Three ways lawmakers could help Arizonans
Unemployed, renters and schools seek relief
The Arizona Legislature has not met in more than six months, and in that time nearly 10,000 Arizonans are dead from COVID-19. The unemployment rate is at its highest level in at least eight years.
Many legislators are eager to get back to the Capitol, but not necessarily to address those issues.
Instead, plenty remain focused on President Donald Trump’s defeat in the election and are urging changes to the state’s election process — or reversing the results altogether.
Others are looking to pick up the unfinished business of the last session, which was cut short by the pandemic, scuttling a range of legislation. The state is also on track to end the fiscal year with a surplus, a prospect that bucks forecasts from the start of the pandemic.
Still, for many Arizonans, COVID-19 and its economic impact remain perhaps the most tangible and immediate issues that legislators could address when they reconvene on Monday for their 2021 session.
The Legislature remains narrowly divided between Republicans and Democrats, and lawmakers’ responses to the pandemic could not differ more radically. Some have mocked mea
sures to stop the spread of COVID-19, and the disease has nearly killed other legislators.
While a few Republicans have called for lifting the emergency order Gov. Doug Ducey instituted at the start of the pandemic and, in turn, ending some of the public health precautions that have been in place around Arizona, Democrats have called for more precautions, such as a statewide mask mandate and measures such as an extended eviction moratorium.
Amid the rancor, there are a few areas — such as aid for the unemployed, funding for schools and assistance for renters — where the Legislature can take steps to support needs that have emerged during the pandemic in Arizona.
While they still involve what often are hot-button political issues, these proposals could muster interest from both sides of the aisle.
Help for unemployment insurance
At $240 a week, Arizona’s maximum unemployment insurance benefit is among the lowest in the country. Democrats have called for raising that limit, but the idea has met concerns about straining the state’s unemployment insurance trust fund, among other objections.
One potential compromise might be to not increase the payments but instead increase the amount of money recipients can earn on the side without seeing their benefits cut.
Under current law, anyone receiving unemployment insurance who makes more than $30 a week sees their payment cut dollar for dollar for what they earned over that limit.
Critics argue this eliminates assistance to tens of thousands of Arizonans and means that those receiving unemployment insurance might lose all of their weekly payment if they take a part-time gig to make ends meet.
If the cap were lifted to $160 a week, as some propose, a minimum wage employee working 31 hours a week would still qualify for about $68 in unemployment insurance under the 2020 rate. And for now, the federal government would add $300 a week to the payment.
The Grand Canyon Institute estimated last year raising the cap to that level would cost the state about $5 million, which proponents argue is a small price for the help it could provide for those behind on rent or struggling on sharply reduced hours.
Rep. Mitzi Epstein, D-Tempe, said she is working on legislation to raise the cap to the threshold.
Epstein argued the change would boost the amount of money Arizonans could make each week and provide a better incentive for workers to take part-time work.
“The longer a person is not employed, the less likely they are to get a job,” she said. “If you give people an adequate amount in their payments, they can pay their rent, make their car payments.”
Raising the cap to $160 a week would still leave it lower than many other states. Georgia, for example, raised its cap to $300 a week in the early months of the pandemic.
Epstein also said she will sponsor legislation to raise the maximum unemployment insurance payment amount from $240 a week to $350 a week. Epstein said she would prefer to raise the cap to $500, but the lower amount may be more politically feasible and would equal the rate of North Carolina.
Still, lawmakers are raising concerns about the swift depletion of the unemployment insurance trust fund, making unlikely any changes that might add further costs.
Gov. Doug Ducey signaled Friday, though, that he might be open to changes that could incentivize those out of work to take a job.
“As we come through the pandemic and now we’re starting to get these vaccines into people’s arms and headed back to normal, I want to make sure that anything that we do in public policy incents people to work in the state of Arizona and doesn’t pay people to stay home when there’s a job available,” he said in an interview.
“So if people want to talk about policy around that, those are things I’m going to engage in. But just to raise a dollar number for an unnecessary reason is not something that’s a priority.”
Online education hurting districts
School districts and charter schools faced a $266 million funding shortfall as of mid-December because the state funds distance learning — which many have turned to during the pandemic — at a lower rate than in-person learning.
School funding is calculated per student. Ducey issued an order in June declaring students participating in distance learning would be counted as enrolled in online instructional programs, a pre-pandemic system of online schooling. But under state law, online school students are funded at a rate of 5% less than in-person students.
Meanwhile, Arizona school budgets also were hit when an estimated 50,000 fewer students than usual enrolled last year.
Together, the changes amount to a one-two punch for school finances.
Federal funds will fill part of the gap, but not all of it. The problem may seem like a possible wash if schools face lower bills for some expenses that come from opening campuses every day. But legislators say it is not so simple.
“Our expenses have gone up, not down, with virtual learning,” said Sen. Lela Alston, a Democrat from Phoenix who also is president of the governing board of the Phoenix Union High School District.
Some districts need to furnish students with devices for distance learning or provide access to the internet. Teachers also need training to conduct lessons using equipment and programs some don’t have experience using.
Lawmakers have raised concerns about adjusting the funding levels, though.
“Doing so probably incentivizes not doing in-person learning,” said Sen.-elect T.J. Shope, a Republican from Coolidge and a former member of the Coolidge
Unified School District governing board.
Shope said he would not support financially penalizing districts that have adjusted over the past year to virtual learning but is cooler to proposals of a permanent, prospective change in funding levels that he suggested could encourage making virtual learning a long-term arrangement.
Expanding housing assistance
More than 31,000 households have applied for rental assistance through a state program. Only 3,108 households, about 10%, had received aid as of Friday.
While Ducey launched the program in March with an initial $5 million and supplemented it with more funds, the slow distribution of that money has frustrated applicants and confounded lawmakers.
“It’s a black box at this point,” Alston said.
Even as the program is slow to roll out funding, the demand could easily outstrip the available cash. Ducey set up the fund with an initial $5 million in March and added $2 million in October.
Nearly 4,600 applications were under review at the end of December.
If only half of those applications were approved and given the average amount of aid, the fund could easily be exhausted within a few months.
And the need would remain.
While the federal government has extended a moratorium on evictions at properties with federally backed mortgages, lawmakers still expect an increase in people living on the streets or moving in with family.
Arizona renters owe at least $178 million to their landlords, and as many as 250,000 renters could be facing eviction, according to the National Council of State Housing Agencies.
All of this is likely to renew interest in setting aside more funding for housing assistance.