Show SWINDLING SOLONS How the Arizoua lawMakers Robbed Uncle Sam The Legislature of Arizona has immortalized im-mortalized itself among the famous robbers of this rSd preceding centuries The total should eil expenses not have exceeded ex-ceeded 25600 Some idea of what Will c done may be gathered from the following follow-ing report on the items of the bill made by Assistant AttorneyGeneral Montgomery Mont-gomery when the claim was referred to him for examination The statute says that in no case shall the expenditures for public printing print-ing in any of the Territories exceed the sum of 2500 for any one year and yet it from Governor appears Zuhcks communication com-munication that there was appropriated appro-priated for printing bills letter heads and other printing 12 133 and lot printing dally journals bills and reports a re-ports etc 7834 making an aggregate s expenditure printing alone for the Thirteenth Assembly 199GUO being an excess of 1746770 above the bounds limited by Congress Again in the face of the said act of June 14 1878 enumerating and defining and fixing C wth great particularity tbe subordinate subordin-ate officers of a Territorial Legislature and fixing the amount of compensation ot each it appears that the Arizona Legislature its said thirteenth session ses-sion employed in addition to those authorized by said act of Congress no less than fifty cl rks assistant clerks and committee clerks besides four pages two janitors and two doorkeepers door-keepers at an aggregate cost of 23700 This troop of subordinates seems to have been a remarkable one both on account of its numbers and the magnitude mag-nitude of its salaries I find that the pages presumably small boys were paid 240 each and as the Legislature could not under sit longer than forty days this would be 6 per day precisely pre-cisely the per diem allowed by law to the honorable members of the same Legislature Again while the laws of Congress allow to the chief clerks of the respective respec-tive branches of the Legislatuo 6 per a day I find an assistant chief clerk and assistant enrolling clerk in each of the said branches four in ali at a salary of 20 for said forty days service making 18 per day being just thre a times the per diem allowed by law to a the honorable members This certainly a seems to have been an extraordinary display of Legislative liberality especially espe-cially as In view of the fact that there is nothing whatever in the documents before be-fore me to show that said clerks made a any division of their salaries with their fi munificent benefactors It further appears ap-pears that the higher branch of the Legislature although consisting of only twelve members employed no less than nineteen committee clerks at salaries ranging from 360 to 510 each These salaries amounted to 9 per day and 350 per day It further appears that the said Legislature appropriated 307050 to pay for newspapers news-papers for the use of its members there being thirtysix members all told This amounted to a little over S5 per member mem-ber being upwards of 2 per day each The United States statute is explicit that no appropriation shaH be made by which members or officers ofthe Leigis lature are paid any compensation other than that provided by Congress and yet the Legislature in this law proceeded pro-ceeded to appropriate HO for each member of the lower house and 90for each member of the higher |