Arizona education group talks tax increases

A nonprofit education organization is unveiling a proposal to increase Arizona sales and property taxes to fund an additional $1.5 billion for education.

The Helios Foundation, a nonprofit focused on education initiatives in Arizona and Florida, convened a group of community leaders to develop a longterm funding solution for education. Paul Luna, president and CEO of Helios, said the conversations began informally around the time the #RedForEd teacher movement picked up steam in 2018.

“One of the things that we didn’t feel we had in place on behalf of our state and on behalf of education was an education funding strategy, or a real vision for how we wanted to fund education over a long period of time,” Luna said.

He said “a number of ” different individuals and organizations asked Helios to host a group of community leaders to talk funding. The group included Jim Swanson, CEO of construction

company Kitchell, Mark Joraanstad with Arizona School Administrators, Chris Camacho, president of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, and Ron Shoopman with the Arizona Board of Regents.

The proposal is meant to start the funding conversation, Luna said. The organization intends to gather more input from communities around the state before determining what to put on the 2020 ballot.

“Nobody is saying, ‘This is the answer,’ ”he said. “It was intended to be a framing document to say, ‘We’ve been having conversations, and it’s been informed by economists.’ “

Helios’ proposal is one of several, including the #RedForEd-backed #InvestInEd proposal, that could land on the 2020 ballot. With another contender in the ring, it’s even more likely that voters will consider some kind of tax increase for education in 2020.

What would a tax increase look like?

Luna said several economists helped develop the preliminary tax proposal.

It would:

❚ Raise the state sales tax rate by 0.4 cents to generate $500 million more for education. This would be a separate revenue stream from the money that comes in for education from Prop. 301.

❚ Raise residential property taxes by $1.60 per $100 of assessed value. This would mean a tax increase of $1,600 for a house with an assessed value of $100,000.

Here’s where the money would go each year:

❚ $1 billion to Arizona’s K-12 public district and charter school system.

❚ $300 million to Arizona universities.

❚ $100 million to community colleges.

❚ $100 million to early education to expand access to high-quality child care for low-income families.

Those figures are not finalized, Luna said.

“We’re now going out and talking with individuals and other organizations in the community to get a sense of what impact would that have,” he said. “What effect does that have on companies and corporations? And is that a reasonable amount to consider? And if not, what’s the more reasonable amount?”

Would Arizonans pay more?

Earlier this year, a Republican lawmaker’s proposed sales tax increase failed to pick up enough steam for the state Legislature to refer it to the ballot.

Sen. Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake, wanted to ask voters in 2020 to increase the education sales tax rate to one penny, from its current 0.6 cents, in a bid to raise about $400 million more annually for Arizona K-12 schools and higher education.

#InvestInEd, the measure knocked off the 2018 ballot by the Arizona Supreme Court, proposed to raise income taxes on high earners to bring in an estimated additional $690 million a year in public school funding.

Joe Thomas, president of the Arizona Education Association, wrote in a text message that he believed #InvestInEd was the right proposal and that it was “taken away from the voters.”

He said he had not seen enough about Helios’ proposal to take a stance on it.

“Our schools need a significant investment and we can only put a question in front of the voters every two years,” Thomas wrote. “It has to be the right question or we’ve wasted an opportunity and end up making our students wait longer for resources they need to be successful.”

Luna said the goal is to have that conversation and develop the right question.

“At the end of the day, for the most part, there’s an agreement that we all want to more significantly and better fund education and invest in education,” he said.