Negotiations over Arizona school voucher ballot measures fail after Biggs steps in

Last-minute efforts to craft a deal to avoid a ballot fight over vouchers crumbled late Monday as Republican gubernatorial hopeful Andy Biggs got inserted into the fight.

Senate Minority Leader Priya Sundareshan said she and other Democrat leaders had engaged in good-faith negotiations with House Speaker Steve Montenegro to quash a plan by the Arizona Education Association to ask voters to impose new restrictions on what are formally known as Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. Those range from who is eligible for the vouchers – about $7,500 a year – to how the cash can be spent.

In exchange, the Republicans would rescind sending three measures disliked by Democrats from the November ballot.

That includes one aimed specifically at impairing the ability of AEA to use public resources, another aimed at penalizing schools who don't spend enough in the classroom, and a third designed to put a measure into the Arizona Constitution to effectively protect vouchers from any voter-approved restrictions.

But that was before Biggs told Republicans that it wasn't a good deal. Instead, he said he preferred a one-for-one trade: no AEA initiative in exchange for dropping the anti-union referendum.

More to the point, GOP leaders fell into line.

"Congressman Biggs has the full weight of the Arizona House and Senate standing with him,'' Montenegro posted Monday.

And if there were any doubt about what that meant, Senate President Warren Petersen followed up an hour later with his own post.

"I support the Biggs plan for a one-for-one ballot measure exchange,'' said the Queen Creek Republican, saying that if the teachers drop their "anti-ESA measure'' the Senate will repeal the ballot proposal aimed at the AEA – and only that referral, not the others.

That, said Sundareshan, a Tucson Democrat, was unacceptable.

She said that, as of late last week, some Democrats were willing to go along with a broader plan proffered by Republicans to shelve the initiative in exchange for Republicans rescinding the three ballot referrals.

What gave Democrats some leverage is the fact that lawmakers formally adjourned for the year earlier in June.

That meant any change – including withdrawing already-approved referenda from the ballot – would require a special session. And that could be convened only with the consent of Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs or a two-third vote of lawmakers in a House and Senate where Republicans have only a small edge.

But all that changed Monday when Montenegro backed out.

That change of heart comes with some risk for Republicans – and not just over the question of whether a vote in November could show there is popular support for the comprehensive changes in vouchers being pushed by the AEA.

House Minority Leader Oscar De Los Santos pointed out that the measure Republicans say is aimed solely at the AEA appears to be crafted in a way that it actually also would affect the ability of unions for police, firefighters and other public employees to negotiate with local and state governments over terms of employment.

The Laveen Democrat already is preparing to explain to voters that, regardless of what they think of teacher unions, they might want to think about supporting this plan.

"The Republicans in charge of the Legislature have decided to throw firefighters, police officers under the bus in order to protect the waste and abuse in the ESA voucher program,'' he said.

And De Los Santos said he knows who to blame.

"It appears that happened when Andy Biggs got involved,'' he said. "And they chose to appease a Washington politician over working in the best interests of Arizona public schools and public safety.”

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs told a similar story, saying there was real momentum for a deal.
"That bipartisan opportunity kind of fell apart when Biggs got involved and said ‘no, you should just trade one for one,’ and that was just not acceptable to anyone," she said.

But Biggs said it is a mischaracterization to say that he inserted himself into already ongoing negotiations. He said that he had been approached by people concerned about the voucher issue about the kinds of deals being considered.

"I didn't necessarily want to insert myself,'' Biggs told Capitol Media Services.

He said all he did was draft a statement.

"People asked me what I thought,'' he said. And he said the best deal would have been the one-for-one tradeoff: AEA drops its initiative in exchange for lawmakers taking the anti-union measure off the ballot, and not "all this other stuff, too.''

Still, his statement became public even as bipartisan negotiations were going on. More to the point, what Biggs was suggesting actually meant Republicans were removing from the table some things they already had promised.

And that, said Sundareshan, is exactly what happened – and why she said Democrats finally concluded that the Republicans were not negotiating in good faith and that it no longer made sense to try to reach a deal with them.

It was also the reason AEA and its allies walked away.

"After Biggs and his extremist allies intervened, their involvement left the Republican caucus divided and unable to negotiate in a serious or constructive way,'' said a statement released by initiative supporters and unions.

"As a result, we are no longer willing to participate in what has become a political circus,'' the statement read. "If Republican leadership cannot present a unified, credible proposal, there is no basis for further discussions."

Supporters of the Protect Education Act are scheduled to turn in their petitions on Wednesday. If election officials determine they have at least 255,949 valid signatures, the measure will go on the ballot.

The measure’s reach is comprehensive.

It contains a specific list of things that parents can not use voucher dollars to obtain, including admission to water parks, home swimming pools, international travel, lingerie, jewelry and household appliances. All that follows reporting by KPNX-TV that such purchases have been made.

There also are new restrictions designed to keep voucher recipients from saving up unused voucher funds from year-to-year and applying the dollars for college.

And potentially the most sweeping provision would deny vouchers to any child from a family making more than $150,000 a year.

It was that language that apparently caused concern among Republicans to the point that earlier this month they were willing to make a deal. They would enact some guardrails around voucher spending – but not the income cap in exchange for the AEA dropping its initiative.

GOP leaders also were willing to scrap two other measures aimed at the education community.

Another last-minute addition to the November ballot would financially penalize schools that do not use 60 cents out of every dollar received on direct instruction expenses. That is crucial as the average school district spends just 52.1 cents in that area, with the rest taken up by everything from utilities and administration to buying gasoline for buses.

And then GOP lawmakers also put a measure on the ballot to constitutionally protect voucher funds given to students from military families – but with a poison pill to say if approved it would override not just the AEA initiative, but any future voter-approved restrictions on vouchers, no matter how many votes it got.

But the failure to reach a deal also has risks for Democrats.

It means that the AEA will have to spend money to promote its own initiative. And both the AEA and other public employee unions also will need to divert resources to kill the anti-union measure – all money that might otherwise go to trying to reelect Hobbs and wrest control of the Legislature from Republicans.

De Los Santos, however, said he thinks that there is a way to minimize the cost through a coordinated campaign: Tell people to vote for the voucher initiative and against everything else put on the ballot by Republicans.

It also is not a sure thing that all of this will be on the ballot.

Voucher supporters could sue and allege there are insufficient valid signatures on the petitions to allow it to go forward.

Separately, there is a lawsuit designed to knock the anti-union measure off the ballot amid claims that it illegally tries to tie too many unrelated issues together. And a similar challenge has been mounted to the other GOP referral designed to constitutionally block future voucher initiatives.