Much of the time when the Arizona Legislature is in session, the members make themselves available for news media interviews in a wide range of ways.
Some will take a few minutes between committee meetings and votes on the floor. Some won't talk before the end of the day's or even the week's work.
Some are hardly available at all, camera shy or otherwise not in tune to the sometimes breathless needs of we in the media.
But on what turned out to be the final day of the 2012 regular session on Thursday, there was a lot of interest in the lights and cameras the AZPM crew set up in the House majority leader's conference room.
We had scheduled interviews with three legislators, and we got those. But betwixt and between, we got one more from an assertive Democratic representative who said he had something to say on the topic -- state educational funding.
Others wanted to know what we were up to, asking me or the video crew who we represented and whom we were speaking with.
Our crew having made several trips to the Capitol during the session this spring and having worked sometimes gruelingly to get good interviews, this was a mixed blessing.
We were happy to have smiling legislators ready to give us their thoughts. But we have just a half hour a week, after all, so the "extras" who came by offering their opinions were a bit perplexing to deal with.
Peter Gelb, the Metropolitan Opera's powerful autocrat who sometimes actually has some great ideas, did something less than honorable a few days ago. According to a New York Times article, he pressured a leading New York City radio station, WQXR, into removing a blog post that was highly critical of Gelb and his very expensive, widely reviled new production of Wagner's Ring.
I didn't see the blog post, so I can't comment on it, but from the Times summary it seems rather innocuous, mainly summarizing a recent newspaper interview with Gelb. Surely the blog couldn't have drawn as much blood as Alex Ross's oft-quoted line from his New Yorkerreview of the production: “Pound for pound, ton for ton, it is the most witless and wasteful production in modern operatic history.”
Look, many bloggers and newspaper critics are idiots, but a lot of arts administrators are idiots, too. Public figures, especially very ambitions figures like Gelb, are subject to close scrutiny, and when they whine about being abused in what is really a minor blog post, they look petty, insecure, and overweening. And most of all, when an arts organization strong-arms its critics, things always come out worse for the organization than for the critic. The Cleveland Orchestra pressured the Cleveland Plain Dealer to pull Don Rosenberg from the orchestra beat because of his long-term criticism of music director Franz Welser-Möst--a conductor whom London musicians had long before dubbed Frankly Worse Than Most. The episode made the newspaper editors look like cowards, and it transformed what had been a purely local nuisance for the orchestra into a national scandal.
Unless a critic is truly incompetent, getting basic facts wrong, the best thing an arts organization or administrator can do is simply shrug off the criticism--or, heaven forbid, learn from it--and produce the best work possible as consistently as possible. Audiences are not such dullards that they can't evaluate the work on their own. In fact, they're sharp enough to be put off by any abuse of power--as Peter Gelb is likely to learn in the next few days.
Postscript: I've just stumbled across a cached pdf of the offending blog post. Read it, and decide for yourself if it should have been pulled.
Just like its Republican counterpart, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is getting involved in the CD8 election.
The National Republican Congressional Committee is airing ads opposing Democrat Ron Barber in the special election to fill the seat for the remainder of the term.
And the DCCC is joining in to oppose Republican Jesse Kelly:
Gov. Jan Brewer often refers to herself as "the education governor," pointing out that her original involvement in politics lo many years ago was on a school board.
She has pushed educational issues, including in 2010 the 1-cent education sales tax designed to build a dedicated funding source for education at all levels, K-12, community colleges and universities.
Despite it, she couldn't stave off a Legislature intent on slashing education spending last year, sitting by almost helplessly as $400 million was severed from public education at all levels. Her redoubt was that she had "protected education to the best of my ability," including "risking my career for the 1-cent sales tax.
So along comes 2012 and for the first time in her three-year tenure as governor, the prospect of a state budget surplus. Brewer set about to assign a good bit of the surplus to restore a big chunk of he education cuts. Specifically, she sought just shy of $300 million to be added to education spending.
The Legislature balked at that and at any added spending, saying the state needed to build up its rainy day fund to stave off future fiscal catastrophe.
The compromise gives education $120 million or so in funding added to last year's paltry appropriations.
One-third of it -- $40 million, which is $10 million less than Brewer wanted -- will go to establish reading programs so that children in kindergarten through third grade can get extra help if needed to earn to read. That's a necessity given that the state next year implements a requirement that children must learn to read by third grade or not get promoted.
The real short shrift comes in school building renewal. Brewer sought $100 million spread over three years to make repairs on school facilities that are in some cases literally coming apart at the seams. She's getting $12 million for the next year and no promise of anything in subsequent years.
On Friday's Arizona Week, we will look at the whys and hows of education funding by talking to legislators, and we will find out what the effects of the continued low level of funding are by talking to educators and public education advocates.
The Legislature is past its targeted 100-day goal for adjourning the 2012 regular session, and there's no end in sight.
Or so it seems.
The way budget negotiations have gone in past years, the process -- and the session -- could linger until July, as one legislative leader said he feared, or it could be over in an instant.
More like two or three instances. Once an agreement between Gov. Jan Brewer and Republican legislative leaders is struck, expect everyone to move quickly for passage and the governor to sign.
On Friday's Arizona Week, we will get an update on the budget process -- and other work in which the Legislature is engaged -- from veteran legislative reporters Mary Jo Pitzl of the Arizona Republic and Luige del Puerto of the Arizona Capitol Times.
The governor's office and legislators are at odds over projects for how much state revenues will be in the next two years, with the governor saying more, so spend more, and legislators saying less, so save more.
Democrat Ron Barber released the first general election CD8 ad today, a day after the GOP primary revealed Jesse Kelly as the party pick to face Barber.
Barber ran unopposed in his primary, and Green Party candidate Charles Manolakis beat a write-in candidate from his party to move on to the general election June 12.
The ad is an introduction to Barber, with a focus on the issues his campaign says are most important to voters in the district.
Kelly bought commercial air time during the primary election, and his ads were still airing late Tuesday night. Barber's is the first new ad of the general election cycle in this race, and is also Barber's campaign TV premiere.
