LAURIE ROBERTS

What a week! Only in Arizona

Laurie Roberts
opinion columnist

After 10 days on the road, I have to say it's great to be back. There is, truly, no place like home.

Really. Nooooo place.

So what did I miss while I was gone?

Well, a new report says we're No. 1 when it comes to university spending. Our leaders have managed to make the deepest cuts in state funding for higher education and the steepest tuition hikes in the nation since the Great Recession, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The state is spending 47 percent less per student this year than it did in 2008 and tuition has jumped nearly 84 percent here in the state that mandates that college must be "as nearly free as possible." And that's before the coming $99 million cut to universities.

On the K-12 front, state Superintendent Diane Douglas continues to work tirelessly for our children. This, by holding her breath, stamping her foot and suing the state Board of Education because its staff won't "submit to the direction of the superintendent."

Secretary of State Michele Reagan decried a proposal by the Clean Elections Commission to try to shine at least a few rays of light on the dark money that is taking over Arizona's elections. Her spokesman says she's "troubled by what appears to be the Commission's latest attempt to usurp the authority of the Chief Election Officer in Arizona." A chief election officer who has thus far demonstrated no curiosity about who is trying to buy Arizona's elections.

Meanwhile, Gov. Doug Ducey revealed that he fired the head of the now-defunct Department of Weights and Measures earlier this year because he believed the guy was preparingto enforce state law.

"Well, I'm happy to tell you that that director is now in the private sector," Ducey told the Republican National Committee, recounting the devious (and possibly non-existent) plot to require uber and Lyft to actually abide by state law during the Super Bowl.

But surely the most heartening news came from The Republic's Ken Alltucker, who detailed the generous health benefits given to a group of part-time state employees. Our leaders have long been chipping away at subsidized health care for Arizonans who can't afford insurance. Yet here they are, offering a veritable smorgasbord of state-subsidized plans to state employees who worked just 81 days this year.

Themselves, that would be.

While other state employees must work 20 hours each week to be eligible for health benefits, not so our leaders. Seventy of our 90 legislators are enrolled in state health-care plans that are, according to Alltucker, "more robust and less expensive than what the average Arizona resident gets from private employers."

Many of them are the same legislators who opposed Medicaid expansion and have even sued to stop it.

The same ones who this year passed a law this year that might kick 150,000 Arizonans to the health-care curb. The new law bars the state from running a health exchange, which would presumably leave those 150,000 Arizonans out of luck if the Supreme Court bars federally run exchanges from offering subsidized coverage.

Legislators, of course, don't see the irony.

"I don't think there is anything inconsistent about getting health-care coverage from one's employer and eliminating a government subsidy for an entitlement program," Rep. Justin Olson told Alltucker.

Olson opted for state-subsidized coverage rather than getting coverage through his private employer – the one for whom he presumably works more than 81 days.

I can't imagine why.