By Alexander Lomax
Photo Credit: arizonahuntingforums.com
Laurie Roberts is perhaps the local media’s most prominent and prolific crap-talker. Her style is one of consistent bear-poking; you will almost never read her give kudos to politicians, but instead take them to task about some perceived injustice. And there’s a role for that; politicians are good enough at spinning their supposed successes and hiding their own failures, and she does play an important role in cutting through the BS, regardless of whether or not it’s coming from the left or the right.
Sometimes goes after enough people or entities that it’s difficult to keep them straight however, and she ends up contradicting herself with her attacks.
See this missive, amongst other items Roberts takes swings at Governor Hobbs and Arizona Republicans, including former Governor Ducey, for utilizing the Arizona State Land Trust to boost education spending in Arizona. The complaint is that it’s unsustainable by definition, and now another solution has to be conjured up lest there be a significant shortfall in education funding.
And hey, that’s a valid criticism. Proposition 123, Ducey’s brainchild nearly a decade ago, was not meant to be a sustainable source of education funding in Arizona; it is a temporary drawdown. But what about the short-changing of the Arizona State Land Trust, the very source of education funding?
I’d like to remind Laurie about one of the most blatant de facto robberies from the Arizona State Land Trust, from none other than Axon. When it originally bought the plot of land that it now wants to put its massive, unwanted apartment megaplex on, it bought it under the guise of it being used for office or commercial uses. Had it applied for the purchase declaring its real intent, using it for commercial real estate, it would have paid tens of millions of dollars more into the State Land Trust.
It would have been nice if Laurie had been using her megaphone early in often to shine a light on this short-changing. If she had brought that up then, Axon might have realized earlier that it was going at this alone and reversed course.
I like you, Laurie, I really do. But you dropped the ball on this one. Criticize unsustainable education funding all you like, but don’t forget one company’s dishonesty and how it very significantly contributed to this issue as well.