By AZ Mirror
A Republican bill that would appropriate $50 million from the state general fund to the Arizona Department of Public Safety to enforce “border related crimes” and implement a measure voters approved last year cleared its first hurdle Monday afternoon.
But if it ultimately becomes law, it could trigger a constitutional challenge to the law that voters overwhelmingly backed in the November election.
That law, Proposition 314, makes illegally crossing the border a state crime, enabling local police to detain and arrest migrants. But the GOP lawmakers who crafted the measure and sent it to the ballot didn’t allocate any funding to enforce its provisions, even after sheriffs and other law enforcement leaders told them they needed money if they were going to be asked to enforce it.
Now that Prop. 314 won at the ballot box, Rep.Quang Nguyen, R-Prescott Valley, is pushing House Bill 2606 to provide funding to actually enforce its provisions.
“I think if we are going to ask law enforcement to perform additional duties, we need to have that money,” Nguyen told the House Committee on Public Safety and Law Enforcement when it considered his bill.
But doing so could be grounds for a lawsuit that aims to take down the entire law. The Arizona Constitution requires any ballot measure that increases state spending to provide money to pay for it — and says that money cannot come out of the state’s general operating account. Nguyen’s proposal would appropriate the $50 million from the state’s general fund.
