State Senate candidates speak in GV

Two Arizona state Senate candidates related their different views about solving the state budget problems while attending a forum in Green Valley Thursday.

The forum, hosted by the Government Relations Committee of the Green Valley Sahuarita Chamber of Commerce, featured Republican candidate Jonathan Paton and Democratic candidate Georgette Valle.

The candidates are running for the 30th Legislative District seat currently held by State Senate President Tim Bee.

Speaking to a full dining room at La Perla apartments at La Posada, the two candidates fielded prepared questions ranging from the state budget and terrorism, to the legalization of drugs and schoolteachers paying out of pocket for supplies for the classroom.

When it came to the state budget deficit, the candidates showed different views on fiscal responsibility.

“It seems to me that we’re going to have to rely on indebtedness for the future,” Valle said. Citing interest rates and common individual experiences, Valle said that the state could be stable while operating in the red.

“Interest rates are not too high right now,” she said. “We do it in our personal lives, and so I think it’s all right for us to do it for the state.”

Paton, who represents District 30 in the Arizona House of Representatives, had a different approach.

“We need to spend less,” he said. “We’ve increased the budget by 70 percent over the past decade. We could do that in the past because we had a surplus. But as I said, we’ve had a severe collapse of the home building industry, and like it or not, that industry has fueled those surplus’.”

Both candidates also addressed a lack of funding for teachers in the state.

Paton said that new funds being allocated toward teachers are being mismanaged by school administration.

“We gave a 3 percent pay raise for teachers not long ago,” he said. “They spent that on themselves, and it never reached the teachers in the first place. Too much of that money goes towards administration and never reaches the classroom.”

Valle agreed that “teachers aren’t getting the money,” but said the rules associated with the distributing of funds are inherently flawed.

“If the appropriations process is correct, and if you write the appropriations bill correctly, and it says how much [teachers] are to get, then they don’t get it the next time,” she said. “There’s a penalty for not spending the money the way the budget says they must spend it.”

Valle is a former Washington State legislator of 24 years and current Green Valley resident, while Paton is currently a member of the Arizona State House of Representatives and an Iraq war veteran and Tucson resident.