Doug Ducey, the inbox governor
This election, voters will be presented at least three images of Doug Ducey’s tenure as governor.
The Ducey campaign will depict him as a conservative hero who rescued the state. In the primary, Ken Bennett will depict Ducey as an apostate from the Trump agenda. And during the general election, Democrats will depict Ducey as a lying, thieving, uncaring, out-of-touch vermin.
None of these depictions will be worth much to voters deciding whether to renew Ducey’s contract for another four years. In making that decision, the best way to think of Ducey is as an inbox governor. He deals with stuff as it comes up.
That’s not the way Ducey presented himself to voters in 2014. In that campaign, he ran as a conservative reformer. Income taxes would be cut as close to zero as possible. The school-finance formula would be revamped to get better performance from existing dollars. School governance would be revolutionized to empower principals and promote school choice. Waiting lists for highperforming charter schools and district programs would be funded.
None of this happened. In most cases, there wasn’t even much of an effort.
In fact, Ducey ended up raising taxes. He signed a new per vehicle highway safety fee that will raise $182 million a year when fully implemented. Ducey will claim that it is a fee, so doesn’t count as a violation of his “no tax increase” pledge. But, through various accounting contortions, over $100 million of it ends up improving the status of the general fund, by relieving costs and increasing revenue, just as a general tax hike would.
Instead of pursuing a conservative reform agenda, Ducey ended up spending four years dealing with the stuff that showed up in his inbox.
Ducey inherited a general-fund deficit of around $1 billion. That resolved through additional budget cuts and some temporizing measures. State finances were put on semi steady footing.
He inherited a lawsuit over inflation funding for K-12 education. He negotiated a settlement that involved a deeper draw for education from the state land trust. Voters narrowly approved it, as Proposition 123, in a special election.
School shootings provoked a public outcry and a student movement. Ducey put together a school-safety program that, in the end, couldn’t navigate the treacherous politics of gun control.
A decade of frustration over cuts to K-12 education erupted with a teachers strike and #RedforEd. Ducey tore up his proposed budget and advocated a massive increase in state funding for education, earmarked for teacher pay.
The Legislature ended up approving the amount, but reducing the earmark to a statement of intention. School districts appear to be honoring the intention by approving large increases in teacher salaries.
The extent to which, under the Ducey program, funding for K-12 education will be restored to pre-recession levels has yet to sink in.
In 2015, according to the Legislature’s budget staff, maintenance and operations funding for K-12 education, from state and local sources, was $980 million below pre-recession levels, adjusted for student enrollment and inflation.
Since then, there have been four additional pots of money approved: the Prop. 123 money; the teacher-pay boost; restoration of what’s called “additional assistance”; and a program to provide additional money to high-performing schools.
Next year, additional funding from these sources will total $670 million. By 2023, they are projected to produce an additional $1.3 billion.
To make room for this additional funding, the state budget had to be put back on roller skates. The rest of state government will be on bread-and-water rations. Any hiccup in revenue will put the budget back into red ink.
Now, it’s fair to say, except for resolving the deficit he inherited, that Ducey didn’t set out with the intention of doing any of this. He was reacting to events, not truly setting an agenda for the state.
Reportedly, Ducey will have a second-term agenda on which he plans to campaign. I guess that’s inevitable. Saying you will deal with stuff as it comes up isn’t much of a campaign theme.
Nevertheless, having a competent inbox governor isn’t a bad thing for a state. Stuff that landed in Ducey’s inbox did get handled. Governance can be worse.