The state budget battle has prevented Arizona from complying with a federal mandate that requires states to enter information about sex offenders into a national database.
The Adam Walsh Act of 2006 requires states to submit information about their most prolific perverts by July of this year, and Arizona has failed to do so because our leaders are still engaged in a two-month-old pissing match over a 1-cent sales tax increase.
"Arizona, right now, has a real challenge financially to be able to buy the type of hardware and software that would be needed to do it," Sgt. Harold Sanders of the Arizona Department of Public Safety told KTAR (92.3 FM).
Right now, there are roughly 14,000 convicted sex offenders gracing our streets, however, we only keep track of the ones a judge has deemed "most likely to re-offend."
Trying to keep track of so many miscreants is as about as plausible as Arizona seeing a budget today, and the Adam Walsh Act is designed to keep track of all sex offenders, making the most vicious re-register every three months so law enforcement can keep better track of them.
Maybe next year we can create a wayward legislator registry to keep track of all our elected officials who feel that since being in the state legislature is a part-time job, they can just skip town and go on vacation whenever things get sticky down at the Capitol (as always, Senators Gray, and Gorman, we are looking in your direction).
