Arizona republican., 1917-02-17

The chief interest in the legislature yesterday centered about an inconspi- cuous incident senate committee hearing and representatives from near ly all parts of the state presented themselves. The bill creates only one first class county. Cochise. Maricopa finds itself ranged with Gila as a coun- ty of the second class, the classification being based on the taxable wealth, and the salaries of county officers be- ing based in turn upon the class of the county. Such a bill naturally produces excitement in certain quarters and the | representatives from the larger and middle sized counties equally naturally want something different.
 MT Mattox in presenting the bill, did not expect and did not wish that it should undergo enactment without change. It was rather a basis for d classification, to take the place of the old classification law which had been declared by the supreme court, to be invalid. There will probably be several changes of the bases suggested in the bill and now the dissatisfied are pre- senting kaleidoscopic combinations which they think will be more satis- factory The smaller counties are less concerned about the matter than the larger ones. though CoChise is said to be wholly satisfied.
 The State Normal Fund
 After the committee of the whole
 of the house had gone through all the
 subdivisions and sections of the gen. eral appropriation bill and was putting
 the finishing touches on the conclud- ing paragraphs MT. Flake of Navajo,
 launched a surprise in the form of an
 amendment creating a state school FT7I q
 900 for that purpose S1,000.000 for
 each of the next ensuing two years. The
 amendment states that this sum is in lieu of the statutory appropriation of
 $500, 900 a year to repeal which an ef-
 fort was made by the legislature two
 years ago.
 When the amendment was first read,
 smile ran through the committee; it was supposed to be little joke of Mr. Flakes but when, after an all-after-
 noon contest the amendment was adopted, all had ceased smiling. The
 amendment was first attacked by Speaker Johns who recited the trouble over statutory appropriation in the last legislature. He had opposed il then but since then he had come to
 believe that though it was unjust as between the counties, it ought to stand. Rot this amendment of MT Flakes was too much of a good thing. He showed that under the present law, his
 own county of Yavapai paid, about S30 000 more into the school fund than it
 received in turn and MT. Flake ad- mitted that his own county of Navajo paid about s10,00 into the fund and re- ceived back $2G,000. Following an ad-
 Gress by the speaker on the enormity
 of the amendment, MT. Flake took the
 ,T7d the evolution of the public school sys-
 tenn from the dark ages when only the children of the wealthy were educated, privately Next came the grouping of poorer children under the care of poorly paid and incompetent instructor and then. the public school system in embryo
 In those days. he said the rich raised the same objection to payment i for the eductaiOn of the poor that the rich counties now raised to paying for | the education of the children of the poorer counties and he contended that under the county system the rate of taxation was higher in the poorer coun- ties than in the wealthy counties. Mir. Peterson also supported the i, amendment as another step toward an | inevitable end, the centralizatiOn Of the school system. It was proposed to take a step in this amendment, not to the wiping out of county boundaries, but toward that event. He believed that the time would come when state boundaries would be wiped out and the school system would center in the seat | of national government.
 ! Under the present law. the state raised about one-third of the school 1 fund and the counties, two-thirds; un- i der the amendment the state would raise about two-thirds and the cOun- ! ties, one-t third. MT. Peterson mentioned