By C1 Staff
PHOENIX, Ariz. — Rep. Mark Cardenas is hoping that reallocating resources to help schools rather than prisons will help stop the growing population of inmates in Arizona.
KTAR reports that Cardenas believes reducing sentencing rates for petty crimes such as marijuana possession could help reduce the state deficit and free up tax dollars for higher education.
He’s recently been working on a bill to legalize the personal use of marijuana to generate more tax dollars and lower prison rates.
“Incarceration through the Department of Corrections is taking a larger and larger chunk of our state budget,” he said.
“So we have to start looking at different ways to start being smart with taxpayer dollars and start saving money because we are not getting more revenue but we need to look at how to smartly spend the money that the taxpayers give us.”
He hopes that spending tax dollars on higher education will also help to lower tuition rates, which have spiked in the last decade.