He's doing it again!

I recently talked about Arizona Republic columnist EJ Montini and his uncanny ability to tick me off. Well, he's at it again!

Today, Montini chimes in about Governor Napolitano's recent vetoes of bills in the budget deal and the resulting clash with legislative Republicans. His remarks are, while intended I'm sure to be somewhat satiric, contemptuous and worst of all, conveniently leave out a few essential points.

Montini begins by setting up his little analogy: A governor is like a single parent trying to raise a bunch of rowdy, undisciplined kids. They don't listen. They constantly test her authority. In order to get them to behave she sometimes has to drop all of those touchy-feely notions of child care and put her foot down.

At the state Capitol, that's called a veto.

From there, he dives right in to an assessment of what went awry:

The Republicans control the state House of Representatives and the state Senate. Because of that they don't feel that they need to consult with Democrats, including the only one who actually matters: Gov. Janet Napolitano.

So, without asking permission or seeking guidance, the lawmakers in the House and Senate got out their garden hose, dug a big hole in the ground and mixed together a batch of water and dirt. Now they're mad because the governor didn't find the resulting mud pies simply delicious.

Here his logic train runs off the rails. As all participants and observers have noted, the budget deal was a compromise; one that both parties agreed to. One where both parties committed to giving up some to the other while also taking some. One where one party decided they would take all and give nothing.

As State Rep. Steve Tully pointed out in a letter that Montini apparently didn't read though it was published in the paper he writes for, the Governor's office reviewed the amendments to the vetoed corporate tuition tax credit bill: On Friday, the governor reneged on the deal by vetoing the corporate tuition tax credit bill with the claim that the bill was not exactly as she remembered the agreement.

This, even though her staff reviewed, made changes to, and ultimately approved the amendments to the bill. In fact, the governor's staff reviewed the amendments as many as six times prior to passage by the House and Senate. And while she vetoed the bills she disliked, the governor did not veto the bills passed by the Legislature that she favored.

Additionally, Montni's colleague Robert Robb wrote a piece discussing the issue as well. Among other things, Robb essentially confirmed Tully's assertions when he wrote: Regardless of what the deal actually was, Napolitano's chief budget negotiator, George Cunningham, signed off on the corporate tuition tax credit language before it was passed with the five-year review rather than the hard sunset. He scrutinized the language carefully enough to insist that a $5 million-a-year cap apply to all donations, not just large ones, as initially drafted.

While Democratic State Rep. Harry Mitchell's letter to the editor attempted to bolster the Governor's characterization of the vetoes as resulting from last-minute changes by Republicans, it does nothing to blunt the assertions of either Tully or Robb that the Governor's office was, a)reviewing the bills as they evolved prior to submission for signatures and b)fully aware of what was and/or wasn't in them.

That being the case, this--and any--argument about what Napolitano did in reneging on her end of the deal while greedily taking what she was given in concession by the legislature is disingenuous. At best!