Foes sue over ed funding measure

Opponents: Effort is ‘false and misleading’

The leader of the campaign opposing Arizona’s education income-tax proposal has filed a lawsuit in an attempt to kick the measure off the November ballot.

The lawsuit alleges the education effort was “materially false and misleading.”

In his complaint, Jaime Molera, chairman of the Arizonans for Great Schools and a Strong Economy committee, accused #InvestInEd campaign leaders of essentially misstating how many people would be affected by

the proposed tax increase, and by how much.

Molera’s group is backed by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Joshua Buckley, a Mesa teacher and the #InvestInEd campaign’s chairman, dismissed the complaint as “a baseless lawsuit attempting to prevent Arizonans from voting on this sustainable funding source for our children’s classrooms.”

The Arizona Secretary of State’s Office is reviewing the 270,000 signatures — nearly double the amount required — the #InvestInEd campaign said it collected for the proposed ballot measure.

The #InvestInEd measure would bring in $690 million in additional funds for Arizona public and charter schools.

It proposes a raise in income-tax rates of 3.46 percentage points, to 8 percent, on individuals who earn more than $250,000 or households that earn more than $500,000. It also would raise individual rates by 4.46 percent, to 9 percent, for individuals who earn more than $500,000 and households that earn more than $1 million.

Currently, both levels of income are taxed at the highest state bracket of 4.54 percent. So, under Arizona’s graduated tax, an individual who makes $750,000 now pays about $33,000 in state income taxes. Under the #InvestInEd proposal, the individual would pay about $53,000.

The complaint’s allegations against the #InvestInEd measure include:

❚ WORDING: The lawsuit alleges that the petitions were misleading because they refer to the proposed tax rate increase as a “percent” increase and not the more accurate “percentage point” increase. According to the complaint, the tax rate would see a 76 and 78 percent increase, not a 3.46 and 4.46 percent increase.

❚ DISCLOSURE: Not disclosing the initiative would repeal a separate tax law and “over time raise income taxes on all Arizona taxpayers in every income bracket,” according to the complaint.

❚ SIGNATURES: Not indicating in the designated spot on the forms which petition gatherers for #InvestInEd were paid and which were volunteers.

“The drafters of this initiative were either sloppy, or deceptive,” Molera said in a statement announcing the complaint. “Unfortunately, we now must go to court to ensure that this poorly-drafted, misleading initiative does not appear on the November ballot.”

Buckley fired back at the lawsuit in his own statement.

“The Chamber’s assertion that the Invest in Education initiative eliminates tax indexing is ridiculous and flies in the face of a plain reading of the initiative,” Buckley said. “Invest In Ed will result in no tax increase for taxable incomes less than a quarter million dollars. The Chamber’s analysis to the contrary is plainly false.”