Tucson CitizenTucson Citizen

Our Opinion: Budget fixes started too late

Part of the reason Arizona is in such deep financial trouble today is that nothing was done sooner to ameliorate this deepening disaster.

Last fall, there were predictions the state would face an $800 million revenue shortfall by the end of the fiscal year.

Gov. Janet Napolitano proposed several solutions – modifying them as projections showed the shortfall growing. She urged legislators to come to some agreement on what should be done so she could call a special session and get the process started.

But lawmakers were in the midst of election campaigns and didn’t want to spend time at the Capitol. So the shortfall grew, unchecked.

Now the deficit is twice as large as it was in the fall. If consensus had been reached and cuts implemented sooner, they could have been spread over a far longer period.

It was a lost opportunity.

Citizen Online Archive, 2006-2009

This archive contains all the stories that appeared on the Tucson Citizen's website from mid-2006 to June 1, 2009.

In 2010, a power surge fried a server that contained all of videos linked to dozens of stories in this archive. Also, a server that contained all of the databases for dozens of stories was accidentally erased, so all of those links are broken as well. However, all of the text and photos that accompanied some stories have been preserved.

For all of the stories that were archived by the Tucson Citizen newspaper's library in a digital archive between 1993 and 2009, go to Morgue Part 2

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