Deal to avoid vouchers fight on Arizona ballot falls apart

Senate Minority Leader Priya Sundareshan said she and other Democratic leaders had engaged in good-faith negotiations with Republican 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 or ESAs. The proposed restrictions in that initiative drive range from who is eligible for the vouchers to how the cash could be spent.

In exchange, Republican legislators would rescind sending three measures disliked by Democrats to the November ballot.

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

But that was before Biggs told Republicans 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.

GOP legislative leaders fell into line.

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

Republican 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,'' Petersen said, saying that if the teachers dropped their "anti-ESA measure'' the Senate would 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.

Democrats had some leverage because lawmakers formally adjourned for the year earlier this month.

That meant any change — including withdrawing measures already referred to the ballot by the Republican-controlled Legislature — would require a special legislative session. And that could be convened only with the consent of Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs or a two-thirds vote of lawmakers in a House and Senate where Republicans have only a small edge.

But all that changed Monday when Montenegro backed out.

How Biggs got involved

The 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 the GOP-referred ballot measure Republicans say is aimed solely at the AEA appears to be written in a way that it 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. De Los Santos, a Laveen Democrat, is already preparing to explain to voters that, regardless of what they think of teachers' unions, they might not want to support this plan.

"The Republicans in charge of the Legislature have decided to throw firefighters and 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."

But Biggs, a member of Congress, said it is a mischaracterization to say he inserted himself into already ongoing negotiations. He said he had been approached by people concerned about the voucher issue and 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, and Republicans started removing some things from the table that they already had promised, Sundareshan said.  

She said that's why Democrats concluded 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."

Initiative petitions due Wednesday

Supporters of the initiative, 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.

Its reach is comprehensive.

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

It also includes new restrictions designed to keep voucher recipients from saving up unused voucher funds from year-to-year and applying the money 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 enough concern among Republicans that, as of earlier in June, they were willing to make a deal. They said they would enact some guardrails around voucher spending — but not the income cap — in exchange for the AEA dropping its initiative.

GOP leaders also had been willing to scrap the two other measures aimed at educators that they voted to send to the ballot.

One would financially penalize schools that did not use 60 cents out of every dollar received on direct instruction expenses. The average school district spends 52.1 cents in that area, with the rest taken up by everything from utilities and administration to buying gasoline for buses.

The other would 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.

Risks for Democrats as well as Republicans

The failure to reach a deal also poses a risk for Democrats.

It means 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 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 is also 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 initiative petitions to allow it to go forward.

Separately, there is a lawsuit designed to knock the anti-union measure off the ballot amid claims 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.