Poll: Voters would pay higher taxes for schools

Arizona needs a plan with Prop. 301 expiring in 2021

In a new poll of Arizona voters, a majority of those surveyed said the state should spend more money on education — and more than half indicated they’d be willing to pay higher taxes to do so.

The poll, released by the public school advocacy group Stand for Children Arizona, sets the groundwork for a legislative conversation on Proposition 301, which currently designates six-tenths of a cent per dollar in sales taxes to education. The tax is set to expire in 2021.

The Legislature convenes its 2017 session Jan. 10, and Gov. Doug Ducey is expected to reveal his agenda for the year in his Jan. 9 State of the State address. Ducey has said education funding will be a priority, but has offered no details.

Moore Information conducted the poll of 500 Arizona voters, doing live cellphone and landline phone interviews Dec. 5-7. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

77 percent indicated the state should spend more money on schools.

61 percent indicated they would support a tax increase to provide additional funding for education.

65 percent indicated they would support increasing the Prop. 301 sales tax, which funds education, to a full penny. That would bring in an estimated $400 million more a year.

“A lot of people thought that after Prop. 123, everyone would be tired of education funding,” said Stand for Children Arizona Executive Director Rebecca Gau. “But across the board, people know we need to be spending more on schools.”

She said the poll results show an even higher interest in education as the state’s top priority than there was before voters passed Prop. 123.

“There’s an even greater interest in increasing spending, and in potentially using a sales tax to do that,” she said. “We were actually pretty surprised with those results. It does provide a really important temperature of voters across the state.”

The poll results reflect similar results found in a September Arizona Republic/Morrison/Cronkite News poll in which 74 percent of registered voters polled said the state is spending “too little” on K-12 public education.

Gau said her organization is focused on pushing Ducey and the Legislature to propose a new Prop. 301 this session to take to voters.