Arizona state miner., 1927-02-05

members of the committee privately
admit that it will be impossible for
them to shake, short of a physical
inventory of all supplies and ma
terials which the department now
lists as assets.
1--WE owe a lot of money" he said
in substance-"too much. But if a
receiver is appointed to wind up our
affairs, if federal aid projects now un-
der contract were completed and all
our supplies and materials turned in
to cash, we could pay every cent and
have something left over Therefore
we are solvent.
But ~ is true that we are carrying
a heavy burden of back bills They
represent Indebtedness which we did
not incur, and which you never have
directed us to pay off We are con-
stantly paying old bills and charging
new ones. None of these now on
file is more than one year old, but the
debt remains, though always changing
form
This, gentlemen, is a very costly
state of affairs. The taxpayers whom
you represent are paying between 10
and Is per cent annually in carrying
charges on more than a half million
Moreover, the necessity of taking up
these bills from time to time keeps
us painfully short of working capital
Our real difficulty is an acute short
age of working capital"
Nulling this over the next day, the
committee began to realize that it
will be impossible to establish the SOL
vency or insolvency of the depart
ment without checking the depart
ments file of invoices against the
actual supplies and materials which
they represent Such a task, though
theoretically possible, is practically
beyond the powers of the legislature.
1t would be enormously expensive and
it would be SO long drawn out that,
before it was finished, the legislature
would have gone home: BY that time,
any report made would be worthless,
except as interesting literature
At the conclusion of the session,
two things were promised by Senator
Sutter-an appropriation, of undeter-
Is There will be road legislation at
this session, undoubtedly, he told
the state engineer. But the first and
foremost purpose we brought here
was to take this department out OF
politics-to divorce them entirely The
questions we have directed to you
were not addressed to individuals but
with view to pulling you and the
department out of slough that
threatens to engulf the state"
Representative Abel made it even
the committee.
There are even some legislators,
he added, who would rather see road
building stop altogether than to per-
nit this department to founder deep
err into politics.
Meanwhile, the appropriations COM
mittees of both houses are more or
less at loss what to do for highways
until they know how much the dead
| horse they must buy will cost them.
Thus far, they have made only one
important decision-to adopt the gen
eral policy of making state appropria-
lIOIIS W IudICn every 10ucIdl dlQ dp-
preparation They will follow that
course rs long as the money holds out
State departments probably will
| have to worry along the best they can
with considerably less money than
they ask in the budget transmitted to
| the legislature by Governor Hunt
Translating their requests into terms
| of taxes, Representative Murphy OF
| Gila chairman Of the house committee
on appropriations, has found that
they would be equivalent to a 90cent
! tax rate.
Nothing like that, he intends, shall
! happen, but there probably will be {
substantial increase. The present
rate is 67 cents, a decrease of II
cents from the year preceding, and 81
cents is the. speculative figure fol
next year most often heard.
This verifies the prediction made
by H S. McCluskey, in his primary
campaign speeches for the governor
that when the Legislature had looked
the situation over and acted on it
the people would find that more anC
I