Last weekend, the Arizona legislature completed its constitutional duty and finally passed a state budget, concluding its business for the year. Looming over the entire process was a budget deficit that needed to be filled—fluctuating from around $1.6 billion to just over $2 billion over the 3-year budgeting period.
Though the left and the media wanted to blame historic tax cuts and landmark school choice expansion for the shortfall, the real problem was record spending that resulted in Arizona’s budget growing by over 50% in the last five years. So, when lawmakers gaveled into session in January, the solution was to right-size state spending. Our organization even provided a roadmap for a successful budget process:
Cut spending to align with current and future funding projections
Don’t raid the rainy-day fund
Don’t use budget gimmicks to balance the sheets
Don’t roll back our school choice programs
Don’t raise taxes
So how did the legislature do? Here is a breakdown of the good and the not so good results from the budget:
For the second year in a row, Republicans protected the state’s historic school choice program from Democrats seeking to regulate or end it.
This past weekend, the Arizona legislature passed the 2024-2025 state budget, adjourning for the session.
House Speaker Ben Toma, who was instrumental in the negotiations and approval of the budget, addressed his caucus’ defense of the Empowerment Scholarship Account program, writing, “I’m most proud of the fact that this budget fully protects the state’s universal Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program which provides educational freedom for Arizona families. Democrats have long vowed to dismantle the program. As the sponsor of the universal expansion of ESAs, I was never going to let that happen. Eligibility for the program is unchanged and we have included several smart, commonsense reforms that improve this popular school choice program and increases accountability.”
✅House Approves Fiscally Conservative State Budget that Trims Government and Protects School Choice
“At a time when Arizonans are having to tighten their financial belts, so is state government. The Arizona House of Representatives has passed a fiscally conservative,… pic.twitter.com/yJRtoKAZqb
— Arizona House Republicans (@AZHouseGOP) June 16, 2024
“What’s not included in the $16.1 billion budget is an elimination of the historic Universal Empowerment Scholarship Accounts program or our School Tuition Organizations program providing tens of thousands of Arizona families the freedom to pick the best schools to meet their children’s unique learning needs,” said Majority Whip Sine Kerr. “We are continuing our commitment to providing every family in the state of Arizona with a quality education, no matter their zip code or economic status. Additionally, we said ‘no’ when Governor Hobbs and Democrats proposed eliminating our Arizona Freedom Schools at our public universities, which are dedicated to civics education and ensuring students are equipped down the road to lead our state to a brighter tomorrow.”
🚨FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Republicans Eliminate Deficit, Increase Border Security Spending, Fully Fund Public Safety, Protect School Choice, Shrink Government in 2024-2025 State Budget
Christine Accurso, one of Arizona’s foremost advocates for the ESA program, shared an update on the state of the program in the aftermath of the legislature’s action with the budget. She said, “For the second year in a row, Governor Hobbs failed to live up to her campaign promise of gutting the Empowerment Scholarship Program. ESA students will see the full funding in the program in 2024-2025 school year… The legislature prioritized parents and students over bureaucratic vendors… “
Governor Hobbs failed to gut the ESA program again!
For a detailed account of what is changing in the ESA program this year, click here to read my recent bulletin:https://t.co/boQtE9gnOp
— Christine Accurso (@ArizonaCatholic) June 16, 2024
Accurso’s comment about Hobbs harkened back to the passage of the 2023-2024 budget process, where the then-first-year governor disappointed Democrat legislators and allied interest groups with her failure to break through a Republican blockade of the ESA program on behalf of Arizona families. Hobbs spent the remainder of 2023 and a good portion of the first half of 2024 taking more overt political swipes at ESAs in, what appeared to be, an attempt to win back favor from her base.
Hobbs may have sensed a renewed crescendo of disappointment and outrage from her side after the budget was passed by the legislature. In her statement about the agreement, Hobbs said, “…I know we still have more work to do. While this bipartisan budget delivers reforms to ESAs, there are not enough. I stand committed to bringing much needed accountability and transparency to the unsustainable ESA program.”
Marisol Garcia, the President of the Arizona Education Association, issued a statement following the latest budget passage, in which she previewed the road ahead for her side as they regroup and try to win Democrat seats for a legislative majority come January. Garcia wrote, “…There’s only so much that pro-education lawmakers can do when they’re outnumbered by an extremist majority. This budget is a call to action – it’s up to us to elect a new legislature this November and start making Arizona a state that works for everyone, not just the wealthy few.”
Save Our Schools Arizona also released a statement to oppose the budget and echoed the sentiments of the Arizona Education Association, stating, “Failing to touch Gov. Ducey’s unaccountable ESA voucher giveaway is an incredibly irresponsible use of taxpayer funds… This budget makes the path forward abundantly clear: No progress can be made for Arizona public schools until the balance of power is shifted at the legislature.”
Read our statement in opposition to the budget passed by the Arizona legislature: pic.twitter.com/WOCZuSut7b
Nobody likes a bully, and yet some people relish playing such a role. Here in Arizona, perhaps no person has taken on that persona quite like Kris Mayes. When she began her political career with the Arizona Corporation Commission, Mayes quickly gained a reputation for bullying other people around, but since becoming Arizona’s Attorney General (AG) in January 2023, she has taken it to a whole other level.
Within months of occupying the AG office, Mayes began using her post to target and investigate the very people and entities she is constitutionally obligated to defend. First in her crosshairs was the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR), a state agency she is legally obligated to represent and provide legal advice to. But because she wants to score political points with her radical environmental allies, she decided to threaten legal action against ADWR unless they provide her with documentation showing that the agency is in compliance with its water management responsibilities.
Mayes then turned around a few weeks later and went after the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program at the Department of Education. In a public tirade, she falsely claimed that the budget agreement that protected universal school choice would bankrupt the state, despite the expenditure data showing that the ESA program actually saves the state money. When that didn’t stop the Republican budget bill from being signed by Governor Hobbs, Mayes doubled down on her ESA assault by threatening legal action against her own client, the Arizona Department of Education, over the program.
And now that she has had more time to get comfortable in office, Mayes is discovering new and creative ways to abuse her power, including collusion and the usage of dirty tactics to target political opponents…
The state spends billions more on wealthy students who attend public schools than through the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA), or universal school choice program, according to a new analysis of federal census data from the Goldwater Institute.
The study released earlier this month culminated data from the last five U.S. Census Bureau Household Pulse Surveys ranging from last year to this year assessing school enrollment types for K-12 children across various household incomes.
The Goldwater Institute found that together, the data revealed that nearly one-third of public school students came from households earning over $100,000, of which about half came from households earning over $150,000.
The study disclosed that the Census data, though aggregated, was limited as general approximations due to coming from sample sizes.
Over 80 percent of children from higher-income households enroll at taxpayer expense in Arizona public schools, at a much higher rate than the ESA funds. About 1.1 million students in all attend public schooling.
Goldwater estimated that the higher rate amounts to anywhere from $2 to $4 billion annually for children from households earning over $100,000, and anywhere from $1 to $2 billion for children from households earning over $150,000.
“[W]hen it comes to funding higher-income students in the public school, the state is being charged specifically for those students, whose collective presence in the public school system does add significant cost to the public school system: both variable and fixed costs, including the necessity to hire additional staff or construct or renovate for larger campuses,” read the report.
The minimum formula funding for one public school student is about $7,500 annually for a baseline. That number rises to $12,200 with the inclusion of other funds like district overrides, bonds, and school facilities funding. The minimum tops out at over $14,700 with the inclusion of federal funding.
By comparison, Goldwater reported that average ESA funds amount to about $7,400. These students also lose out on several sources of fixed and variable costs, such as the Classroom Site Fund, and those funds revert back to the public school system.
Overall, the institute estimated that it costs taxpayers 10 to 20 times more to educate students of wealthy families in public schools than it does for similarly-situated families in the ESA Program.
The Goldwater Institute issued the study on the heels of Governor Katie Hobbs’ January announcement of a budget plan to revoke ESA Program scholarships from nearly 50,000 students.
Aggregated data collected by Goldwater in the course of their research further suggested that about 20 percent of private schoolers came from households with an income under $50,000, while about 50 percent came from households with an income under $100,000.
As for homeschoolers, the institute found that nearly 60 percent of those students hailed from households with income levels under $100,000.
In addition to state and Census Bureau data, the report relied on research from the National Center for Education Statistics, Reason, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
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Everyone knows that political pundits, social media influencers, and the corporate media love a good narrative. And one of their favorites for years has been the claim that Arizona is trending blue—that a demographic shift toward Democrats is inevitable.
This ‘conventional wisdom’ is repeated so often that much of the Republican political class in the state has accepted it as fact. Some are even advising candidates that the only path forward for Republicans is to abandon their conservative principles, embrace center-left policy solutions, and settle for a future of divided government.
But a funny thing about narratives and conventional wisdom: numbers don’t lie, especially those showing party preference when people are registering to vote.
Last month, the Secretary of State updated the statewide voter registration data prior to the Presidential Preference Election. The latest figures show that Republicans are once again the largest voting bloc in Arizona, surpassing Independents by nearly 40,000. This is certainly an important development—especially given all the attention it received on social media when Independent registrations surpassed Republicans last year.
But that’s not the most significant voter registration trend…