Republic editorial:
Takeaways from the governor’s speech.
In a New Year’s Day essay in this newspaper, Valley attorney and scholar Grady Gammage, Jr. argued that 2018 may have been a watershed year in Arizona, as the people of this state broke habit and showed up at the polls in droves.
“… They made discerning judgments,” Gammage wrote. “A pragmatic Republican governor was reelected by a wide margin, and yet, those same voters chose a Democrat for United States Senate: A Democrat who said she wanted to ‘get stuff done.’
“Maybe this means electoral politics is becoming more moderate, more focused on results than on scoring philosophical points.”
As if singing from the same hymnal, Gov. Doug Ducey delivered a State of the State address Monday replete with the themes of pragmatism and bipartisanship.
Early in his speech, he said, “I’m not here just to work with Republicans on Republican ideas. And bipartisanship doesn’t simply mean working with Democrats on Democratic ideas. I’m here as governor of all the people to work with all of you on good ideas.”
It was a speech that defied the sharp political divisions of our time, and if it played it safe, it was probably because the last session ended with 50,000 teachers and their friends marching on the Capitol and wringing a massive pay hike out of the governor and Legislature.
After that drama, a reprieve was in order.
So the governor set forth his modest priorities for the year, and in them there were key moments of note. He are four major takeaways worth your attention.
1. Water is king
In his New Year’s Day essay, Gammage argued that Arizonans should look to the water leadership of the past to confront the massive challenges of the future. Water has before united this state in a single purpose, Gammage explained, and that kind of spirit can be summoned again.
Ducey summoned it to the Capitol on Monday, inviting former Democratic Governor Bruce Babbitt and former Republican U.S. Senator Jon Kyl to join the festivities.
The two savants played major roles in our history securing water supply for the future of the state. Their presence gave Ducey the visual context for calling on the Legislature to perform its most important duty – pass the Lower Basin Drought Contingency Plan by the federal deadline of Jan. 31.
Arizona will prove in the next couple of weeks whether it is a reliable regional partner with other states that take water from the Colorado River. Those Western states are called on to help protect Lake Mead from critically low water levels. If they don’t come together, the federal government will decide who gets how much when the water becomes more scarce.
By making the DCP the first priority in his speech, Ducey committed himself to DCP passage. That’s no small risk, in that numerous interests will duel over the details. If the DCP falls apart, Ducey owns its failure. The DCP will not pass without the governor’s aggressive participation.
2. The moment is bipartisan
Governors who vow to work together with all parties are a staple of State of the State addresses. But Ducey started this speech with call for bipartisanship and ended with one:
“Let’s put party labels aside,” he said in closing. “Let’s put Arizona first. Let’s do the things that matter. Let’s get to work.”
Was he calling on our better angels, or was he embracing the emerging zeitgeist? Perhaps he had simply accepted the realities of a more tightly constructed Legislature whose margin of Republicans to Democrats in the House is now at 31 to 29 and whose chambers both picked up more moderates in the 2018 election.
That new geniality was there when he turned to Democratic leadership and said, “I’m looking forward to working together. I think we can all agree, there’s plenty of opportunities to find common ground.”
And again when he touted Safe Arizona Schools to secure public classrooms from gun violence: “This is simply too important an issue to let partisan politics and special interests get in the way.” He then partially credited former Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords for the plan.
Once more he sounded the call to expand the Arizona Teachers Academy by introducing its creator, Fred Duval, his Democratic opponent in the 2014 gubernatorial election.
And he paid tribute to major Democrats (Ed Pastor and Carolyn Warner) and Republicans (John McCain and Carol Springer) who had left this earth in the past year.
While that might have seemed ordinary, he did argue Arizona Republicans and Democrats are committed to shrinking state government, a bit of a stretch that we’re likely to see refuted in the coming battle over the $1 billion budget surplus.
3. Fiscal discipline is still in fashion
Ducey swept into office four years ago during the jobless recovery that followed the Great Recession. He gleefully pointed to the symmetry of starting his first term with a $1 billion deficit and his second with a $1 billion surplus.
This no doubt changes the mood in the state Capitol and means the difference between owning your august chamber and leasing it, but Ducey still talks like the recession of 2007 is still raining on Winged Victory and the copper dome.
“Some have suggested loosen up, let the good times roll,” Ducey said. “Ladies and gentlemen: We’ve seen that movie before, and we know how it ends.”
There will be no spending sprees, he said. “Frankly, for a surplus year, this budget is pretty light reading.”
4. Education funding is sufficient
Staunch conservative lawmaker Sylvia Allen and Republican Senate President Karen Fann are supporting a penny per dollar sales tax to create a more sustainable funding source for public schools and universities.
You wouldn’t know that from Ducey’s speech, which sounded self-satisfied that his 20by2020 pay hike for teachers is adequate and sustainable.
Democrats are planning to fight for their own funding source and #RedForEd leadership has promised to repeat the hoofbeats of 2018 if the governor and Legislature don’t come up with something.
Bipartisanship is more easily expressed in words than executed, and public education is likely to highlight the divisions of the two major parties.
There could be room for agreement, however. The governor pointed to the need for charter-school reform.
“Improvements can be made,” he said. “More transparency, more accountability, and granting more financial review and oversight over taxpayer dollars.”
Alas, expect this policy to also find the limitations of bipartisanship, in that it’s unlikely Republicans and Democrats will agree on just how much charter reform is really necessary.