AZ Blue Meanie over at Blog For Arizona complained a while back that TW wasn't paying enough attention to the civil war underway between Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas on one side and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and the judiciary on the other.

It's a bit out of our backyard, but it is relevant to all Arizonans in that Thomas has his eye on the position of attorney general once Democrat Terry Goddard runs for governor next year and Sheriff Joe is making noises about running for governor, although I'm of the opinion that he'd rather have us talking about him running for governor than actually run.

If you ask me, Thomas and Arpaio are using their law-enforcement powers to target their political enemies on flimsy grounds. That's the sort of thing that should concern everyone, on both the left and the right.

The Arizona Republic's Rob Robb weighed in today with a column. Key takeaway:

But for the residents of Maricopa County, here's what it comes down to: either we have a massively corrupt judiciary and county government, or we have a prosecutor and sheriff assaulting the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law.

There is no third possibility.

Meanwhile, Mike Lacey of the Phoenix New Times recaps some of Thomas and Sheriff Joe's greatest hits.

Blogger Ted Prezelski of Rum, Romanism and Rebellion—and a major soccer junkie—recently conducted a survey of his readers to determine the World Cup of Arizona Politics. It was, he says, a "way of seeing who is still remembered and who should be remembered."

The big winners: Mo Udall, Terry Goddard and Gabrielle Giffords.

Prezelski will be discussing the World Cup of Arizona Politics with Mark Goldstein on KJZZ's local version of Here and Now today. He's supposed to be on near the end of the show, which runs from 11 a.m to noon on 98.9 FM.

• Ward 6 Councilman Steve Kozachik meeting with Jasper the Marbled Pole Cat

As regular readers may recall, TW endorsed Jasper in the Ward 6 race.

Kozachik says he's "in my one-on-one consultation with my new staff aide, Jasper, following tonight's council meeting. We're working hard on the budget and I felt you'd be pleased to see that I didn't ignore your paper's intuition."

Another staffing note: Linda White, the former county GOP executive director, decided she wasn't a good fit in the Ward 6 office, so she's moved on.

• A page from City Manager Mike Letcher's briefing to the City Council

It's not often that a budget briefing brings hundreds of people down to a City Council meeting on a Tuesday afternoon.

But it's not often that the city is discussing how to plug a $32 million hole in the budget with only six months left in the fiscal year.

Worried after reading headlines that announced the city was considering cuts of 15 percent to city departments, supporters of police officers and firefighters came out in force to hear City Manager Mike Letcher deliver the bad news to mayor and council. After the chamber filled up, hundreds of people were left to listen in the lobby of City Hall and on the sidewalk outside.

Here are the big takeaways from Letcher's report:

• Like nearly every other government in the state, the city is in dire financial shape, with a projected budget shortfall of roughly $32 million. While spending has stayed within the budget, the city isn’t collecting as much money as officials estimated.

The biggest chunk is a drop in sales-tax collections, which are expected to come in $10.1 million below forecast. The city also didn’t get $5.3 million that it is owed from a lawsuit and various other funds are coming in below expectations.

"We need to immediately close this budget gap," City Manager Mike Letcher told the council.

• Letcher presented the city council with a bunch of proposed spending cuts, including eliminating vacant positions, holding off on contributing to the city’s rainy-day fund, refinancing $1.5 million in debt and cutting off a program that that helps people in tough straits with water-bill payments. But that’s mostly nibbling around the edges of the problem.

• The city will likely have to raise fees for parks-and-rec programs, including sports leagues and leisure classes.

• Outside agencies—the Tucson Musuem of Art, Access Tucson, the Botanical Gardens—are facing cuts of 10 percent this year and 30 percent next year.

• While council members were reluctant to admit it (especially two weeks before Christmas), the city could be forced to lay off employees and reduce city services.

• Letcher is calling for structural changes in the city budget—the kinds of changes that are often politically unpopular.

"We're out of one-time fixes," Letcher said.

• Among the new proposed taxes: A short-term “landlord tax”—the rebranded rental tax that the council rejected earlier this year—that could sunset in 2016.

• A new property tax, approved by voters, to supplement funding for public safety, streets, buses and parks, which would be phased in and eventually replace the rental tax.

Want more details? Here's Letcher's PowerPoint presentation: BudgetRevUpdate12-15-09.pdf

After digesting Letcher’s briefing, Councilman Rodney Glassman busted on Letcher for not bringing forward the falling revenue figures sooner. "It would have been nice to know this sooner," Glassman said.

Letcher replied that the shortfall developed rapidly over

Hundreds of people have turned out for today's Tucson City Council meeting. Most appear upset at the idea of cuts to police and fire services.

City Manager Mike Letcher is floating the idea of a rental tax, now renamed the "landlord tax."

More to come.

A limited-edition beer made by Barrio Brewing Company is being sold around town through Christmas to benefit Caridad de Porres, which provides more than 100,000 meals to hungry people across Pima County every year.

The beer has a Facebook page, which you can check out here.

And the Arizona Daily Star did a nice story on it here.

The beer is available at the Bamboo Club, Barrio Brewing Company, Buffet Bar and Crockpot, Cow Pony, The Dish, Fox and Hound, Frog 'n' Firkin, Gentle Ben's, The Hut, Jonathan's Tucson Cork, Kingfisher, Maloney's, Papagayo, Pastiche, T6 Filling Station and the Wooden Nickel.

The Facebook page says that every pint sold ($4.25) will provide four meals for Tucson's hungry.

• Michael Chihak

Chihak relocated to San Francisco in 2008 to head up something called the Communications Leadership Institute, but that gig lasted for about a year.

Now he’s followed in the footsteps of former Arizona Gov. J. Fife Symington III and enrolled in cooking school.

“My life-long interest in cooking, instilled by my mom and others, has for many years included the desire to attend culinary school,” Chihak tells The Skinny via e-mail. “The opportunity presented itself, and I enrolled in a one-year culinary arts certificate program at the California Culinary Academy here in San Francisco. I am cooking in class every day and loving it.”

Chihak, who still visits the Old Pueblo now and then to visit family and grab tortillas and other Sonoran staples, has a blog, Que Aprovecho, where he shares his culinary adventures with the occasional recipe, such as roasted whole chicken with root vegetables, turned potatoes, sauce nateur and garnish.

It can be a dangerous gig: Chihak suffered an injury while practicing for a vegetable-slicing exam that sent him to the emergency room for five stitches.

UA economist Marshall Vest became the latest Cassandra to warn about the state government’s impending financial collapse.

Vest and fellow Eller School big-brain Gerald Swanson delivered their annual financial forecast last week. Guess what? The news is not good.

Although the private sector is creeping out of the recession (at least at the national level), in Arizona “it’s especially grim for the public sector,” says Vest.

That’s because, as we’ve been noting all year, the state has yet to hit bottom in plummeting tax collections. Meanwhile, the state keeps spending borrowing enough money to pay the bills because spending remains out of control.

Vest, who has been studying the Arizona economy since, well, forever, puts it in simple terms: The state is on track to spend roughly $10.1 billion, but it’s only collecting $6.4 billion in taxes. Even after you throw in stimulus funds and various other gimmicks, you still have a shortfall of $2 billion this year and $3 billion or more next year.

Here's his take:

After cutting budgets significantly during the past two years, the state of Arizona this year is spending roughly $10.1 billion, but revenues of only $6.4 billion will be collected. $1.1 billion of federal stimulus money, coupled with additional cuts, fund sweeps, and sales of state buildings reduces the current-year shortfall to about $2 billion. The gap will grow to $3 billion-plus next year, and a structural deficit of similar size looms for as far as the eye can see.

The budget gap cannot be closed through spending cuts alone. K-12 education spending totals roughly $4 billion, Medicaid and health $2 billion, community colleges and universities $1.3 billion, prisons $1 billion, $700 million for welfare, and $1 billion for everything else. Health-related spending is mandated either by the federal government or voters, K-12 is formula-driven and voter-mandated, and federal stimulus dollars for K-12 and higher education are subject to “maintenance of effort” clauses that limit further cuts without forfeiting federal dollars. The bottom line is, you could lay off every state employee and not begin to balance the budget. You could entirely eliminate funding for higher education and not come close. Ditto for welfare programs such as food stamps, TANF, the disabled, unemployment insurance, assisted living, and programs for children such as child abuse, child care, and foster care.

Given the current political environment, Vest tell us: “It looks to be unsolvable. You cannot balance the budget by cutting spending alone.”

At the same time, a tax increase looks unlikely, “given the rules that have been put in place over the last few years and given the ideological blocs that exist,” Vest says. “But we desperately need to augment revenues.”

He also has a message for anti-tax Republicans:

Before rejecting out-of-hand the idea of a tax increase on the grounds that it will hurt the economy, consider that the series of tax cuts enacted since the mid-1990s has carved an estimated $2.6 billion from annual collections (in today’s dollars). Had legislators not passed permanent tax cuts based on temporary increase in revenues, we wouldn’t be in such a mess today. Permanent cuts were favored rather than adequately funding the Budget Stabilization Fund, which was quickly drained. So what would be so bad about simply reversing the earlier-enacted tax cuts? (The lion’s share targeted the individual income tax).

Moreover, spending cuts hurt the economy just as much as tax increases. Some argue that spending cuts are even more damaging. Nobel prize winner in economics, Joseph Stiglitz, prescribes that the way to inflict the least damage on the economy is to raise income tax rates on the highest tax brackets. A significant portion of the extra revenue raised comes from

We got some good news about the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter from the morning daily this weekend: The UA Lunar and Planetary Lab says the MRO should be working fine again after some repairs.

We're delighted to hear that we're going to continue to get images like these:

• NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

• NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

The top image shows bright layered deposits near the junction of Coprates Chasma and Melas Chasma, part of Valles Marineris.

The lower is image is of barchan dunes. The LPL's Andrea Philippoff tells us:

Barchan dunes are common on both Earth and Mars. These dunes are very distinctive in shape, and are important because they can tell scientists about the environment in which they formed.

Barchans form in wind regimes that blow

Our newly elected councilmen, Republican Steve Kozachik and Democrat Richard Fimbres, stop by Arizona Illustrated's Friday Roundtable to talk about the city's $31 million budget shortfall, roads, light rail, the downtown hotel and more.

Kozachik, BTW, wants to drop the city's lawsuit to stop the state from imposing non-partisan and ward-only elections in Tucson. Fimbres says he more or less supports the lawsuit. Both said they wanted to avoid the police and fire layoffs highlighted in this morning's Star.