The Arizona Legislative Session ended with hours to spare today.
The only winners during these last several weeks of the grueling budget process were:
- The wealthy received large tax cuts they did not need and possibly greater opportunities to milk the school voucher system.
- People who enabled the 2020 Election Big Lie and took a voting system that Doug Ducey himself said was a model for the country and made it harder for people to vote.
- The fringe right used their bargaining power to help pass the most regressive and repressive budget and policy measures in recent Arizona history.
To anyone on the right-wing side of the political spectrum that moans and groans that Joe Biden and the Democrats want to pass a liberal-socialist budget in Washington: SHOVE IT. Just look with the lunatic right did in Arizona. You have no room to talk or protest what Democrats in Washington pass. At least Biden is reaching out to Republicans. What did Ducey and Republicans do?
Did the members of the former Party of Lincoln spend $12 million to expand KidsCare for poor children?
No! What they did instead was give the wealthiest people in the state a $30,000 a year tax cut.
How is this good for Arizona? It is not.
Did the members of the former Party of Lincoln help poor pregnant women get dental care through the state health care system?
No! So much for the party that proclaims its allegiance to family values.
Did the members of the former Party of Lincoln fully fund public schools?
They did everything possible to deny them funding again by circumventing the voter-approved Invest in Education-Proposition 208.
Did the members of the former Party of Lincoln protect Democracy?
Most took every possible step to weaken it and make Arizona a sanctuary for minority rule.
Did the members of the former Party of Lincoln fund law enforcement?
Only after local governments said they would not support the original version of the state budget and they told all schools to do away with Coronavirus mask-wearing and vaccination reporting requirements.
Did the members of the former Party of Lincoln promote public safety?
No! They told all schools to do away with Coronavirus mask-wearing and vaccination reporting requirements.
Arizona House Democratic Leader Reginald Bolding quickly released a statement after the legislative session, condemning the Republican actions by relaying:
“Arizona is a politically purple state with a $2 billion surplus. We had a once-in-a-generation opportunity to step up in a bi-partisan 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. With a single-vote majority in both chambers, Republicans passed an irresponsible and permanent $1.7 billion tax giveaway to the wealthy. At the same time, they doubled down on extreme policies to roll back voting and reproductive rights, while openly retaliating against voters for choosing a Democratic president and against public-school educators who successfully asked voters for more resources. The big winners this session were election conspiracy theorists and a few thousand well-to-do Arizonans who needed our help the least. A shameful end to a shameful session.”
Senate Democrats also released their statement which read:
“This entire session was marred by a complete disregard for the struggles Arizonans experienced during the COVID19 pandemic that is still ongoing. The lives of Arizonans have been irrevocably changed by this pandemic, and many have lost jobs, lost homes and lost loved ones. Rather than focusing our efforts on helping Arizonans recover from the pandemic, Republicans handed out welfare for the wealthy and sought retribution on teachers and voters for passing Prop 208 to fund our public schools. Further, Republicans snuck in a Pandora’s box of partisan bills that included a host of election conspiracy theories, attacks on teachers, banning mask and vaccine mandates at schools and a still massive expansion of ESA vouchers, despite a majority of Arizonans voting to overturn ESA expansion via Prop 305.
We could have had a transformational budget to rebuild and revitalize Arizona. We have a $2 billion surplus that could go toward investing in our public schools, providing teachers much needed raises, updating and repairing our state’s infrastructure, paying down our debt and more. Instead, we have decided to prioritize welfare for the wealthy, forcing Arizonans to subsidize the lifestyles of the rich with a radical tax cut plan. We had a real opportunity to help Arizona’s working families restore, recover and rebuild from the COVID-19 pandemic and it is a travesty that we failed them.”
Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman commented on social media:
“Instead of funding full-day kinder, improving school facilities, bridging the digital divide, and investing in students, the #AZGOP’s budget prioritizes reinvesting wealth into the wealthy, leaving our schools and communities at the bottom of nearly all metrics.
In the interim, I look forward to working with state lawmakers and showing them our schools’ needs.”
The Arizona Education Association statement echoed some of the themes of the House and Senate Democrat ones. It said:
“Governor Ducey and legislators had a tremendous opportunity to invest in public education funding using the billions of dollars in surplus. Instead, they chose to line the pockets of their wealthy donors by creating a multi-year billion-dollar tax cut and a tax loophole for the wealthy to avoid paying taxes to invest in education.”
Last year, educators worked to get the Invest in Education Act on the ballot and voters approved the measure to provide $940 million in permanent sustainable funding for our schools by implementing a 3.5% tax for those with incomes over $500K. This budget undermines the will of voters and spends the state surplus on a regressive flat income tax that will permanently drain billions from state revenue and tips the scales in favor of the wealthiest 1% in Arizona.
“This budget fails to fund full-day Kindergarten. It fails to provide schools with enough resources to repair their buildings and build new schools when needed. It fails to address Arizona’s shortage of teachers. This budget will have devastating consequences for our students and educators for decades with the expansion of the private school voucher program and permanent loss of $3 billion in state revenue over the next few years.”
A private school voucher expansion was amended to the K-12 Education Budget bill, further diverting tax dollars away from public schools into private schools without any accountability. Arizona’s private school program is rife with fraud, waste, and abuse and several reports show it has no positive academic impact on our students.
AEA has rallied members, educators, and education supporters to contact legislators and sit in the gallery to lobby elected officials to work on a bipartisan budget that invests in education without permanent tax cuts.
“Our students are at the center of everything we do. We will not stand down when it comes to our students. We will advocate every day for the policies and resources necessary for the respect our educators deserve and the educational opportunities our students need.”
The Arizona Center for Economic Progress also issued a press release which stated:
“This legislative session, politicians at the State Capitol had a historic opportunity to use a massive surplus of state and federal resources to make long-term investments and improve the economic well-being of all Arizonans. Yet sadly, they squandered this chance by giving hundreds of millions of dollars to the wealthiest households, negating the will of the voters as expressed through Proposition 208 and surrendering the ability to invest in Arizona’s future. The enacted budget is the latest and most egregious in a long tradition of prioritizing tax cuts, credits, and deductions that tilt the scales of state finances in favor of the those with high incomes.”
Matt Grodsky of Matters of State Strategies commented:
“Elections have consequences. This is the result of Republicans retaining control of the State Legislature. If Arizona voters are upset about their lack of savings from this proposed flat tax, if they are curious why their support for Prop 208 is being ignored, and if they are angry about the lack of resources for their children’s schools – then they need to vote for Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. Democratic control of the State Legislature = no more of these crazy audits and unsound budgets.”
Also, remember the verdict of Legislative District 18 Representative Mitzi Epstein who pronounced the whole Republican budget process “rotten.”
The 2021 Arizona Legislative Session is over.
Now, the responsibility for undoing the mess the Republicans have created these last couple of months falls to the great numbers of judicial and citizen activists who will take some of these questionable new laws and regressive tax measures to the courts to adjudicate or the ballot box to defeat and push back.
Expect a lot of activity these next 90 days as groups dedicated to Democracy, a level playing field for everyone, and public education work to protect all the ideals and policies designed to help people most Republicans in the Legislature endeavored to take away.
Onto the courthouses and ballot box.
Save Arizona.
Get out, stay engaged, and vote.
Don’t worry – next year’s session will end much earlier than this year’s.
They will all want to get out and campaign.