House Bill 2586 was passed 57-0 by the Arizona House of Representatives, but was defeated in the Senate Commerce committee. The State of Arizona spent nearly $100M of taxpayer money on corporate tax credits intended to stimulate economic development in 2011, but the public received no information about the results of these programs or which companies received the tax credits, according to Arizona PIRG.
“Taxpayers have a right to know who is receiving these credits and in what amount so we can determine if it is a good investment for Arizona,” said Scot Mussi, Executive Director of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club. “At a cost of $100 million dollars a year, a little sunshine wouldn’t be such a bad idea.”
Representative Darin Mitchell, representatives from the Goldwater Institute, Arizona PIRG, the Arizona Free Enterprise Club and state comptroller Clark Partridge, called a press conference on Tuesday to condemn the move by Senator Bob Worsley to kill the bill.
“We met some very tough opposition. And for whatever reasons, those who opposed it were able to sway enough votes to kill it in committee. There was… one Republican senator who was able to kill this bill. And that was Bob Worsley of Mesa,” said Mitchell said during the press briefing at the Rose Garden, reported the Yellow Sheet. “So, the question is, why would somebody oppose transparency in government? Certainly the voters don’t. The voters demand it.”
Worsley, who has never met a piece of corporate welfare he didn’t like, is supported by the chambers of commerce and other business groups.
Mitchell believed that Worsley’s move would cost him the support of Mesa residents. According to the Yellow Sheet, Mitchell said, “I can’t explain why he did it. That’s a question you’ll have to ask him. But I think people in his district in Mesa will be asking that question, because it’s very popular whenever you bring up topics of spending transparency.”
The focus of the press conference was the fifth annual Arizona PIRG Education Fund spending transparency report, Following the Money 2014: How the States Rank on Providing Online Access to Government Spending Data.
The report found that “Arizona performs well when it comes to government spending transparency, but has room for improvement. Arizona received a ‘B’ grade.
“Arizona continues to do a relatively good job when it comes to being transparent about where our public money is going. The state’s OpenBooks transparency website provides citizens with the information they need to hold elected officials accountable in an easily accessible, online format,” said Serena Unrein, Public Interest Advocate with the Arizona PIRG Education Fund. “One area where Arizona has big room to improve is in the transparency of economic development subsidies.”
Officials from Arizona and 44 other states provided the researchers with feedback on their initial evaluation of state transparency websites. The leading states with the most comprehensive transparency websites are Indiana, Florida, Oregon, Texas, Massachusetts, Iowa, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
States that have created or improved their online transparency have typically done so with little upfront cost. In fact, top-flight transparency websites can save money for taxpayers, while also restoring public confidence in government and preventing misspending and pay-to-play contracts, according to Arizona PIRG.
The report compared transparency scores with a variety of measures of which party rules the state legislative, or sits in the Governor’s office, or how public opinion tilts in the states. Neither Republican nor Democratic states tended to have higher levels of spending disclosure.
“To be an ‘A’ state when it comes to spending transparency, Arizona will need to show the public how their tax money is being spent on economic development subsidies and do a better job of reporting on the results of those programs,” concluded Unrein.