The Arizona Department of Commerce has filed an amicus brief attacking the Arizona Court of Appeals decision invalidating the gift clause in the CityNorth case.

Incredibly, a segment of the Brewer Administration has jumped into the CityNorth case on the side of Phoenix and the other advocates of taxpayer subsidies to private industries who are trying to get the Court of Appeals decision striking down these subsidies as illegal gifts thrown out.

The Department of Commerce, a state agency under Governor Brewer, thinks the Court of Appeals ruling calls into question some of its programs. If this is the case, it’s because the Department of Commerce has been giving taxpayer money away to private groups, in violation of our state constitution’s ban on such gifts.

It was bad enough when the Department of Commerce was just a waste of money, a parking lot for old, washed up Democrat politicos. But now it is actively fighting to undermine our liberties.

With the state in a budget crisis, the Department of Commerce should be the first to go. Unfortunately, the oldest trick in the book of the apologists for Big Government is to put popular things on the chopping block like police and education.

Hopefully voters will remember that this fall when all the Chicken Littles predict massive cuts to police and education and general Armageddon if they don’t vote to raise taxes. How come the cuts put on the table by apologists for Big Government never include wasteful programs like the Department of Commerce, Structural Pest Commission, Board of Cosmetology, etc.?

If our state leaders had made more of an effort to cut out these boondoggles they would be on much more solid ground in calling for higher taxes. But they haven’t.