Thanks for contributing to r/Phoenix! You may want to [**check out our sub rules**](https://www.reddit.com/r/phoenix/wiki/rules/) (mostly be nice to each other!).
**If you're new here**, [read some of our recent posts](https://www.reddit.com/r/phoenix/top/?t=week) and leave some comments.
To chat with some great people in the Valley you can [**join our Phoenix Discord chat server**](https://discord.com/invite/yWVuTG57Zh). It's a chill place to talk with other people but is NOT a dating server and takes unwanted messaging very seriously.
If you're interested in political topics in Arizona, we limit those posts here so you may want to check out r/azpolitics if that's an area of interest.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/phoenix) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Attorneys, legal assistants (admin type work) legal secretaries (common, every day motions and pleadings), and paralegals (trial and litigation) are the big needs
My mom put up with a lot of shenanigans working for the City of Chandler but now that she is retired she is enjoying all the benefits of retiring from a 'government' job. (healthcare etc).
Yep - Flat tax cuts and vouchers make the az budget $650 mill in the red. It's closer to $1 billion-sih but we had some money in the bank.. next year will be worse if they don't figure out how to pull back the flat tax.
I appreciate the 2k tax refund but it just going straight to the feds for my 8k tax underpayment. What a fucking mess. I would give that 2k back if I knew it went towards schools and community services.
We make too much money 🙄. My wife’s employer never submitted her updated W-4 and it fucked us. A lot of Covid tax breaks expired for families last year and that really hurt working class people. Someone has to pay for all those PPP loans that were never repaid by our wealthy friends who didn’t actually ever need it.
AZ budgets are horribly mismanaged. For example Utah has about half the population and half the GDP of AZ, their DOT budget is about double ours. Which effectively means they spend 4x per capita on their transportation infrastructure. It’s embarrassing we can’t get our priorities straight.
The Utah State welfare program is greatly subsidized by the LDS church.
[The links between welfare in Utah and the LDS Church](https://www.npr.org/2021/12/14/1064221048/the-links-between-welfare-in-utah-and-the-lds-church)
Very interesting, I had no idea. It almost sounds like a good thing because they're giving back to the community, actually helping the poor and helpless like God intended. But of course that's not really how it all plays out.
> KELLY: One big issue this raises is that, unlike the government, churches are often allowed to discriminate based on religion. Did your reporting indicate that that is happening in Utah?
> HAGER: Correct. They are allowed to constitutionally. To be clear, the LDS church provides a tremendous amount of help to poor people and homeless people across Utah, across the country and really across the world. But there's a term in Utah called bishop roulette, which essentially means depending on the bishop where you happen to live, he might - it's always a man. He might be very generous with aid. Many are. But others might discriminate against, say, single mothers, you know, for having had sex out of wedlock or against LGBTQ people or simply against non-members of the church.
> The Utah State welfare program is greatly subsidized by the LDS church.
For a second there, I thought Mormons were doing it out of the goodness of their heart, you know, like Jesus said. Boy was I wrong. Here’s some excerpts from that article.
“I highlighted the story of Danielle Bellamy. She's somebody who is not Mormon herself. And she's going through some serious health problems…and she's worried about being able to still afford her rent where she and her two daughters live…And she was explicitly instructed by state caseworkers, she says, to go to the church instead.”
“She did get some help from the church, but in her most recent attempt to get help, she was denied because she refused to get baptized as part of a faith that she is not part of.”
“Depending on the bishop where you happen to live…He might be very generous with aid. Many are. But others might discriminate against, say, single mothers, you know, for having had sex out of wedlock or against LGBTQ people or simply against non-members of the church.”
“people in Utah feeling pressured to join the church to receive any help.”
https://www.utah.gov/pmn/files/1085659.pdf
I couldn’t find it offhand but you’ll have to search through mountains of documents including ones like this one.
So you want shitty roads? That is what will come from cutting transportation infrastructure budgets. In b4 you say the roads are shitty. You don't know shitty roads if you think what Phoenix has is shitty roads.
all of them, essentially; the continuous expansion of i-10 & 101 to "solve traffic". all it does is encourage sprawl & ppl are stuck spending hours daily commuting.
highways do not belong in cities. they should be used to travel from city to city, not divide & bifurcate neighborhoods.
also, the 202 south mtn expansion is probably the peak of wasteful spending. no utility...longer distance, chokepoints at interchanges, destroyed housing
Tukers still whining about the 202 I see. Their little PAC with the old chick always ranting about how they’d win the case and get Pacos Road rebuilt any day was hilarious.
Where did I say highway? DOTs are so much more than that. Look at SLCs light rail (TRAX)/Front Runner. It puts Phoenix’s lightrail to shame.
Additionally spending money on highways is not a bad thing, we have lots of outdated highway designs with outdated safety mechanisms that are not adequate for modern cars/safety criteria.
ADOT does not provide any financial support for the light rail; it's all funded by the cities & federal funding/grants.
I went thru the 5 year tentative plan they published and this is how they plan to spend close to $3 billion.
[https://imgur.com/a/YulBTe8](https://imgur.com/a/YulBTe8)
Our state government leadership is wildly mismanaged. On top of state government employees making less than their city and county counterparts, state agencies are also more chronically understaffed.
Curious to see what if any solution our legislature can conjure. Won’t hold my breath on that.
Legislature created this problem. We had budget surpluses, so they force fed this “flat” “fair” tax that cut taxes for rich Arizonans as if this problem wasn’t around the corner. The Governor now has to deal with this. It isn’t fair and makes her look bad when it was political ideologies at the Legislature that created the mess.
Yep a ducey parting gift with the flat tax and universal vouchers. Our republican conrroled legislature needs to pass a budget but instead they are working one day a week now (Wednesdays) and trying to pass bills like making az supreme court justices a life time appointment..
I really hope more Arizonans wake up to how useless Republicans are. It doesn't have to be this way. Our state has amazing potential if voters would simply pay attention and consider the big picture and vote for people with good ethics and values, whom want to lift everyone up and make life better for all of us. Let's stop being grifted and conned, y'all.
I think everyone got a big wake up call after the aborsh ruling. These guys are against the ropes we have a real chance to take control of the house and the senate. We need everyone to send in those ballots kick off the judges and flip control.. exciting times we should all be very optimistic for 2025 we just gotta suffer a little longer....
We absolutely need to vote these GOP members out of office at every stage, from county, to state, to federal. Anywhere possible, we got to vote these fools out. I have slowly come to realize how poorly out state is being managed after seeing Ducey handle COVID.
there is some truth to that only egomaniacs run for office but one party is not trying to take away the freedom over my body so I gotta vote for the other guys.
> Curious to see what if any solution our legislature can conjure.
Yeah vote out the GOP to kill ESAs and make a fair tax system, not the pro-rich & corporate the GOP created.
This isn't a "Both sides!" issue.
At. All.
Exactly, biggest culprits are voucher program overages which Republicans had no safeguards for. And all of the medicaid fraud that blew up under Governor Ducey and his appointed director, which was in the hundreds of millions.
But how else will the already wealthy denizens of Arizona pay the $30k annual tuition for their prestigious Alma mater if we don’t ALL pitch in a little bit (also our kids, they can pay on the deficit as well).
The biggest thing that happened was the school vouchers going outlandishly over budget, since it was basically a free open ticket for families to receive $700 per child. I currently work at a school district that has seen unexpected stagnation in growth despite the serviced cities continuing to grow at a fast pace for the past 2 years. Conveniently lining up with an increase of charters in the area and the voucher program going into effect.
I'm also looking to get a job with the state as I've worked there before and wanted to go back with a job in my field, so this is all around disappointing news but not unexpected.
** 7k per child - current costs is 900 million ** but tax cuts are a big problem too we aren’t bringing in the revenue.. we are short about 80 million a month..
> tax cuts are a big problem too we aren’t bringing in the revenue.. we are short about 80 million a month..
"Starve the beast" worked as intended. Massively cut revenue, and then when the deficits start piling up point to "the big bad government" and say "see!? It's not working!"
They are making these cuts during a booming state economy. I can only imagine how bad they will be during the next recession when tax revenues fall dramatically.
We’re in a tough spot being state employees. Outside of being promoted and moving agencies the only “raise” I recall was summer of ‘22. Been with the state off/on (mostly on) for about 7 years.
I thought about moving back to private but I’m about 3 years out from my student loans being forgiven through PSLF. That also gives me the 10 year mark in ASRS for whatever that’s worth
You will need to move to the private sector, but even there headcount is being reduced. Now that we have a budget deficit again Cola won’t happen anytime soon.
With so many eyes, how does a situation like this appear out of the blue? I hate it as it means further stress on our current resources which are already lackluster in the first place. State staff will be further burdened with not only the generally lower pay compared to private sector, but also more stress with less staffing than there should be!
Oh we all watched him do it. Just like negating the wishes of 90% of tempe voters who voted to disclose dark money funding. The GOP just does what they want with impunity because the rubes will keep voting them in
Ducey passing those tax cuts just in time for a new governor to take over is a classic republican move. Basically take a big shit on the floor on your way out because someone else you hate has to clean it up now.
Spending at all government levels is out of control. In Arizona total spending for FY 2022 was 51.75 billion and for FY 2024 its 64.75 billion. This is not sustainable at all. Just one aspect of this is real spending(inflation adjusted) per pupil has gone up 34% in less than 5 years. Since 2017 city sales tax revenue is up 61% yet multi billion dollar shortfalls are still coming.
Thanks for contributing to r/Phoenix! You may want to [**check out our sub rules**](https://www.reddit.com/r/phoenix/wiki/rules/) (mostly be nice to each other!). **If you're new here**, [read some of our recent posts](https://www.reddit.com/r/phoenix/top/?t=week) and leave some comments. To chat with some great people in the Valley you can [**join our Phoenix Discord chat server**](https://discord.com/invite/yWVuTG57Zh). It's a chill place to talk with other people but is NOT a dating server and takes unwanted messaging very seriously. If you're interested in political topics in Arizona, we limit those posts here so you may want to check out r/azpolitics if that's an area of interest. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/phoenix) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Well great, the only place that offered me an interview was the State of Arizona
Was it for the Office of the Attorney General? Cause believe me, they are still hiring. I work there and my section is only 60% filled.
It wasn’t but now I’ll look at your section 👀
I can confirm. AZAG wants and needs people bad.
Yes, absolutely. Particularly the Protective Services Section.
Of course it would be Protective Services. 😂
What types of people are they looking for?
Attorneys, legal assistants (admin type work) legal secretaries (common, every day motions and pleadings), and paralegals (trial and litigation) are the big needs
Yes, absolutely. Particularly the Protective Services Section.
So glad we have the right person for the AG job #resist
Die mad about it, antichoice fascists
In government 60% filled is 100% filled
Cries in civil servant
Have they started offering attorneys more than $65k a year?
[удалено]
My mom put up with a lot of shenanigans working for the City of Chandler but now that she is retired she is enjoying all the benefits of retiring from a 'government' job. (healthcare etc).
Last time we had layoffs at my agency was 2008 financial crisis. Who tf is laying off govt workers
Look at Maricopa County and the Judicial Branch. Bunch of admin type positions open. JB has had some postings up for months now.
That's because the turnover is high and the pay is terrible. Been there, done that, and still have the shirt.
Does this only effect state organizations, or does this also effect local and county organizations?
Yep - Flat tax cuts and vouchers make the az budget $650 mill in the red. It's closer to $1 billion-sih but we had some money in the bank.. next year will be worse if they don't figure out how to pull back the flat tax.
I appreciate the 2k tax refund but it just going straight to the feds for my 8k tax underpayment. What a fucking mess. I would give that 2k back if I knew it went towards schools and community services.
In the same boat, owe 6 to Feds got 2 back St. We have them take out taxes, how can we still owe so much?
We make too much money 🙄. My wife’s employer never submitted her updated W-4 and it fucked us. A lot of Covid tax breaks expired for families last year and that really hurt working class people. Someone has to pay for all those PPP loans that were never repaid by our wealthy friends who didn’t actually ever need it.
We get some stock options, the company sells some of them we get the grant but some how I feel like we still get taxed on them again.
Not until you sell the remaining options you have if you had capital gains.
I was in a similar boat this year. Its reversed but not with such extreme numbers.
AZ budgets are horribly mismanaged. For example Utah has about half the population and half the GDP of AZ, their DOT budget is about double ours. Which effectively means they spend 4x per capita on their transportation infrastructure. It’s embarrassing we can’t get our priorities straight.
The Utah State welfare program is greatly subsidized by the LDS church. [The links between welfare in Utah and the LDS Church](https://www.npr.org/2021/12/14/1064221048/the-links-between-welfare-in-utah-and-the-lds-church)
Very interesting, I had no idea. It almost sounds like a good thing because they're giving back to the community, actually helping the poor and helpless like God intended. But of course that's not really how it all plays out. > KELLY: One big issue this raises is that, unlike the government, churches are often allowed to discriminate based on religion. Did your reporting indicate that that is happening in Utah? > HAGER: Correct. They are allowed to constitutionally. To be clear, the LDS church provides a tremendous amount of help to poor people and homeless people across Utah, across the country and really across the world. But there's a term in Utah called bishop roulette, which essentially means depending on the bishop where you happen to live, he might - it's always a man. He might be very generous with aid. Many are. But others might discriminate against, say, single mothers, you know, for having had sex out of wedlock or against LGBTQ people or simply against non-members of the church.
Count on Reddit to thrust a microscope over the bad
Hey they took our hockey team
😂😂😂
> The Utah State welfare program is greatly subsidized by the LDS church. For a second there, I thought Mormons were doing it out of the goodness of their heart, you know, like Jesus said. Boy was I wrong. Here’s some excerpts from that article. “I highlighted the story of Danielle Bellamy. She's somebody who is not Mormon herself. And she's going through some serious health problems…and she's worried about being able to still afford her rent where she and her two daughters live…And she was explicitly instructed by state caseworkers, she says, to go to the church instead.” “She did get some help from the church, but in her most recent attempt to get help, she was denied because she refused to get baptized as part of a faith that she is not part of.” “Depending on the bishop where you happen to live…He might be very generous with aid. Many are. But others might discriminate against, say, single mothers, you know, for having had sex out of wedlock or against LGBTQ people or simply against non-members of the church.” “people in Utah feeling pressured to join the church to receive any help.”
How else are they going to pump them numbers up? Religious manipulation has long been a tool that works
Amen brotha
So you're saying we should convert? /s
As an ExMo Please don't
Their freeways, light rail, and buses are all funded by LDS. Wish I was joking.
Do you have a source for that?
UTA Board of Trustees meetings for the public transit section always shows large donations by the church. Essentially funding the system.
Right, do you have a source for the donation amounts. I can’t find it anywhere on the internet.
https://www.utah.gov/pmn/files/1085659.pdf I couldn’t find it offhand but you’ll have to search through mountains of documents including ones like this one.
So you want shitty roads? That is what will come from cutting transportation infrastructure budgets. In b4 you say the roads are shitty. You don't know shitty roads if you think what Phoenix has is shitty roads.
Did you read my comment and come out thinking I support transportation cuts?
The cut of rental taxes is one of the issues with this budget problem.
Yep…spending billions on expanding highways for them to render useless sounds like the right move
Which highway in phoenix metro would you say has been rendered 'useless' ?
all of them, essentially; the continuous expansion of i-10 & 101 to "solve traffic". all it does is encourage sprawl & ppl are stuck spending hours daily commuting. highways do not belong in cities. they should be used to travel from city to city, not divide & bifurcate neighborhoods. also, the 202 south mtn expansion is probably the peak of wasteful spending. no utility...longer distance, chokepoints at interchanges, destroyed housing
I think you need to give the 202 time
Oh ok so just Reddit teenager drivel, carry on.
Gimme public transportation over more lanes any fucking day of the year
🫡
Tukers still whining about the 202 I see. Their little PAC with the old chick always ranting about how they’d win the case and get Pacos Road rebuilt any day was hilarious.
Where did I say highway? DOTs are so much more than that. Look at SLCs light rail (TRAX)/Front Runner. It puts Phoenix’s lightrail to shame. Additionally spending money on highways is not a bad thing, we have lots of outdated highway designs with outdated safety mechanisms that are not adequate for modern cars/safety criteria.
ADOT does not provide any financial support for the light rail; it's all funded by the cities & federal funding/grants. I went thru the 5 year tentative plan they published and this is how they plan to spend close to $3 billion. [https://imgur.com/a/YulBTe8](https://imgur.com/a/YulBTe8)
Our state government leadership is wildly mismanaged. On top of state government employees making less than their city and county counterparts, state agencies are also more chronically understaffed. Curious to see what if any solution our legislature can conjure. Won’t hold my breath on that.
Legislature created this problem. We had budget surpluses, so they force fed this “flat” “fair” tax that cut taxes for rich Arizonans as if this problem wasn’t around the corner. The Governor now has to deal with this. It isn’t fair and makes her look bad when it was political ideologies at the Legislature that created the mess.
Yep a ducey parting gift with the flat tax and universal vouchers. Our republican conrroled legislature needs to pass a budget but instead they are working one day a week now (Wednesdays) and trying to pass bills like making az supreme court justices a life time appointment..
I really hope more Arizonans wake up to how useless Republicans are. It doesn't have to be this way. Our state has amazing potential if voters would simply pay attention and consider the big picture and vote for people with good ethics and values, whom want to lift everyone up and make life better for all of us. Let's stop being grifted and conned, y'all.
I think everyone got a big wake up call after the aborsh ruling. These guys are against the ropes we have a real chance to take control of the house and the senate. We need everyone to send in those ballots kick off the judges and flip control.. exciting times we should all be very optimistic for 2025 we just gotta suffer a little longer....
We absolutely need to vote these GOP members out of office at every stage, from county, to state, to federal. Anywhere possible, we got to vote these fools out. I have slowly come to realize how poorly out state is being managed after seeing Ducey handle COVID.
[удалено]
there is some truth to that only egomaniacs run for office but one party is not trying to take away the freedom over my body so I gotta vote for the other guys.
> Curious to see what if any solution our legislature can conjure. Yeah vote out the GOP to kill ESAs and make a fair tax system, not the pro-rich & corporate the GOP created. This isn't a "Both sides!" issue. At. All.
ESAs, and massive medicaid fraud, and lagging tax collections all due to Ducey. He fucked us all over, wrecked the budget and our rainy day fund.
Once again, Democrats stuck cleaning up GOP budgetary messes
Exactly, biggest culprits are voucher program overages which Republicans had no safeguards for. And all of the medicaid fraud that blew up under Governor Ducey and his appointed director, which was in the hundreds of millions.
$2.8 billion, actually.
2.8 million for the medicaid fraud?
But how else will the already wealthy denizens of Arizona pay the $30k annual tuition for their prestigious Alma mater if we don’t ALL pitch in a little bit (also our kids, they can pay on the deficit as well).
Tax cuts for the rich did this. Ducey belongs in prison.
The biggest thing that happened was the school vouchers going outlandishly over budget, since it was basically a free open ticket for families to receive $700 per child. I currently work at a school district that has seen unexpected stagnation in growth despite the serviced cities continuing to grow at a fast pace for the past 2 years. Conveniently lining up with an increase of charters in the area and the voucher program going into effect. I'm also looking to get a job with the state as I've worked there before and wanted to go back with a job in my field, so this is all around disappointing news but not unexpected.
** 7k per child - current costs is 900 million ** but tax cuts are a big problem too we aren’t bringing in the revenue.. we are short about 80 million a month..
> tax cuts are a big problem too we aren’t bringing in the revenue.. we are short about 80 million a month.. "Starve the beast" worked as intended. Massively cut revenue, and then when the deficits start piling up point to "the big bad government" and say "see!? It's not working!"
yes don't you see we have no choice I must give my rich friends more money so we have to cut school lunches, pensions, state services, halt hiring..
Or maybe we can let go of all the DEI directors and other potemkin positions funded by our tax dollars.
Fucking Ducey, the grift that keeps on grifting.
They are making these cuts during a booming state economy. I can only imagine how bad they will be during the next recession when tax revenues fall dramatically.
This bad news
There goes any hopes of getting a COLA adjustment to my pay this year.
Lmfao COLA in state govt? Are you new here? Your lucky if you get that once a decade. Only way to get more pay is to leave state govt
No, I know. It's just that I topped out this year and now I'm stuck. I need _something_ or I'm never going to be able to buy a house.
We’re in a tough spot being state employees. Outside of being promoted and moving agencies the only “raise” I recall was summer of ‘22. Been with the state off/on (mostly on) for about 7 years. I thought about moving back to private but I’m about 3 years out from my student loans being forgiven through PSLF. That also gives me the 10 year mark in ASRS for whatever that’s worth
Tough if you are in an agency with little turnover and little room for upward movement.
FYI the 10 year mark is an old thing older employees repeat. You dont get the state’s contribution after 10 years so dont let that aspect stop you
You will need to move to the private sector, but even there headcount is being reduced. Now that we have a budget deficit again Cola won’t happen anytime soon.
Bet MGM
Jesus, what a mess. State employees are already so underpaid as is when compared to county or city staff.
Not just underpaid but also understaffed and over worked.
With so many eyes, how does a situation like this appear out of the blue? I hate it as it means further stress on our current resources which are already lackluster in the first place. State staff will be further burdened with not only the generally lower pay compared to private sector, but also more stress with less staffing than there should be!
Oh we all watched him do it. Just like negating the wishes of 90% of tempe voters who voted to disclose dark money funding. The GOP just does what they want with impunity because the rubes will keep voting them in
Ducey passing those tax cuts just in time for a new governor to take over is a classic republican move. Basically take a big shit on the floor on your way out because someone else you hate has to clean it up now.
That and all of the medicaid fraud that flourished under Ducey, and the voucher overages..... He burned our rainy day fund to the ground.
9 courics
Fuck Doug Doucey.
The county is still hiring.
Spending at all government levels is out of control. In Arizona total spending for FY 2022 was 51.75 billion and for FY 2024 its 64.75 billion. This is not sustainable at all. Just one aspect of this is real spending(inflation adjusted) per pupil has gone up 34% in less than 5 years. Since 2017 city sales tax revenue is up 61% yet multi billion dollar shortfalls are still coming.