Once again, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon is using city police and firefighters as bait in a tax grab.

This time, in imposing a two-cent grocery tax, Gordon has the help of Councilmembers Michael Johnson, Claude Mattox, Michael Nowakowski, Tom Simplot, and Thelda Williams.

Last time, it was all of the Councilmembers, including Johnson, Mattox, and Simplot, who voted to send the two-tenths cent sales tax hike to the September 11, 2007 ballot. (Peggy Neely also voted aye the last time, but this time voted against the tax--thank you, Peggy!).

But the game is basically the same. In 2007, the hiring of new police and firefighters was used as an excuse to raise taxes--when there was actually plenty of money to hire them, if the city had made hiring them a priority.

Now, the threat is that the city will have to fire a bunch of police and firefighters if we don't raise taxes--even though the city could cut non-essential services and save tens of millions of dollars by contracting out city services and maintenance to the private sector.

This is what the Arizona Federation of Taxpayers wrote back in August of 2007, the first time around:

Re Proposition 1:

Proposition 1 is a scam. City politicians and the politicos in the police and fire unions claim that Phoenix needs a new sales tax in order to spend an additional $60 million per year to fund 500 new police officers and 100 new firemen. And yet, during each of the past two years, Mayor Gordon and the members of the Phoenix City Council have voted for $300 million in spending increases on programs other than police and fire. They could easily have spent $60 million extra on police and fire, and had $240 million left over for the other programs. But they did not. Why? What programs did Mayor Gordon and the City Council think were more important than police and fire? Some of this year’s program increases include: $6 million for the Convention Center; $1 million for Golf; $3 million for Libraries; $10 million for Parks and Recreation; $17 million for Housing Projects; $6 million for Development Services; $29 million for Transit; and, $10 million annually in new tax dodges for politically-connected developers.

The reality is that Mayor Gordon and the City Council wanted a tax increase, and the most attractive use of tax dollars is public safety--police and fire. So, Gordon and the Council deliberately chose to underfund police and fire in order to make it look like the new tax money would go to something important.

What a scam!

This time, there's no election (at least, not until citizens put a repeal measure on a ballot...). Gordon, Johnson, Mattox, Nowakowski, Simplot, and Williams simply snuck the measure through--without even setting up a study committee.

Of course, the police and fire unions are not innocent bystanders in this process. They're part of the game. But it does make you wonder how the rank-and-file feel about being used over and over as bait in a dirty political game.

--Tom