Arizona’s current state budget is already expected to come up short by well over $1 billion — maybe close to $2 billion. And forecasts for next fiscal year, which is eight months away, are that it will be short of revenue projections by billions more.

Gov. Jan Brewer has asked state agencies to prepare for 15 percent budget cuts.

• The Department of Public Safety is talking about taking officers off the highways.

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• Both K-12 and the state’s universities, which are already living through significant budget cuts, are looking at furloughing teachers and professors, increasing class sizes, eliminating programs and, at the university level, raising tuitions.

• The Department of Economic Security is looking at cutting back to 2004 funding levels forcing major cuts in financial assistance to thousands of families and restricting eligibility for programs such as those for the developmentally disabled and Child Protective Services.

• The state Medicaid program, Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS), would reduce and eliminate programs serving those who cannot afford health care alternatives.

• The Department of Corrections is talking about releasing thousands of prisoners.

• Both the Arizona Department of Transportation and the state’s park system have already started closing facilities to meet cuts already in place. It’s anyone’s guess as to what else they could cut.

In the midst of all of this, what is top of mind for the chairman of the state Senate Appropriations Committee? Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, held a news conference Oct. 21 to announce his top priority is launching a major push to pass legislation to “combat,” as he put it, illegal immigration.

He said the thrust of his proposals will be to take away things that prohibit the police from identifying illegal immigrants and turning them into federal authorities. 

And if he doesn’t get his way with legislation in the next session, Pearce is also going to initiate a petition drive to put matters before voters.

Among Pearce’s ideas is one that would allow prosecutors to subpoena business records and testimony to investigate whether companies are hiring undocumented workers without a warrant from a judge. Aside from the due process questions this raises, we have to ask why?

You’ll recall Pearce was the driving force behind Arizona’s employer-sanctions law that went into effect Jan. 1, 2008. At best it’s a law that didn’t prove anything. At worst it’s a law that may be contributing to the extraordinary negative impact the economic recession is having on Arizona.

Not a single person or business has been prosecuted under the law. Not even close. But plenty of legal workers have left the state and so have employers. They’ve gone to places like Texas which doesn’t have the same kind of law and is getting through the recession less scathed than Arizona.

Nobody supports law breakers when it comes to illegal immigration. But the preoccupation of the subject by Pearce and other Arizona politicians has so far accomplished very little that’s good. It’s nothing more than a witch hunt.

Now, Mr. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman would you clue us in a little bit on how you intend to address that other little matter — the billions of dollars Arizona doesn’t have to spend on programs and services for real people?