On May 15, an unelected state commission overruled them and ordered Quelland out of the House for violating rules governing publicly financed campaigns.

Quelland is appealing and can remain in the House until that’s resolved but judging from the evidence gathered by the commission, it’s likely he’ll be forced out.

It’s the second time in two years the state’s Clean Elections Commission has overturned voters’ wishes because a candidate agreed to take public money for his campaign then broke the incredibly complex rules governing that money’s use.

Clean Elections and its cousin, term limits, were supposed to put the citizen back in citizen government. Neither has happened.

The Democrats elected to the Legislature are more liberal and the Republicans more conservative than ever before. The gulf that lies between them has prevented compromise and progress on a whole host of issues.

Candidates who had to put their hand out to numerous constituencies to raise money pre-Clean Elections need now only put their hands out to their parties’ true believers. Because of another good idea gone bad – the state’s redistricting commission, which botched the gerrymandering of state legislative districts – there are few competitive districts in the state. Most candidates need only win their party’s primary to get elected and primary voters tend to be the most strident of party faithful.

Meanwhile, party operatives have figured out how to game the system, turning Clean Elections into more of an oxymoron than a supposed field leveler.

While public financing was supposed to take the corruption out of politics by making candidates beholden more to voters than donors, term limits was supposed to refresh the state house every few years with new candidates bringing fresh ideas to state government.

Instead, candidates have likewise made term limits an oxymoron. Candidates termed out of the House after eight years simply run for the Senate, or vice versa, and almost always get elected.

Quelland’s seatmate from District 10, Jim Weiers, has been in the Legislature for 15 years. He did his eight in the House, including a term as Speaker, got termed out, got elected to the Senate for one term, then jumped back to the House where he was Speaker for two terms. He’s in the middle of his eighth two-year term in the Legislature.

It was this kind of career politician that term limits was supposed to limit.

The great irony is that term limits was unnecessary, there already were term limits every two years.

Voters should be able to give money to whomever they want and elect whomever they want however many times they want.

It’s time for voters to jettison both these laws and re-take responsibility for whom they elect.

• The always gloomy report of the Social Security and Medicare trustees was released last week. The news focus was that the date for the Social Security trust fund to go broke had been moved up to 2037.

That, however, isn’t the relevant economic date. The relevant date is when annual income begins to fall short of annual expenses.

It is true that both Social Security and Medicare have IOUs from the federal treasury for the surpluses that have been being used for other purposes. But the government will have to raise the money to make good on the IOUs. That means higher taxes, more borrowing, or cuts in other programs.

The Medicare hospitalization fund is already running an annual deficit. For Social Security, annual expenses are expected to exceed annual income in 2016, just seven years from now.

Very shortly, the Social Security surpluses the government is currently using for other purposes will start to decline, beginning the pressure on the general fisc.

After they have come to an end in 2016, the amount the government will have to pump into Social Security and Medicare from sources other than payroll taxes will be small at first.

But it grows pretty quickly. By 2025, it is expected to reach over $500 billion a year.

The day of reckoning for Social Security and Medicare reform is fast approaching.

• Given the circumstances, the fix Legislative Republicans adopted as, they hope, the final tourniquet for this fiscal year, which ends in June, is excusable.

Primarily, they pushed bills due this year into next. Ordinarily, that would be outrageous. But the fall in state revenues has been so deep that it’s hard to work up a lather over any temporizing measures.

Democrats voted almost unanimously against the fix, even though they have recommended postponing payments as a strategy as well.

They objected to a provision requiring school districts to first use excess cash balances to cover their costs in lieu of actually getting their deferred payment next year. But the Democratic argument makes no sense.

School districts have been banking reserves beyond what they can legally spend. These excesses are supposed to be used to reduce property taxes the following year.

So, Democrats complained that using them to reduce what the state actually ends up forking out for its deferred payment to the schools amounted to a property tax increase.

However, the evidence is overwhelming that the districts have not been using excess cash balances to reduce property taxes.

According to the Arizona Tax Research Association, districts have more than doubled their cash balances over the last five years, from $219 million to $443 million.

Moreover, Democrats support reimposing a property tax at the state level. Why cavil at an increase at the local level?

• The lone exception to Democratic opposition came from Sen. Minority Leader Jorge Luis Garcia. He pointed out that using the excess cash balances now reserved more federal stimulus money to offset potential education cuts later. And he’s exactly right.

Independent thinking and actions are rare in politics. Garcia is to be commended for his.

• I attended President Obama’s commencement address at Arizona State University, not as a journalist but as a parent of a graduating student.

A few years ago, I also attended a graduation ceremony at Wells Fargo Arena. The latter was significantly less of a pain in the patoot, but I was struck by the same conclusion: This was a ceremony for the university, not the students.

Yes, my son will remember that Obama spoke at his graduation. And Obama gave a fine commencement address.

But my son petitioned us to get out of there even before his degree was officially conferred by having his college stand up and have a few words of incantation recited by ASU’s president.

There is only one moment that really matters to students and family at these things. That’s when the student’s name is called and he gets to tread across the stage while his clan hoots and hollers. At ASU, there are simply too many graduates to provide the main moment.

This big mega-ritual should be done away with at ASU. Have graduation ceremonies at the school level. Eliminate all the academic folderol and get right to the name-calling, treading and hooting and hollering.

Done right, the thing shouldn’t take more than an hour. And it would be much easier on aging patoots.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

Unfortunately, truth was a casualty as at least one lawmaker threw unsubstantiated and inaccurate allegations at school officials, accusing them of “illegally and secretly stockpiling millions of dollars.”

It makes for a great press release. But little of it is true.

As they dig in the sofa cushions looking for every unsecured dime to balance the state budget, lawmakers have turned their eyes on school funds. That’s understandable because education represents the single largest area of state spending – as it should be.

But in trying to grab money from schools, lawmakers showed that they really don’t understand the complexities of education finance.

In a recent press release, state Sen. Pamela Gorman, a Republican from the Phoenix suburb of Anthem, claimed school districts had more than $2.3 billion “cash” in the bank.

“A relatively small portion of this cash balance could be used” to help balance the budget for fiscal 2010, Gorman claimed.

Then she started lobbing grenades, accusing schools of “blatant deception and hypocrisy”

“Districts have been violating state law and illegally amassing larger and larger cash balances while crying out that we at the Legislature are decimating public education,” Gorman said. “It is shameless!”

If Gorman has any evidence of illegal activity, let’s see it. Every school district is audited every year and no allegation of illegal cash hoarding has ever been raised before Gorman’s broadside.

It is true that Arizona school districts have money in the bank. To not do so would be incredibly poor financial management. The Legislature often has challenged school districts to act like businesses – and that is what they are doing.

Money is held in reserve for many reasons. Hundreds of millions of dollars come from the federal government for the school lunch program. Some are gifts or school tax credit money waiting to be spent.

Other money is held in self- insurance accounts to pay health and liability claims. And if school districts collect property taxes in excess of what they are allowed to legally spend, the money is used to reduce property taxes in the following year.

The Legislature does have a difficult task facing it as it struggles to balance the state budget. But stealing money from school districts, then trying to distract the public with wildly inaccurate allegations of illegal activity is not going to make the job any easier.

Legislators should balance the budget based on honest and transparent discussion. Gorman’s statements were neither.

• Within the spending lobby, there is no more firmly held belief than that Arizona is an inexcusably low-tax state.

The basis for this belief is a report on state and local tax collections from the Census Bureau.

For 2006, the most recent year for which figures are available, Arizona ranked 39th among the states in tax collections per capita. Hence the conclusion that, compared to other states, Arizona is among the bottom dwellers.

Too much was always made of this. Arizona ranks 35th in per capita personal income. So, the proper conclusion all along was that the state taxes roughly proportionate to the body politic’s ability to pay.

As it turns out, even that seriously understates Arizona’s tax load.

The Census Bureau figures aroused the suspicions of the indispensible fiscal sleuths at the Arizona Tax Research Association. So, they started digging into the data’s details.

They found that Arizona’s figures were missing huge sums of money. The state education sales tax revenue wasn’t included. The Maricopa County transportation sales tax was omitted. More than half of Arizona’s vehicle license tax was missing.

In all, ATRA found almost $2 billion in unreported tax collections.

If these missing revenues are included, Arizona’s rank increases to 32nd in per capita tax collections. As a percentage of personal income, or capacity to pay, it rises to 15th highest in the country.

So, rather than being a low-tax state, Arizona actually ranks more toward the middle in terms of nominal tax load, and higher than average based upon ability to pay.

Based upon ATRA’s research, the Census Bureau already has added $1.2 billion to Arizona’s tax collections and is studying the rest of the claims.

ATRA has done a lot of good work over the years. This sleuthing is one of its most valuable contributions.

• As much as public policy debates in Arizona are driven by these kinds of cross-state comparisons, the Legislature should take action to ensure that Arizona’s reported data is accurate.

The local government figures for the Census, for example, were being collected by an ASU professor with limited help. It’s just too big of a job, with too little incentive on the part of the entities with the raw data to cooperate, to do it that way.

Arizona expenditure data in the Census reports are undoubtedly as flawed as its tax collection data. Arizona’s reporting on education expenditures for national studies has also been spotty. Sometimes, the Arizona figures have had to be extrapolated.

To ensure accuracy, the Legislature should assign the job of collecting and reporting this data to the Auditor General’s Office.

And it should make the distribution of state-shared revenues to cities and counties and education assistance to school districts dependent on cooperation with the Auditor General’s efforts.

• The historical importance of Jack Kemp was generally understated in the reporting of his passing last week. Kemp changed the central focus of Republican economic policy.

Prior to Kemp, the Republican central focus was on the need to balance budgets through limiting spending.

Kemp argued that instead the central focus should be on fostering expanded economic opportunity through reductions in marginal tax rates.

Ronald Reagan made Kemp’s idea the principal domestic proposal of his 1980 presidential campaign, enacted it after being elected, and it has been the Republicans’ central economic focus ever since.

Kemp was a graduate of Occidental College in Los Angeles. He gave a series of lectures there while I was serving as editor of the campus newspaper. So, I was able to follow him around and get to know him a little. His intellectual appetite for information and policy analysis was nearly exhausting.

Kemp practiced a different kind of politics as well. Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove sought Republican victories by highlighting divisions in which more people sided with Republicans than Democrats.

Kemp was frankly bored when talking to Republican and conservative groups, people who agreed with him. His politics was that of an evangelist. He was always trying to make converts.

He passionately believed that expanding private sector opportunity was a better way to help the disadvantaged than government programs. His sincerity and commitment to building better ladders to success for those at the bottom were transparent.

As Republicans consider how to regroup and regain political traction, they would do very well to try to recapture the spirit of Jack Kemp.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

Whether that is the best course of action is a very difficult question.

As always, some historical perspective is valuable.

After the last recession, state revenues stabilized in 2003. State general fund spending that year was $6.6 billion.

State spending peaked in 2008, at $10.5 billion, or a 60 percent increase in just five years.

The House budget for next year comes in at $9.3 billion. So, that’s a real decrease of more than 11 percent in two years.

But since 2003, it still represents an increase of 41 percent. That’s more than 5 percent a year.

The proposed budget cuts are not small, and certainly not painless. But the proposed end result hardly amounts to a barbaric return to poor houses and one-room schoolhouses.

Instead, the House budget reduces state spending to around where it would have been if it had grown more prudently during the days of plenty.

On the other hand, state general fund revenues are expected to fall $2 billion short of funding that spending. The House budget makes up for that by using federal stimulus money and stealing money from other accounts.

Given that there is still a $2 billion shortfall even after reducing spending growth to a modest level indicates that profligate spending during the Napolitano era is hardly the exclusive culprit.

Nor would the problem not exist if tax cuts had been eschewed during the days of plenty. If state income and state property tax rates were as they were in 2003, they might produce an additional $600 million in revenue, still leaving a $1.4 billion hole.

Simply put, state revenues have run into a severe cyclical downturn that exceeds everyone’s blame game. The conventional wisdom from all sides of the ideological spectrum is pretty much useless and pointless in confronting this situation.

So, what to do?

The House budget is based upon the point of view that the worst thing to do in the current circumstances would be to increase taxes. There is considerable merit to that position. Raising taxes in an economic downturn is a monumentally bad idea.

The House budget illustrates that avoiding a tax increase is doable.

It steals $265 million from cities and counties, which is monstrously unfair and shouldn’t be done. They have their own budget woes and are handling them much more responsibly than is the state.

The other maneuver getting some gas, using excess school district balances, is completely justified. These are funds that should have been used to reduce property taxes and that the districts cannot legally spend anyway.

The money taken from the cities and counties could be replaced, including by deferring some payments if necessary. So, the state could get through next year OK without increasing taxes or borrowing.

But, given a structural deficit of $2 billion, the very same problem faces the state in 2011, with considerably less federal stimulus money to cover it up.

Gov. Jan Brewer says the Legislature should bite the bullet this year and really fix the problem with a tax increase. She’s being less than candid about how much of a tax increase that would take and for how long. But hers is also a position with considerable merit.

The problem – the imbalance between spending and revenues – isn’t going away, and the House budget doesn’t do much to shrink it.

If the Legislature bit the bullet this year, it would make for a much more stable environment for state government and politics.

There are no rights and wrongs here. There are no responsible vs. irresponsible positions. Ideological conventions don’t get you to an end game.

You kick the state government problem down the road until what you hope is a more propitious time to deal with it. Or you fix state government’s problem at a very bad time for the state’s private sector economy.

I’d kick the problem down the road. But I’m not going to reproach those who reach a different conclusion.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

One way the Legislature proposes to collect more money is by stealing $265 million from impact fees paid to cities and counties.

At the same time, the Legislature is planning to hand out a $250 million tax break – mostly to businesses.

The state House budget plan would permanently wipe off the books a statewide property tax. The tax was put on hiatus for three years when the state had budget surpluses and was scheduled to return next year.

But instead of letting the tax go back into effect just in time to help address record deficits, lawmakers now say they want to repeal it.

Here’s a better idea: Keep the tax in place and let cities and counties keep their impact fee money.

Gov. Jan Brewer said she wanted a $1 billion per year temporary tax increase and called that one of her budget "principles" Now she's abandoned that position. So much for principles. What does Brewer stand for?

A state budget that can only be described as disastrous is taking shape as Gov. Jan Brewer stands on the sidelines, unwilling to get involved.

This budget, if approved in anything close to its present form, will deeply hurt schools, cities, clinics, hospitals, universities and services for children and the developmentally disabled.

It will eviscerate many state services and drive away businesses hoping to locate or expand here. And it will take years for the state to recover.

Brewer, who earlier staked out a strong position in favor of preserving essential state services, has turned tail and run away, displaying a complete lack of backbone. Her noninvolvement in dealing with this – the state’s most pressing issue – is deeply disappointing.

Despite promises of openness and transparency, Republicans in the state House have drawn up their budget plan in secret. Many Republicans legislators as well as all Democrats have been shut out of the process.

The result is terrible.

Cities and counties that collected impact fees from developers to build roads, parks and public safety facilities would have to turn over $265 million of that to the state. That’s grossly unfair as cities and counties deal with their own budget problems.

There are raids on school funds, in addition to proposed cuts in school operating payments – cuts that run counter to voter-approved increases.

The Legislature also plans to eliminate Science Foundation Arizona, which was formed to nurture high-tech businesses.

And legislators are relying largely on one-time money from fund sweeps and from the federal stimulus program for much of the budget fix – not a sound way to situate the state for future years.

Despite all these deep cuts, the state budget still is about $700 million short of being in balance.

Recognizing the impossibility of balancing the budget while still providing needed services, Brewer several months ago said she wanted a $1 billion per year temporary tax increase. She also said she would submit her own proposal for a balanced budget.

She has failed to submit a budget plan and to flesh out details of the tax increase proposal. And although she said several times that the tax boost was one of her budget “principles,” she’s abandoned that position.

So much for principles. What does Brewer stand for?

This is a budget proposal that would devastate Arizona. And it is being pushed through as the governor is MIA.

It is a shameful performance by the person who is supposed to be the state’s leader – a performance that voters certainly will remember next year if and when she seeks election to this job she inherited.

This is far more than a legal technicality. This is a requirement imposed by voters. And under the state constitution, it is something neither the Legislature nor anyone else can ignore.

A brief history lesson is helpful: In 2000, Arizona voters approved Proposition 301. The initiative increased the state sales tax by 0.6 cent per dollar with the money going to all levels of education.

But voters also mandated in Prop. 301 that the Legislature could not reduce education funding to offset the new revenue. The measure required that state funding to schools be increased by the rate of inflation or by 2 percent annually, whichever is lower.

For fiscal 2010, which begins July 1, the required increase in state funding for education is 2 percent. But legislators are ignoring that and planning aggressive cuts to balance a budget that is $3 billion in the red.

Should the Legislature continue to ignore the mandate, the Arizona School Boards Association says it is prepared to challenge the budget in court.

In a letter to legislative leaders, Panfilo Contreras, executive director of the association, noted that a court decision as well as an opinion by the Arizona attorney general both concluded across-the-board spending increases for education are mandated by Prop. 301.

And under Arizona’s Voter Protection Act, the Legislature is not allowed to tinker with voter-approved measures – unless it furthers the intent of the measure. Clearly that is not what the Legislature is doing when it cuts funding that voters said must be increased annually.

The School Boards Association has retained an attorney to file suit against the Legislature and Gov. Jan Brewer if a budget is passed and signed that cuts education.

But to its credit, the association said it recognizes the state is going through extraordinary financial times. It is prepared to accept some funding reductions as long as legislators make the required increases and then cut them.

Yes, these are difficult times for state budget-writers. But as Contreras wrote in his letter to legislators, “We can’t return to the days of moving backwards and tough times are no excuse to set aside these legal and fiscal obligations.”

Arizona already spends less on schools than almost every other state does. The voters of this state have emphatically said that must change – and they have backed it up with an ironclad ballot initiative.

It shouldn’t take a court case to ensure that the Legislature does the right thing. But if that is needed, bring it on.

It’s a perfect illustration of how the majority of our legislators try to cling to conservative ideology – i.e., no new taxes – while ignoring the many consequences, from human suffering to setting our economy even further back than it has fallen.

Evidently this ill-conceived budget is the best they can produce after nearly four months in session. Given that failure of leadership, where is Gov. Jan Brewer?

Brewer vowed months ago to push for a new tax via a special election to raise $3 billion. Yet she still hasn’t said what type or size tax she would like to pursue or how the new revenue would be spent from her “five-point tax hike plan.”

Brewer also promised to provide her own detailed budget proposal, but she hasn’t done so even as Arizona struggles through its worst budget crisis in history.

Meanwhile, Republican budget negotiators are playing a veritable shell game with our money while feigning protection of taxpayers.

They want to sweep more than $300 million in savings accounts from school districts, for example, even though much of that money typically is used to cut local property taxes.

They also want to strip about $265 million from cities and counties, a move that likely would force some local governments to pursue new taxes to cover the shortfall.

Yet at the same time, legislators have waived $240 million in outstanding taxes due from corporations, and have terminated 300 employees from the Department of Revenue – staffers whose absence will cost the state $174 million in lost collections, Brewer advisers say.

Legislators and Brewer are ducking responsibility when Arizona needs them most.

Now an even more bleak picture is emerging, as April tax figures show a revenue shortfall of as much as $300 million will materialize by June. That’s on top of the $487 million shortfall already documented.

So how will Republican budget gurus cope with that? By cutting more services for vulnerable Arizonans, we’d wager.

Now more than ever, Arizona needs its governor to exercise some leadership. Brewer has failed to do so, but she still can step up.

We urge her to show some strength before our schools fall apart, hospitals overflow and local governments suffer. Governor, Arizonans are counting on you.

• It’s not unusual for Arizona to have candidates for secretary of state who don’t really have much interest in the job. That’s understandable. Other than setting some election policy, the office is basically a filing repository.

As the first in line for succession, the secretary of state is also in some respects a governor-in-waiting. And in Arizona’s turbulent politics, that happens not infrequently.

To mask their disinterest in the real duties of the job, these candidates sometimes make up new duties for the office that interest them more.

And sometimes these candidates actually win. Remember Dick Mahoney?

But once in office, they learn that the duties of the secretary of state are as they are, bound by the statutes.

• Now this phenomenon is creeping down the ballot. Take the recent announcement of Democrat Andrei Cherny for state treasurer, for example.

Cherny’s platform consists of an economic plan for the state, revolutionizing the management of state government and acting as the “taxpayer’s bulldog” in sniffing out spending abuse and misuse.

Cherny is thought by Democrats to be an up-and-comer. But that’s a platform for a candidate for governor, not treasurer.

The treasurer’s office is very small, constituting just 25 people out of a state work force of around 35,000. Not exactly much of a platoon to launch a revolution of the management of state government with.

The real duties of the office are rather dull: keep track of and invest the state’s money.

Dull but very important. Close to $40 billion flow through the state accounts and the treasurer manages investments of more than

$10 billion.

Cherny’s views about what the office actually does are worrisome.

Right now, there are tight restrictions on the investments that can be made. For the most part, only investment-grade fixed-income instruments can be purchased. Sixty percent of the state trust fund endowment, mostly to benefit schools, can be invested in equities publicly-traded on national exchanges. For my taste, even that’s too permissive.

Cherny says the state’s portfolio should instead be directed at investing in home-grown alternative energy and high-tech companies.

There’s an argument to be made, although I disagree with it, that there should be some sort of public venture capital fund to make such investments. But not the money state government relies on ultimately to pay the bills.

• In fairness to Cherny, the incumbent treasurer, Republican Dean Martin, is also widely regarded as having an eye for other offices, including governor. And in his inaugural speech, Martin strayed as far from his true duties as Cherny did in his announcement speech.

But Martin, to his credit, has thrown himself into the often mundane minutia of the office.

His cash flow analyses have proven to be a much earlier and more accurate indicator of the state’s financial condition than the prognostications of the various economic pooh-bahs employed by the governor’s office and the Legislature.

• In the Maricopa County wars, County Attorney Andrew Thomas has sued for peace. The Board of Supervisors were undoubtedly relieved that this time Thomas was suing metaphorically rather than literally.

Still, it’s hard to imagine the peace terms.

Thomas turned over the investigation of the court tower and the prosecution of Supervisor Don Stapley to outside counsel.

In the court tower case, he really had no choice. A judge determined that, since lawyers for Thomas had advised the board about the court tower, Thomas couldn’t criminally investigate it.

In the Stapley case, Thomas was on stronger ground. Case law in Arizona does seem to support the notion that elected public attorneys can civilly advise and represent a government unit while criminally pursing wrongful conduct by some of its members.

What Thomas wants in a peace settlement is undoubtedly for the board to dismantle the independent civil litigation unit it is setting up. The board will be reluctant to do that, but public sentiment may swing against it.

Thus far, Thomas has worn the black hat, with his real and apparent conflicts, overblown rhetoric, and Nixonian tendency to see conspiracies against him everywhere.

But he has largely conceded on the conflicts that capture the public’s attention. He was elected to the position, which includes the duty to defend the county in civil litigation.

The board may have difficulty explaining why, given the concessions Thomas has made, it is unwilling to use the public’s choice to do the job.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com