from day to day you’ll have to read about it online or in a newspaper or watch or listen to a news broadcast.

You could have listened to or watched it yourself but the United States Supreme Court doesn’t want you to. It thinks live broadcasts, or even taped ones, are bad for justice. In a 5-4 ruling Wednesday, the court rejected an attempt to broadcast the proceedings on the Internet or post recordings of them there.

California voters passed Prop. 8 in 2008, establishing a state constitutional provision that marriage is between a man and a woman, which more than two dozen states have also done. Seven other states allow for gay marriage.

Consequently, there are few Americans who don’t have an interest in the outcome of this case. With that in mind, District Court Judge Vaughn Walker allowed for the proceedings to appear on the Internet in some fashion, which the Supreme Court subsequently rejected.

The suit argues that Prop. 8 violates the right of gay Americans to equal protection of the law established by the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution.

It is likely that no matter Walker’s decision, the case will be eventually appealed to the Supreme Court.

And there, depending on the ruling, it will go down in history either as repugnant as Plessy v. Ferguson, an 1896 ruling that upheld racial segregation, or as triumphant as Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which rejected Plessy and ended racial segregation (or at least provided the legal basis for ending it). Or perhaps as destructively divisive as Roe v. Wade.

It is inconceivable that a trial of this magnitude being heard in an age of such technological wonder could be so shrouded from public view.

The case is public, to be sure. If you wanted to attend in person, you could. Of course, you’d have to travel to San Francisco and be willing to stand in line outside the courtroom for hours each morning in hopes you can be one of the few to get a seat through the court’s first-come, first-seated rules.

More than likely you’ll end up one of the hundreds left standing outside in the cold wondering what’s going on.

It needn’t be this way.

The Supreme Court’s arguments that justice will be harmed if there is a camera in a federal courtroom are specious. Conservative SCOTUS justices have long argued that lawyers, witnesses and even judges will grandstand for the camera or in some other way alter their behavior or testimony.

But cameras have been in state courts for decades and no such deleterious behavior has occurred, studies have shown.

This case is too important to keep millions of Americans from being able to see and hear for themselves history in the making.

It is ridiculous that the federal court system is stuck in the 19th century when it comes to public access. It’s time for it to join the rest of us in the 21st.

Monday is the first day of perhaps the most important legislative session in state history.

The state’s budget has been out of balance for more than two years. The bag of one-time budget balancing tricks is empty. Mandated spending increases have mitigated or made moot billions of dollars of budget cuts and funding sweeps enacted in the last two legislative sessions.

Arizona is broke, living on credit and facing financial collapse.

It is up to the 90 people – 54 Republicans and 36 Democrats – who convene the second session of the state’s 49^th Legislature Monday to solve the state’s fiscal crisis.

It is more than likely that they will fail. They will fail because this same group had the chance to solve the problem last year and failed. And the year before that, most of these same legislators had the opportunity to prevent it and failed at that, too.

They’ve tinkered, they’ve dithered, they’ve blamed the former governor, the economy, the federal government, illegal immigrants, ideological holdouts and entrenched political partisanship. Too bad blame isn’t a solution, then everything would be fine.

In March, Jan Brewer, our accidental governor, in an address to a joint session of the Legislature, told the 90 that the state’s budgeting process was systemically broken and that the only way to fix it was the urgent passing of a tax increase and numerous budget reforms, most of which required a public vote.

One Republican senator walked on the address and the remaining members politely applauded and then did nothing.

Sure, they talked about reform and balancing the budget. They had special session after special session to try to balance the budget and pass a reform package. But they failed.

Now a year later, the same spending mandates reset. The Legislature convenes Monday facing more than $10 billion in spending requirements for fiscal year 2011, which begins July 1, and an expectation that only about $6.7 billion in revenue will be collected. And this year’s budget still has about $8 billion of spending in it even though revenue is expected to top out at about $6.4 billion.

There is no way to close either gap. The amount of protected spending equals or nearly equals the expected amount of revenue for both years.

It is up to the state’s voters to release the Legislature from the spending ties that have bound up this state. But it is up to the Legislature to put the ballot measures before them.

The Legislature has about two weeks to pass the reforms in order to get them before voters in May. That would provide more flexibility for spending cuts for next year.

And cuts are the only option left. There is no tax increase that could raise enough money to balance the books in one year.

If January turns to February and no reform package has been referred to the May ballot, the Legislature will have failed again.

The only option left to stave off fiscal calamity will come in November when voters will have the opportunity replace the failures with new legislators committed to solving problems, not blaming others for them.