landusewatch.com – court ruling

Superior Court ruling in Arizona: freakish and insane

Plaintiffs in Arizona, including a planning group and the mayors of Flagstaff, Peoria, Sierra Vista and Yuma, failed to keep a Measure 37 clone off the ballot after Judge Paul McMurdie of Maricopa County Superior Court found no law to back up the claim, despite an apparent conflict with the State Constitution.

A statute in the Arizona State Constitution requires ballot measures to specify a source for funding beside the general fund in case of “additional costs” incurred should it pass, except the Judge in this case said the debate over the funding was more complex. He said that Proposition 207 “raises many questions regarding property rights, including the question of who should shoulder the costs of land-use laws passed by governmental entities.”

Except it doesn’t. The “additional costs” are indeed included necessarily, imagining something in Arizona like the $3.7 billion in Measure 37 claims apparently isn’t registering as an “additional cost”. Unless of course the whole intention is that the money never get paid.

August 21, 2006