League of Arizona Cities and Towns sues, Brewer and others lash out

PHOENIX -- Gov. Jan Brewer and top Republican leaders lashed out Tuesday at the League of Arizona Cities and Towns for challenging a new law designed to crack down on illegal immigrants getting public benefits.
"At a time when Arizona is suffering from budget deficits of unprecedented proportions and the state is struggling to meet the basic needs of its citizens, it is outrageous and shocking that the League of Cities and Towns would challenge legislation designed to protect the very entities that it was intended for,'' the governor said.
Brewer said Arizona voters have shown several times, starting with the 2004 election, that they do not want taxpayer dollars going to help those not in this country legally. She said the changes approved by lawmakers in an August special session are designed to plug holes in that law.
And Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, who crafted the language at issue, said the cities' group should be embarrassed that "it would side with lawbreakers over law keepers.''
But Ken Strobeck, executive director of the League of Arizona Cities and Towns, said Brewer is misstating his organization's objections, both legally and practically.
"The law is already clear in Arizona that cities and towns cannot -- and do not want to -- provide public benefits, public services to people who are in the country illegally,'' he said.
What concerns League members, he said, are provisions added to the law which subject public employees to up to four months in jail time for failing to report illegal immigrants. It also allows any Arizona resident who believes that public benefits are being provided to illegal immigrants to file suit.
"We don't want to have a flood of new lawsuits over something that we believe was improperly enacted,'' he said.
That goes to the heart of the League's lawsuit.
Attorneys for the group pointed out that the language about illegal immigration was not enacted in a separate bill of its own but instead made just as provisions of a larger measure dealing with the state budget. That, the lawsuit claims, makes the maneuver unconstitutional.
But House Speaker Kirk Adams, R-Mesa, insisted that requiring cities to do more to crack down on services to illegal immigrants is related to the budget.
"A budget just isn't about spreadsheets or numbers in a column,'' he said.
Adams said lawmakers are free to make "policy changes'' that can save money for the state in the long term. And with cities getting a share of state tax collections, that makes how they spend their money state business.
Brewer said that, in signing the legislation, she came to the conclusion it is constitutional.
The cities' lawsuit isn't only about the language dealing with illegal immigrants. It also challenges provisions in the same budget bill which imposes a retroactive two-year moratorium on any new or increased fees charged on developers, with a similar ban on changes in building codes for any structures which were already approved for construction.
Adams said the cities agreed to those changes.
"What we're seeing here is a cynical and duplicitous action with the lawsuit,'' Adams said.
But Strobeck said that is only half true.
He said the cities did agree to a moratorium on increasing "impact fees'' charged to developers, but not one that undid those already approved. And Strobeck said his organization never accepted any language opening cities to lawsuits over illegal immigration.
In fact, he added, city lobbyists never even saw the language until the measure was headed to the floor, after any opportunity for public comment had passed.
"This happened in the nighttime in a special session,'' Strobeck said. "The first time we saw it is when it showed up in the legislation.''
Pearce said the changes approved during the August special session were necessary to plug loopholes in the original 2004 voter-approved measure.
Actually, he said, the problem wasn't with the wording of the initiative.
Instead he blamed Attorney General Terry Goddard for coming up with a legal interpretation of the language that limited the scope of services made off-limits to illegal immigrants, an interpretation adopted by then Gov. Janet Napolitano. Pearce called that "an absolute back-door veto of the people'' who approved the measure on a 2-1 margin.