Lawmakers even took the the $10 million a year in Lottery money that voters earmarked specifically for the parks when the Heritage Fund was approved by a two-to-one margin in 1990.
Just as with the tax money the legislature and Ducey robbed from public schools (and now propose with Prop 123 to “repay” by selling assets which belong to the schools), this is money that the citizens of Arizona (not the legislature) designated for THEIR state parks.
Governor Ducey is also implementing a “cost savings” plan to rid the state of boards and commissions which were designed to provide oversight for state agencies and expert advise to the governor and legislature. Well, guess what? Even his own political appointees to those boards and commissions are turning against him, so now he’s just going to get rid of them altogether.
Except for the Arizona Game and Fish Commission, which has been a reliable political base for Ducey, and serves a reliable political demographic.
And as the Sierra Club’s Sandy Bahr said in a social media comment this morning in response to a question about whether the Game and Fish Commission would suffer the same fate as the Parks Commission:
No, of course not. It is the political arm of Game and Fish [Department] doing the bidding of those who want wildlife to be treated like an agricultural commodity.
After seeing firsthand how Game and Fish arbitrarily doubled javalina bow hunting bag limits in Scottsdale’s McDowell Sonoran Preserve, I have to agree with her. The first job of wildlife population management is knowing the wildlife. Up to that point, G&F had never done a proper study of population levels in the MSP. Yet they DOUBLED the bag limits.