By Alexander Lomax
Photo Courtesy of Thomas Prezkop
For those of you who have followed Proposition 490 and Scottsdale politics as a whole, you probably have noticed some familiar teams shaping up. Where absolutely anything related to tax dollars comes to a vote, the Goldwater Institute will pipe up and go to war against it, no matter how much it’s in the best interests of the citizenry.
Along with the Goldwater Institute, the same handful of politicians and candidates jump on the bandwagon for an opportunity to campaign on a race down to a libertarian paradise of no taxes and no services. Any opportunity to state their fiscal responsibility and campaign against the city (even as the city recently reduced its budget) is an opportunity to prove their supposed bonafides to a voter base that they presume doesn’t know any better.
In some cases, it makes a bit of sense. For instance, mayoral candidate Lisa Borowsky needs to find a way to stick out and push a narrative of a city that is failing. While it is highly unlikely to work in November, campaigning on how great the city is as a way to oust an incumbent simply won’t work; gaslighting the electorate is the only way forward for her.
However, a recent op-ed by Bob Littlefield is a bit more unfortunate. While he has long been a reliable stalwart against anything tax-related, a useful tool for the Goldwater Institute, he now is further cementing his legacy as a curmudgeon who will simply say no to everything, metaphorically shaking his fist at clouds.
When he mentions that the city had to change the language, that is only after a Goldwater Institute lawsuit, as the lobbyist group did what it could to thwart democracy and the voters’ ability to make their own choices. When he flirts with the same tropes of the “no” side, that this could turn into a gigantic “slush fund”, there is no implication whatsoever that this will be the case, he is simply inventing a potential worst case scenario, one that could quite literally apply to nearly any municipal funding mechanism.
After all, what’s to stop the city of Scottsdale from directing all money dedicated to law enforcement to putting bouncy houses on every corner of the city? Or from building an underground tunnel system for cyclists? Both of those are absurd but use the exact same reasoning and methodology as Littlefield does here.
Scottsdale has been a beacon of fiscal responsibility for years. When someone has to invent hypotheticals that use as little reasoning and are as unrooted from facts on the ground, when their argument is dependent on that fiscal responsibility magically vanishing, it’s clear that they don’t have a solid argument. And it’s unfortunate that Littlefield is negatively cementing his legacy in this way.