Arizona panel directs cash for border fence to technology
*The headline hides what I think is the real story. Four years ago the Arizona legislature began raising private funds to build a $50 million fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. To date they’ve only raised $265,000. So now they’re looking to spend the cash somewhere other than a long, tall, expensive fence. VL
By Bob Chrisie, Associated Press
PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona lawmakers who hoped to build miles of fencing along the border with Mexico using millions of dollars in private donations are instead directing the money to buy equipment for a border sheriff’s office after the state received just a fraction of the donations needed.
The decision Monday by the Legislature’s border security advisory committee came without a mention of the original intent of the donations to build a fence along the border.
[pullquote]The Legislature in August asked sheriffs in Cochise, Pima, Yuma and Santa Cruz counties to present plans for the cash related to border security.[/pullquote]Republican backers of the 2011 legislation hoped for as much as $50 million in private money for the project, which called for building 15-foot fences at busy border-crossing points, then erecting other fences along miles of the state’s nearly 200-mile border that had no federal fences at the time.
Instead, the state received about $265,000.
The effort began during the height of Arizona’s battle against illegal immigration, before a backlash that led to the recall of the Republican Senate president that curbed the GOP-led Legislature’s appetite for measures targeting immigration.
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[Photo by The U.S. Army/Flickr]
