Public school advocates and Republican lawmakers are publicly battling over private school vouchers with competing ballot measures, while lawmakers behind the scenes are discussing making a deal in a special legislative session.
Public education advocates are pushing a ballot measure to put guardrails on vouchers.
GOP lawmakers countered by adding their own measure to the ballot which would invalidate that.
They also added measures which would limit teacher union activity and restrict school spending options.
The education advocates filed a legal challenge against the Republican measure on Wednesday.
Now, lawmakers are considering making a deal with the Arizona Education Association — the public teacher’s union — to take all the competing measures off the ballot in exchange for lawmakers putting guardrails on vouchers themselves.
A similar agreement failed earlier in the legislative session.
“Details still in discussion. Dems are interested in blocking the chaotic and vaguely drafted Republican referrals that were hastily sent to the ballot on the last day of session,” Sen. Priya Sundareshan (D-Tucson) said in a text on Thursday.
Sen. T.J. Shope (R-Coolidge) said GOP lawmakers had a meeting Thursday to talk about the deal, but said the ball is in Democrats’ court, since they’re the ones who opposed the last deal.
Two Republican senators — Warren Petersen (R-Gilbert) and Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek) — also voted against that proposed deal.
Hoffman dug his heels in on social media, saying that a deal to remove the ballot measures and put guardrails on vouchers would be a win for Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, who’s been pushing for voucher reform for the last four years.
“Make no mistake, if Establishment House Republicans do this they will be freeing up $10-15 MILLION in Democrat campaign spending to support Hobbs, (Secretary of State Adrian) Fontes and (Attorney General Kris) Mayes. Establishment House Republicans will be handing Hobbs her crowning achievement. She'll run on Trump tax cuts and "fighting waste fraud and abuse" — and she'll be the only Democrat in America with the pretext to support such a narrative,” Hoffman posted on X.
Petersen didn’t respond to a request for comment.
As for whether Hobbs would be willing to call lawmakers into a special session, she said it would depend on the nature of the deal.
“There are a lot of conversations happening right now. I'm not going to get into the details of those specific conversations, and I am willing to call a special session if the parties that are working on this can come to an agreement that would be productive,” Hobbs said.
It’s not clear whether lawmakers have the ability to retract the ballot measures they’ve already sent to the Secretary of State’s Office. A spokesperson for that office said they’re looking into it.
The voter referral to put guardrails on vouchers is called “Protect Arizona Education” and is the project of both the AEA and nonprofit Save Our Schools AZ.
SOSAZ opposed the original deal struck between the AEA and Republican lawmakers. The SOSAZ group issued another statement Thursday opposing the idea of calling a special session for a similar proposal.
“Once again, Republicans are threatening to negotiate away the will of Arizona voters by seeking a special legislative session to invalidate all signatures for the Protect Education initiative, just one week before signatures are due,” the organization stated.
“A special session to kill the Protect Education Act would rob the people of Arizona of their ability to vote to rein in the $1 billion voucher program,” they said.
Transcript
LAUREN GILGER: The battle over the state’s universal private school voucher program is heating up in court. Now, public education advocates have filed a legal challenge against a Republican-backed ballot measure — a ballot measure that Democrats are calling a “poison pill” designed to weaken another ballot measure aimed at reining in the ballooning program.
And all of the back-and-forth is happening as lawmakers behind the scenes are talking about making a deal on the Empowerment Scholarship Account program. And they’re talking about doing it in a special session.
Here to break it all down for us is our own Camryn Sanchez with KJZZ’s Politics Desk. Good morning, Camryn.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Good morning.
GILGER: OK, so this is a bit of a tangled web, so help us untangle it, Camryn. [LAUGHS] Let’s start with this lawsuit. This was filed by the Arizona Education Association — the state’s teachers’ union — and they’re trying to stop this so-called “poison pill” ballot measure that Republicans in the state Legislature put on the ballot.
LAUREN SANCHEZ: Right, and they put it on the ballot to go after the measure that the AEA and SOSAZ, which is Save Our Schools Arizona, were already trying to gather signatures for to put their measure on the ballot. So, we’ve had a lot of action-retaliation here that got us to this point.
But basically, in their lawsuit they’re saying this measure that Republican lawmakers put up needs to be blocked from ever going on the ballot because it’s a violation of single-subject, it’s doing too many things and it has legal issues.
The main problem with it that they see is this Republican measure is ostensibly about protecting scholarships for military families, and that’s what the title suggests. But further down in the bill, it says if any other measure — like the AEA-backed measure — is to pass in the same election, then our measure would nullify your measure and take precedence.
GILGER: Right.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: And they’re saying you can’t do that, it’s misleading to voters.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. That’s the “poison pill” part.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: That’s the “poison pill” part.
LAUREN GILGER: Right, so potentially here, you could have two ESA-related ballot measures on the ballot for voters to vote on, and they could cancel one another out.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Correct, voters could absolutely pass both, especially if voters — as the AEA and SOS are arguing — if they are not aware that the "poison pill" measure doesn’t just refer to military families.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. At the same time, Camryn, there are whispers behind the scenes — maybe more than whispers now — that lawmakers are trying to work out a deal on ESAs, which they did before this “poison pill” measure came about, right? Thinking about a special session to try to strike a deal on ESAs. What’s on the table in terms of how they might approach reining in this program?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: There’s a few things. So, what the AEA and SOS-backed measure includes is an income cap for eligibility for families, which says if you make over $150,000, you’re not eligible for ESAs. And that is, I think, the main thing that Republicans are not OK with.
But there are other things as well, like security measures, fingerprint requirements, caps on how much you can spend on ESAs and sort of codifying restrictions on purchases for things that are not education-related …
LAUREN GILGER: Which we’ve seen a lot of, we should say.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yes, we have. And we’ve seen plenty of headlines since ESAs were expanded to universal about weird purchases. And I think Republicans maybe see the need to at least take some sort of action on that issue. But I think the income cap is probably going to be the main ... the sticking point there.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. OK, so this is a potential deal between Republicans at the state Legislature and the teachers’ union, the AEA. But there is, as you mentioned, another pro-public education group that’s maybe not OK with this?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, and not all the lawmakers are OK with it either. So, we’ve got two groups sort of trying to organize a deal, and then they don’t have consensus within their own camps. And we’ve got this weird situation where there’s some far-right Republican lawmakers siding with Save Our Schools Arizona because they don’t like a deal either —
LAUREN GILGER: The political horseshoe.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, but for different reasons. So it’s not clear if they can come to an agreement that would put guardrails on ESAs.
I think part of the concern from SOSAZ, and the reason that they’re not in agreement with the AEA on this — even though they’re both advocating for public education and they both want guardrails on ESAs — is the concern that if Republicans agree to put their own guardrails on ESAs, there'll — first of all, be fewer guardrails — they’ll be scaled-back versions of it — and they could potentially just go and undo those guardrails later on.
LAUREN GILGER: Oh, right. And they’d have much more protection, right, if they were passed on the ballot?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Right, because what courts love more than anything else is this concept of the will of the voters. And so, when the voters pass something, like a voter referral or constitutional amendment, that has basically this ironclad protection. Lawmakers can’t just go in and undo that as soon as they come into session.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, so a lot of political, it sounds like, maneuvering going on here, Camryn. Tell us a little more about some of the folks on the far right and the far left who are both against this.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: I mean, it really comes down to uncertainty, right? Because if the Save Our Schools and AEA measure gets enough signatures, then it can go on the ballot. But they’re expecting that to face a legal challenge. Presumably the opponents, the Republicans, are going to file a challenge and say that their signatures are invalid.
So they’re going to have to overcome that even to just get on the ballot. And then, you don’t know for sure if voters are going to pass your measure.
But same thing for the “poison pill” measure.” They don’t know if that’s going to hold up in court now that a legal challenge has been filed against that. And even if that makes it to the ballot, you can’t know for sure if voters are going to pass that either.
I think both sides are not confident in what’s going to happen in this election, and that’s making everybody really nervous. So that is kind of the benefit of coming to an agreement that’s a compromise that isn’t perfect for either side.
But there’s people on both ends who are not cool with what they would be giving up.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, they say it’s not enough, basically.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, we’ve heard from (Sen.) Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek), who voted against the proposed deal the first time around before the end of session, that basically this is too much. It’s too much of a concession and too much of a win for (Katie) Hobbs as well.
Because Gov. Hobbs has been trying to put guardrails on ESAs this whole time, and she’ll be able to campaign on this if they put anything on the ballot or get anything through in a special session that restricts ESAs in any way, and they don’t want that win for her.
LAUREN GILGER: Right, so you’re talking about basically like a bird-in-hand versus later on situation. I wonder, do we know, Camryn, what voters might do on potential measures like this? Do we know if voters want to rein in the ESA program, if they’re mad about it?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: I can’t say for sure that we always know exactly what voters are going to do. I do think that if both of the measures make it to the ballot, they both have a good chance of passing. Again, especially if this “military families” measure gets to go on the ballot with that specific title. And it’s not called, you know, “the scary poison pill measure." And there’s nothing in that, you know, that would suggest that it affects other ballot measures.
But I can also see definitely the SOSAZ and AEA measure getting voter approval. I think there’s a lot of appetite for that in the community.
LAUREN GILGER: So ... that would make for a complicated campaign, I’m guessing, from the public education side, right? How do you advocate for one and against the other?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yes — and without coming across as attacking military families.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, what’s next here? We’re looking at a pretty quick deadline when it comes to signatures, right?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Right, so signature deadline for turning in signatures to get the AEA measure on the ballot, that’s Thursday And today is obviously Monday. So the question is — we’re kind of all expecting to hear by the end of the day today, probably, whether they’re coming in for a special session or not. Because if they do, they have a couple of days to work it out and come to an agreement and pass something before the signature deadline.
LAUREN GILGER: Camryn, would we assume that should they call a special session, they pretty much have a deal and the votes on the table, or is this something that could fall apart even if they do call a special session?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Everything can fall apart, but they typically wouldn’t come into a special session until something’s already been agreed upon, because they wouldn’t want to waste each other’s time. And Hobbs wouldn’t want to call everybody in a special session just for them to go home again without having done anything.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. OK, KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez with our Politics Desk. Camryn, thanks as always, appreciate it.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Thank you.
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