Senator answers questions from Yuma County officials

Public forum with U.S. Rep. Jon Kyl in Yuma on Tuesday. Kyl opened with comments to about 20 to 30 officials and members of the general public in attendance.

Yuma Mayor Larry Nelson introduced the state's junior senator of Arizona. Kyl addressed the crowd, thanked everyone and then answered questions from local officials and the public.

Kyl was dressed in long-sleeve blue dress shirt with red, blue and gold striped tie and flat-front grey slacks. In the intro, he spoke about the wetlands, immigration, water, farming and challenges faced by community leaders and work being done by officials to meet those needs.

Officials 20-minute question and answer session:

Nelson: The desalting plant has been sitting here since the 80s. What do you see is the future of this desalting plant. Of course talking to Phoenix, California and Nevada on this but in your opinion what do you see as the future of the plant?

Kyl: We got a briefing this afternoon from the Bureau of Reclamation officials who finished not to long ago a pilot project running it at 200 percent capacity to see whether it could do what it was supposed to do at a cost that was within the ballpark. And the answer yes it can and it did. There are a lot of needs if they were to run it at full capacity - they really wanted to upgrade it in terms of some piping and some filters and so on but the point is that it is there and it can work. The question is the cost of operation and whether or not the objectives can be achieved. I think the bottom line is a report which should be available to all of us by about June should begin to give us some of the answers.

Supervisor Lenore Stuart: Payment in lieu of taxes senator. I know there have discussions on the formula and plans to give more money back to the counties What is your ...?

Kyl cutting her off before she could finish the question: Thanks for the question. It is almost like a slow ball for me to hit out of the park.

Payment in lieu of taxes is where because there is so much federal government land in Arizona and Yuma County and the federal government doesn't pay Yuma County of the city taxes for all of its services, how does the federal government help to support the services - the schools that educate the kids and the folks in the military for example - and the needs of the people who work here for example on the Indian reservation in Yuma County? Payment in lieu of taxes was supposed to make up for that.

In the past the federal government did a relatively good job of getting enough money to the counties for taxes it doesn't pay. In recent years, it has gone down hill. There are pockets of Western states senators where most of the federal lands are that have tried to increase those amounts but have been unsuccessful. We've had some success but not nearly as much as we need. So it is one areas where the federal government should do a better job of stepping up to the plate and making up for some of the expenses.

I will say this, we also derive a benefit from the federal lands. Just this morning when we were flying the border and looking at all of the improvements the border patrol has been able to make you fly over the dunes area you realize the amount of recreation we are able to participate in here because we are so close to so much in the way of federal land.

So, we get a benefit from the federal lands but there is a cost as well and from your standpoint as a leader of the county you'd like to see more revenue coming in and I will do everything I can to support that.

Supervisor Russell McCloud: Senator while we are on the topic of money, the funding that was given to many of the border counties to offset the cost of immigration on our hospitals and medical facilities I understand that that funding is going to run out this year. Do you think we will be successful in getting that funding restored to offset that?

Kyl: All of these are programs where the federal government needs to provide more money.

We talked about payment in lieu of taxes and state criminal alien assistance program and the concept is that when illegal immigrants commit crimes and are prosecuted in your county courts and serve time in the county jail or the state prison that part of the responsibility for that should be with the federal government because it failed to stop the illegal immigration in the first place and so the funding is supposed to reimburse the states for part of the cost of incarcerating these illegal immigrants. For years it was at about one third the actual cost of incarceration.

Sen. Feinstein of California and I got a bill passed that authorized about $950 million a year in reimbursements that would have gotten us to over 40 percent of the cost. Unfortunately, while that the legislation passed, Congress has never been able to fully fund it. So we still languish around $250 million a year and that is probably about 20 percent maybe and it's not enough.

You know the federal budget has to prioritize, the money comes from all of us that support the federal budget. What do you spend the money, there are always priorities?

I would put more money in SCAP. I would put more money in reimbursing the hospitals that are taking care of illegal immigrants in their emergency rooms. For two reasons, first of all law exists that says no hospital can turn anybody away whether they can afford the cost of care or not. And so that means they have got to care for the illegal immigrant as well as anybody else.

And secondly, the federal government has the first responsibility handling illegal immigration and has not succeeded in doing that. So, I was able to get a new bill in 2003, a billion dollars, $250 million a year to reimburse the hospitals and that money runs out at the end of this year and I had hoped we would have comprehensive immigration reform done by now so we wouldn't need to add to that program but that is not going to be true now so we have to try to figure out before the end of the year whether or not illegal immigration has been reduced to the point where this problem isn't really that serious for the hospitals or if it is to try and find some money to continue to reimburse them for the emergency treatment. And that is just one of the things we are working on right now.

Supervisor Tony Reyes: Senator you mentioned immigration reform and I know to most people that is a dead issue but is there anything moving through the Congress, moving through the Senate that is going to help us out here on the border with the problem of illegal immigration but in the sense of fixing what is wrong?

Kyl: Tony that is a good question. Everybody asks the question. The answer is this. After the unfortunate experience we had with the illegal immigration legislation that failed most people decided that until there is further progress securing the borders and enforcing the law they don't want to try another comprehensive bill. Politically, it would be too hard to do and so nobody expects a bill for maybe a year or so at the earliest.

And to the question of whether some specific pieces of that could be done that has always been my thought that maybe if you can't do a big bill you could at least use rifle shots. For example, guest worker program for agriculture that would suit the needs of communities like Yuma County. I think you will see us try some of those things. I'm not too encouraged that they will succeed, only because if you try a rifle shot approach all of the other people who have an interest in some other community want to add their provision on to yours. And pretty soon the poor old donkey collapses under the weight and nobody gets what they wanted.

Councilman Cody Beeson: You know as we all do the National Guard has been providing security along the border and we have seen the numbers drop dramatically. I guess my question is the federal government interested in keeping the technology here that the National Guard brings with them once they are removed?

Kyl: I don't know the answer to that. I was not aware they had a lot of technology that it might be possible for them to leave here. Have you asked them if they would be willing to leave their technology in place? I don't know.

Beeson: Well maybe the thermal imaging? Basically that is what has been providing a lot of the security.

Kyl: The answer is I don't know but we better find out. There has been a lot of good technology employed outside of the National Guard as well and in visiting with the air station today, the colonel in charge was talking about protection of the Barry Goldwater gunnery range there are virtually no illegal immigrants crossings the range anymore and it used to be a real problem. Part of that is due to some very advanced radar that hasn't been that expensive to put into place and some other technology.

But the reality now is that everybody knows if they cross into that area they are going to be immediately picked up because of that technology. Which is a good example of how if you put your mind to it you can stop it.

San Luis Mayor Juan Carlos Escamilla: Senator the federal government has done a pretty good job of securing the borders. I'm not sure if they are looking at improving the technology at the ports of entry. We rely on people going back and forth and shopping at our retail stores. We depend very highly on those consumers. I'm not sure if the federal government is looking at any type of technology to help people get back and forth.

Kyl: They are looking at a lot of things and implementing some things. But not nearly enough fast enough. And I think you come here to Yuma and you see it. You are about the eighth or ninth person that has mentioned the process so I'm sure it is a huge problem. Right now it is as much a need for more personnel as anything else to just take care of the long lines of people so that they don't have such a long wait. And yes people understand it but do they put a priority on it. No. Part of my job is to try and persuade them that we need an increase in funding so we can hire people to put down here so people don't have to wait in the long lines.

And when you are talking about dealing with the economic slowdown that we have right now what better way than to open the spigot and let people come in and shop here. It's fine to give everybody a $300 rebate check. I'll bet if you had spent one tenth of the money, $150 billion on rebate checks, just to hire more personnel on the border to do more things like that you'd have every bit as much business as would be created by the rebate checks. In Washington there is kind of this notion that if you throw money at a problem it will help.

A lot of times you have to stop and think of what the real impact will be and re-prioritize the funding. And I think we could do a lot more good at both improving our border crossing but also trying to expand free trade. Both of those would do a great deal to helping our economic condition in the United States.

Reyes: Following up on that, with the new requirements it takes more to come back to the United States, it takes more identification for the U.S. citizen. It takes a passport, it takes some other form of identification. Does anybody think these things through when they put these things through? It seems to me the people back in Washington that make these decisions don't understand.

Kyl: There was a lot of thought that went into this. This was a recommendation from the 911 Commission after the terrorist attacks on New York. The notion was we didn't have any idea who was coming and going in the United States.

In every other country at least that I am aware of the government keeps pretty good tabs on who comes in and who goes out whether they be citizens of the country or some place else. The commission said you better get a handle on this coming and going or you are never going to say that you have solved the problem of terrorists potentially coming in. So we developed these laws to try to improve the security effort.

But we are not doing nearly enough. For example at the airports we try to know how and when people come in but also who leaves so that we know whether or not somebody coming in on a Visa has left on time. You are aware of this, 40 percent of the people that are in the United States illegally came here originally on a legal Visa and then they overstayed their Visa. And we don't have any way of knowing of who those people are. Some of the 911 terrorists had overstayed their Visa and had there been a program in place so that lets say I am here on a 90 day tour or 60 days whatever they are and once that tourist Visa expires about two days later my name goes into a database for every law enforcement person in the country.

So I'm driving along and I get a traffic ticket and the highway patrolman says let me see your driver's license and he types it in and immediately the database would be accessed and he would say are you here on a student Visa, a vacation Visa, overstayed your Visa and I would say well sort of. And he would know to turn me into immigration officials so they could get me out of the country.

So a lot of this was recommended by the 911 Commission to try and deal with the problem of those that came here on legal Visas, overstayed, got on airplanes and killed American citizens. That was the idea. Your point is well taken. It's a lot more difficult to do than it is to conceive and put it down on paper. It takes longer and is more expensive. There is more disruption. We will find problems and we will try to solve those problems as it goes along but it is part of securing the border.

Councilwoman Leslie McClendon: I want to change the subject just a tad bit. I want to find out what the federal government might be doing in grant money or filtering money into the communities whether it is due to some crime prevention, or some school health-based programs to help fund some of that? And what I mean by crime prevention is maybe as you see our DARE programs had to go away because of the cost of keeping that going for our youth and our gang task forces and things like that is there monies coming in to help build those programs so we don't stress our police officers that we have now and also school-based programs? I am just wondering what the federal government is going to do for the community?

Kyl: Let me answer that about three different ways

First of all, when you ask what the federal government is going to do for your community what are really asking is how much money do you want to pay to Washington to be sent back here and keep your fingers crossed that you are going to get every dollar back that you sent there. Which may or may not happen. And secondly, you are counting on Washington to make wise decisions about that.

And so my first answer is if the DARE program is important to Yuma County then instead of sending the money to Washington for a DARE program and asking to get it back, do it yourself. Remember the old cops program that is supposed to be temporary. Well, I supported that partially because it was temporary.

What I would rather see in terms of Washington money is to have it oriented toward national things. For example, in Yuma County you have federal game preserves and monuments and you have military reservations and Indian reservations, all of these are federal facilities and there is a reason the federal government would have the rationale to expend federal money on law enforcement activities on those federal reservations. We also have the border which justifies federal money being spent on law enforcement at the border.

I would rather use money that is sent to Washington to meet national needs that to be sent back to Scottsdale, Ariz., for more police, for example. So, I guess be careful what you pray for because you might get it. You may have the opportunity to send more money to Washington and hope that it comes back. If it's really important see if you can fund it.

Now, obviously there are programs where federal money is at stake and you want it spent wisely. Education programs for example. And I'm not sure that we spend money all that wisely on those programs. What you need to do is focus on priorities. Mayor Nelson comes back to Washington frequently with a list and asks what can Washington do about these if anything. Frequently we can find funding but not always. Washington's priorities and Washington's ideas about how to spend money are not very good, in my opinion. So, just be careful about asking Washington to do more than you really want it to do.

I'll give you a good example, one thing that Washington is going to be doing really quickly unless I can stop it, we are going to send $50 billion of your money to Africa to fight aids and malaria and TB. Now we already send $15 billion a year and we are a wealthy country and that is a huge problem and to whom much is given, much is expected. I don't mind supporting programs abroad if the money is spent wisely. And there are some restrictions on the way this money is spent so I have been supportive of the program. The president announced this year that he wanted to double it to $30 billion over five years. I'm thinking that is a lot of money and could go a long way to solving problems here if the restrictions on how it is spent are kept in place and maybe it would still be OK but now they are instead of $30 billion, $50 billion and removing a bunch of the restrictions on how the money is spent. That is not a good thing.

And so when you ask Washington to do too much you are going to get more than you bargained for more likely than not. The more you can do here and the less problems and money you can send to Washington in my point view the better off you are as a county.

The forum concluded with a 20-minute question and answer session with questions from the general public.