By Howard Fischer
Mail | X: @azcapmedia

PHOENIX — Saying he wants to short-circuit “defund the police” movements here, a first-term state lawmaker is pushing legislation designed to bar cities from cutting public safety funding.

House Bill 2120 seeks to spell out in state law that it is illegal to reduce the operating budget for a law enforcement agency “by any amount below the previous year’s budget.”

And the measure, has teeth. It says any community that ignores the law would see a dollar-for-dollar reduction in their state shared revenues until the funding is restored, essentially eating up any savings.

Rep. David Marshall, who crafted the measure, acknowledged the movements to reduce police budgets that have occurred elsewhere have not hit Arizona. But the Snowflake Republican said the legislation has merit.

“We should never be reactive,” he told members of the House Committee on Military Affairs and Public Safety when they considered and approved the measure late Monday. “We should always be proactive, taking care of issues before they occur.”

Marshall also said there are still “activists” in Arizona — and in Phoenix in particular — trying to defund police. The experience of other cities across the nation explains why Arizona needs to get out ahead of the issue.

“They’re losing businesses, crime is running rampant, there’s no consequences to the crimes that are being committed, and people are leaving,” Marshall said.

Approval of the measure by the committee on a party-line vote came over the objections of Marshall Pimentel, lobbyist for the League of Arizona Cities and Towns.

“We view this bill as a fundamental issue of local control,” he told lawmakers. “Just as state voters elect you all to craft a budget that will work for the entirety of the state, they do the same thing with our council members to craft a budget that will work for their individual communities.”

Anyway, Pimentel said, there is no evidence any city where there is such a movement.

On a more practical level, he said the legislation ignores that sometimes there are practical reasons a city might decide to reduce the budget of a police department.

That, Pimentel said, could include administrative savings. Consider communities where things like code enforcement officers or neighborhood outreach staffers are part of the police department even though they are not sworn police officers.

“They may be moved into another department,” Pimentel said.

What the legislation also does not consider, he said, are efficiency savings.

And Pimentel said departments may hire new officers — at starting salary levels — to replace more senior ones that have left.

Marshall said he is willing to provide a bit of leeway. He promised to amend the measure when it now goes to the full House to permit reductions in law enforcement funding if a city reduces the budgets of all agencies at the same or greater rate. That, however, would apply only if a city has not experienced population growth.

There also would be an exception if the police budget had been boosted the prior year by a one-time operating expense or spending on equipment.

Even with those promised changes, Rep. Sarah Ligouri, D-Phoenix, said she could not support the measure.

“I don’t think that the current economic and financial conditions and future uncertainties are prudent for our state to be hampering our cities’ and towns’ budgets,” she said.

Rep. Marcelino Quinonez, D-Phoenix, said his opposition was more basic.

“I trust our local elected officials to make the decision that are best for their cities and towns,” he said.