Voucher measure headed to voters
Referendum will be on 2018 ballot
A coalition of parents and public-education advocates gathered enough signatures to let voters decide whether Arizona moves forward with or rejects a massive expansion of the state’s school voucher program.
Save Our Schools Arizona needed 75,321 valid signatures to refer the measure to the November 2018 ballot. State and county election officials have been poring over the more than 100,000 signatures turned in weeks ago by the large volunteer group.
On Tuesday, Maricopa County certified its batch of signatures and concluded the group had a success rate of nearly 87 percent. Three counties still need to report their numbers, but regardless of the outcome in those counties, the referendum effort was successful, said Eric Spencer, the state elections director.
“Absent what happens in court, it is guaranteed to make the ballot,” Spencer told The Arizona Republic. “At this point, I see an 87 percent state wide verification rate, and it only needed to get 70 percent in order to make the ballot ... It’s a mathematical guarantee it will make the ballot, absent what happens in court.”
The referendum will be known as Proposition 305. The expansion of the Empowerment Scholarship Account program was supposed to go into effect in August but was put on hold pending the outcome of the referendum effort. Barring a loss in court, it will remain on hold until November 2018.
Gov. Doug Ducey, who whipped votes to expand the program last legislative session, and Republican state Sen. Debbie Lesko, of Peoria, who sponsored the measure, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
J.D. Mesnard, speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, said, “All options are on the table” for how to move forward. Mesnard, a Chan---
dler Republican, said he has not talked with Lesko, the Governor’s Office or other expansion supporters about how to move forward.
Now that Save Our Schools Arizona has met the signature threshold, he said he expects those discussions will begin.
“At this point, everything’s on the table ... whether that’s a repeal, whether that’s going ahead and letting it go to the ballot, whether it’s a repeal and replace,” Mesnard said. “I just don’t know what we would do. One school of thought is you let it go to the ballot, and I think we win.”
Supporters of the expanded Empowerment Scholarship Account program have filed two lawsuits in Maricopa County Superior Court an effort to thwart a referendum. One of the lawsuits was dropped on Friday. The other lawsuit remains and centers on petition language and signature-gathering activities by Save Our Schools Arizona volunteers.
SB 1431 made all 1.1 million Arizona students eligible to apply for the voucher program, which grants tax dollars to parents for private-school tuition or other education expenses. While broadening eligibility, the bill capped the number of recipients of the Empowerment Scholarship Account program at 30,000 by 2022.
Prior to expansion — which Ducey and GOP lawmakers narrowly muscled through the Legislature in April — the program had been limited to certain students, including those with special needs, from military families, or in poorperforming schools.
Supporters of expanding the program say it gives parents more options for their children’s education. Opponents say the program lacks financial accountability and takes money from public schools while giving it to private and religious schools. Three months ago, when Save Our Schools Arizona announced its intentions to overturn the school-voucher law, they were given little chance at success by the state’s political establishment.
Save Our Schools Arizona spokeswoman Dawn Penich-Thacker said that the group proved it could mount a serious challenge to the political establishment — even without the support of monied interests.
“The state — the people of Arizona — have had enough,” she said. “They see it. They feel it when their public schools are cut and cut and cut. The timing was right. People are fed up.”
Penich-Thacker said that for years, the governor and the Legislature have said they support public schools while cutting funding and promoting the voucher-like ESA program. She said some petitioners and volunteers opposed using public money for private schools, some thought more money should go into public schools, while others were against public money going to religious schools.
“Vouchers just wrap it all up in one bad package,” she said.
Cochise, Yavapai and Yuma counties have until Monday to turn in their signature certifications to the Secretary of State’s Office. State elections officials then have 72 hours to make a final determination as to whether the referendum effort was successful.
But, said Spencer, “All the documents have been created. We just need to fill in the final numbers. The only other step is us notifying the governor, but that’s a robotic exercise.”
Kim Martinez, spokeswoman for American Federation for Children, a “dark money” group that lobbied for the expansion of the voucher program, wrote in an email that Save Our Schools Arizona’s validity rate is “immaterial.”
The real fight, she said, will be in court over her group’s assertions of improper signature-gathering activities. She referenced “video that’s popping up of multiple SOS petition circulators who were caught misleading voters.”
Martinez added, “For these reasons, we know this is an issue that will have to be determined in court by a judge.”
SOS Arizona officials have called the assertions “baseless.”
Richard Herrera, an Arizona State University associate professor of political science, said the fact that a volunteer group was able to gather an impressive number of signatures during the hot summer, when many in the Valley are out of town, should make the Legislature and the governor think about how popular the voucher program is.
“This should serve as a wake-up call,” Herrera said.
Follow Wingett Sanchez on Twitter @yvonnewingett and reach her at yvonne.wingett@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4712. Follow O’Dell on Twitter @robodellaz and reach him at rob.odell@arizonarepublic.com.