KJZZ’s Friday NewsCap revisits some of the biggest stories of the week from Arizona and beyond.
To talk about the budget work going on at the Arizona Capitol, the report from the U.S. Justice Department on the Phoenix Police Department and more, The Show sat down with former state schools superintendent Jaime Molera of Molera Alvarez and Democratic strategist Tony Cani.
Conversation highlights
MARK BRODIE: Some white smoke came out of the nonexistent chimneys of the Capitol. We have a budget. There was some work in the Appropriations Committee yesterday in both the House and Senate. Jaime, looks like they might be good to go to get this thing passed with a couple weeks to spare before the end of the fiscal year.
JAIME MOLERA: Yeah, looks like some movement was made last night, particularly in shoring up some of the Democrat votes that they’re going to need. Because they’re going to need to have a bipartisan budget. They’re not going to be able to get all the Republicans on and certainly won’t be able to get all the Democrats on. But I think with the compromises that were made last night, it should be good to go.
I just got to say it’s amazing. This process is just a horrible process. Basically we could have done this three months ago, the exact same budget. But the games that are played and the silliness that’s done is just incredible how it took them this long to get this product.
BRODIE: Tony, as Jaime said, you’ll get some Democrats, some Republicans both in favor and opposed. Would you imagine that those that are voting for it are the people in both parties that are maybe closer to the middle, as opposed to people on the outer fringes of each party?
TONY CANI: I think that’s probably going to be the case, but I couldn’t tell you that by looking at the individual members and how they’re going to vote. Because I think that one thing that is going to happen is if it does look like there’s enough votes for this to pass, there’s going to be members on both the Republican side and the Democrat side who are going to be willing to vote no in order to sort of make a statement about some of the specific things in the budget that they don’t like.
And so that’s some of the game that’s being played here is that I think that there’s a commitment to try and get the budget passed, and now some of the people are going to try and look. And perhaps it’s a major issue in their campaign. They think there should be more restrictions on ESAs and they don’t like what’s coming out of this. They don’t think this is enough.
Some of those Democrats might be voting no, even though I suspect if their vote was needed for passage, perhaps they would switch over.
BRODIE: I want to ask you about the ESAs specifically because Governor Hobbs has made that an issue in both of her State of the State speeches, both her budget proposals. She teased a little bit earlier this week that there could be some guardrails on ESAs coming out. And in the language, yes, there are some things dealing with ESAs, but it seems like a lot of Democrats say, “Where’s the beef?” Right?
CANI: I think it’s because there needs to be more reform on this program. Frankly I’m not a supporter of ESAs. If I was, I would think there should be reform to the program, because if there aren’t reforms, this program could end up going away, because I think it’s getting more and more unpopular with voters.
In my opinion, really the only way to get the kind of changes that are necessary in that most of the Democrats support and that the governor supports is if Democrats take control of the Legislature. And so I think that’s really what’s going on. Because you’re just not going to get that stuff through with this Legislature and with this Republican Party.
BRODIE: Jaime, the changes to ESAs have been described — not by me, but by people at the Capitol — as sort of around the margins, doing things like making sure that students who are in public schools don’t apply for an ESA for something over the summer then go back to public school, things like that — so “double dipping.”
What’s in there? Is that the most do you think that the governor and legislative Democrats could get out of Republicans in terms of ESA changes?
MOLERA: Well, I disagree a little bit with what the Republicans did in their approach, where they had a “heck no” on any kind of reforms for ESAs. And then they’ve since modified a little bit, where there’s a couple of tweaks that are going to be made in order to get this budget done.
But I think ESAs are very, very popular. And I think people, by and large, like to have the opportunity to say, “I want to put my student or my kid in an education environment that meets their needs.” But having said that, I think there have been some abuses, and there have been some, bad things that have gone on. And reforming those kinds of things has absolute merit.
Had they done that, I think it would lessen the opportunity if the Democrats are able to either get control or get more power — after this next election, where there’s a good chance, particularly in the Senate — then they would have been able to mollify and say, “Look, we’ve made these kinds of changes already. Let them play out for a while.”
The same thing happened with charter school reform years ago, same exact process. So I think that they’re running the risk of not doing anything but then facing much bigger, more draconian reforms if the Democrats get control.
KJZZ’s The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ’s programming is the audio record.
