Legislature wraps up with tweak to vouchers

Governor signs $13B budget, touts tax cuts

In an ending flourish, the Arizona Legislature closed its annual session on Wednesday with a final debate on private-school vouchers, tweaking the program but rejecting plans to expand it.

As lawmakers were saying their goodbyes, Gov. Doug Ducey signed the $13 billion budget that lawmakers had labored over for the last six weeks — work which led to one of the longest sessions in recent history at 171 days.

The education bill was the last major policy piece lawmakers had to reconcile, as the Senate version called for an expansion of the voucher program, while the House excluded it.

The result was a last-minute change targeted at children who already qualify for the program to more easily apply for an empowerment scholarship account. The voucher program allows a portion of the public school dollars intended for the child to go to a scholarship account that they can use for private-school tuition, tutoring and other learning programs outside the public-school system.

The compromise calmed fears that lawmakers would push for a major expansion by adding new categories of students eligible for the program. But it did little to silence voucher opponents, who said the moves show a continued commitment by the Republican-led Legislature to expanding the program, which they say would further erode support for public schools.

Rep. Michelle Udall, R-Mesa, noted the change to House Bill 2898 will not increase the number of scholarship accounts. State records show about 10,000 students in the program today, and Udall said, “That number would not change.”

But Democrats saw the insistence on reviving the voucher issue hours before they wrapped their session as a sign the debate will continue.

“This is what we are doing, defund

“Today I’m proud to sign a budget that delivers for Arizonans. Each and every Arizona taxpayer, no matter their income, will experience a tax cut under our historic tax reform.”

Gov. Doug Ducey

ing public education,” said Sen. Jamescita Peshlakai, D-Window Rock.

The move to adjourn sine die — the Latin phrase for “without a day” — was punctuated by emotional comments from House Speaker Rusty Bowers, RMesa, who choked back tears as he described the distractions he faced in his duties while grappling with his daughter’s illness and death earlier this year.

Ducey’s office celebrated the session’s achievements, from a $1.3 billion tax package that cuts the personal income rate for all taxpayers to increased funding for roads, water security and child care, among others.

“Today I’m proud to sign a budget that delivers for Arizonans,” Ducey said in a released statement. “Each and every Arizona taxpayer, no matter their income, will experience a tax cut under our historic tax reform.”

Despite fears a year ago that the COVID-19 pandemic would wreck the state’s finances, Arizona’s government has enjoyed a surplus estimated to range between $2 billion and $4 billion.

Ducey also touted provisions in the budget to pay off nearly $1 billion in debt and $1 billion in pension liabilities as well as $100 million for wildfire prevention, $50 million in student disability aid and $13 million to equip the department of public safety officers with body cameras.

But the spending plan also included a long list of provisions that have little to do with the budget — many of which legislators crammed in at the last minute — such as a ban on local governments adopting certain public health precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and curbing the authority of the Democratic secretary of state.

Other last-minute additions to the budget either revived separate legislation that did not have the support to pass on its own or that seemed to come out of nowhere.

The budget, for example, includes $500,000 for an investigation of social media companies after one lawmaker was banned from Twitter.

And Democrats called the budget a missed opportunity, arguing more of the surplus should have gone towards education and infrastructure rather than to tax cuts that will mostly help wealthier Arizonans.

“Arizona is a politically purple state with a $2 billion surplus,” said House Minority Leader Reginald Bolding, DLaveen. “We had a once-in-a-generation opportunity to step up in a bipartisan way and make a real difference for a state hit hard by the pandemic and a state that remains plagued by chronically underfunded schools, prolonged drought, inadequate healthcare, a lack of affordable housing and mounting infrastructure needs. The Republican budget squanders that opportunity.”

Tweaks to voucher program

The 229-page education bill contained myriad changes to Arizona’s school system, from restrictions on classroom lessons that delve into critical race theory to more funding for special-education classes. But on Wednesday, that was overshadowed by the renewed debate on vouchers.

An amendment from Sen. Paul Boyer, R-Glendale, removed the requirement that children who want to apply for the program and who are eligible for the free or reduced lunch program must wait until they’ve spent at least 45 school days in a D or F-rated school. With the change, those children don’t have to attend a low-performing school; they just need to live within the boundaries of one.

Boyer, like his fellow Republicans, said the change will help children who need it the most, and criticized Democrats who said the public schools need more investment.

“When will it ever be enough to allow poor and minority students to leave schools that are failing them?” he said, noting the $6.7 billion in the budget directed to education, as well as $5 billion in federal money — much of it one-time spending.

In the House, Udall said the changes she, Boyer and others negotiated won her over. Last week, she joined with two other Republicans to defeat the voucher expansion.

“This is a focus on helping low-income kids who live within D and F school areas,” Udall said.

The amendment further lowers the wait time for all other eligible children (such as foster children, or the siblings of students already in the ESA program) to 45 days from the current requirement that the student must spend the first 100 days of the previous school year in a public school in order to get an ESA.

This bill changes it to a 45-day period in any year, including the current one, making it much easier for children to leave public school for the ESA program. In addition, private schools and school choice advocates could recruit children to leave public school for a publiclyfunded private school in the same school year.

Beth Lewis, executive director of Save Our Schools Arizona, said she was grateful public-education supporters and the RedforEd movement was able to stave off a major voucher expansion.

But she criticized other parts of the measure.

“I think people would be surprised you can keep your rolled-over savings for four years,” she said, referring to a provision that allows a student to spend money in their account until they graduate from college or for four years after high-school graduation.

Lewis condemned lawmakers who continue to hold up children living in poverty as the rationale for expanding the voucher program. Instead, she said, lawmakers should put more money into schools in low-income areas.

Udall said Ducey has promised to put $20 million into those very schools, using federal dollars.

Higher lawmaker pay gets OK

The last day of the legislative session came with a flurry of efforts to pass a few bills before lawmakers adjourned, even as legislators seemed unsure when — or even if — their session would ever actually end.

The House gave its final approval to raise the daily allowance for lawmakers outside Maricopa County, for example.

Currently, those lawmakers get $60 a day and that sum is cut after the 120th day of the session.

If House Bill 2053 were law today, those lawmakers would earn a daily stipend based on the per diem rates determined by the federal government’s General Services Administration. For Phoenix, that amounts to $151 for lodging and $56 for meals and incidentals.

Lawmakers from outside Maricopa County backed the measure, arguing the current rate forces many of them to dip into their personal finances to cover the costs of housing and other expenses during the session.

Legislators also receive annual salaries of $24,000, but raising those salaries requires support from voters. And voters have repeatedly rejected past proposed increases.

In other action, the Senate shot down a proposal to impose stricter penalties for damaging or tampering with a monument. House Bill 2552 comes after a man doused in red paint on a monument to Confederate troops that stood outside the state Capitol (the state eventually removed the monument after years of requests that it do so).

Also on Wednesday, the Senate blocked a proposed constitutional amendment that would have required the governor to call legislators into session within 10 days of declaring a state of emergency. Backers argued the measure would give the Legislature more oversight and a chance to end a state of emergency after Ducey imposed several public health precautions last year to prevent the spread of COVID-19, rankling many Republican lawmakers.

Senate Concurrent Resolution 1003 would have required approval from voters in 2022 at the end of Ducey’s last term but will not reach the ballot.

One provision of the budget leaves open the prospect that lawmakers could be back at the Capitol soon, however.

The budget establishes a committee to receive the results of the Senate-ordered review of Maricopa County ballots cast in last year’s general election. Comprising the Senate Government Committee, the committee is tasked with coming up with recommendations based on the results — including calling for a special session to act on those recommendations.

It is up to Ducey, however, to decide whether to bring lawmakers back to the Capitol after what already was a lengthy regular session.