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Winter visitors who spend weeks, if not months, at the iconic Lost Dutchman State Park don’t understand why Arizona would sacrifice tourism revenue to cut the $3.2 billion state deficit anticipated in the coming fiscal year.

Plans to close the park – the closest state park to Mesa — on June 3 have left visitors wondering if it will reopen and whether they will have to go someplace else next winter, taking their money with them.

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Lost Dutchman, the state’s eighth most popular park and the closest to the East Valley, lost $9,545 in fiscal year 2008-2009. The biggest loser was Oracle State Park near Tucson, which lost $253,262. In contrast, popular Slide Rock State Park near Sedona turned a $254,249 profit.

But Stephen Filipowicz, Apache Junction’s economic development director, said the Arizona State Parks Department estimates that Lost Dutchman generates $4 million a year in tourism revenues each year.

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So while the park costs the state $10k to operate, it brings in $4 million in tourist revenue to the surrounding community. But because it didn’t break even on its operating expenses, the tax-obsessed clown posse at the state lege is shutting the park down.

I swear. The sheer lunacy in this kind of thinking is so surreal. Not only are they shutting down a beautiful state park that provides entertainment and recreation for tens of thousands of people in the state in order to save $10k in operating expenses, they are throwing away millions of dollars in tourist revenue in the process. This is the party of fiscal responsibility at work in our state.