Dems seek 'full audit' of Arizona's school voucher program

“Arizona families deserve to know why there continues to be little to no checks and balances within this program while taxpayer dollars are being spent on items outside the scope of education,” said Sen. Eva Diaz of Phoenix in a prepared statement. A letter dated May 14 she sent to the chairmen of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee asks for the audit due to "serious concerns" that warrant the committee's oversight.

The new report by the Arizona Auditor General’s office concluded that better reviews should be conducted of the money spent in the controversial school voucher program run by the state Department of Education under Tom Horne, state superintendent of public instruction. It comes as concerns keep growing over the program’s reported abuses, which include purchases of a diamond necklace, dog training and other inappropriate expenditures.

Auditors found nearly 600,000 "high risk” purchases by ESA participants from July 2023 to October 2025, totaling nearly $100 million, that the Department of Education apparently didn’t review or take action on. The audit also found the department didn’t do enough to check potential conflict of interests of ESA employees using the system.

The ESA program allows families to use state taxpayer money for homeschooling costs, private school tuition and qualifying education expenses. Purchases under $2,000 are automatically approved, but the participants account can be audited, and in some cases prosecuted, if Education Department employees find “unallowed” purchases.

“Contrary to State law, the Program did not always conduct or timely conduct reviews of transactions that were identified as unallowable or missing required documentation” for seven months in 2025, the report states, adding the problem increases the risk of "of misuse of public monies."

Republican lawmakers and former Gov. Doug Ducey passed the universal ESA program in 2022.

GOP leader says he wants 'proper oversight'

Arizona House Speaker Steve Montenegro, unlike the Arizona Department of Education, agreed the findings should be taken seriously after reviewing the report. The Goodyear Republican said he remains committed to "proper oversight" of the program.

"Any concerns identified by the Auditor General should be addressed directly and appropriately," he said.

Montenegro took the opportunity in his prepared statement to bash a planned ballot measure by teacher unions that would force the program to follow public school academic standards and restrict households making more than $150,000 a year from using program funds.

"If reforms are needed, they should strengthen accountability and improve administration, not punish families or eliminate school choice in Arizona," he said.

Department of Education officials told The Arizona Republic auditors didn’t give them a fair shake. Their claims against the Auditor General’s continued a dispute between the two agencies that began in the report. An addendum to the report included a roughly 2,000-word complaint from Arizona Auditor General Lindsey Perry's office indicating the Department of Education's response to the audit report would mislead readers and “deflect attention” from the problems found.

Horne said he found nothing valuable in the report at all and blamed Perry for her auditors' "disregard of the truth."

"Every agency’s complaining about her," Horne said.

Perry didn't return a call seeking comment.

Yet the ESA report came within a larger, 342-page report about multiple state agencies, and all of those concurred with the Auditor General’s Office findings and recommendations — except for the ESA program.

In its response, Department of Education officials complained the report "poorly" presented its main conflict-of-interest finding, that Perry was "overstepping her authority" by recommending policy "rather than demonstrating gaps in compliance."

ESA executive director: Conflict of interest finding 'petty'

Horne and John Ward, the program's executive director, said auditors repeatedly ignored their explanations for certain findings.

Ward, for instance, was called out in the report for failing to provide proper documentation for his own child's ESA-funded music lessons and for helping two families he knew get on a fast track for reimbursement of expenses.

But Ward told The Republic nothing inappropriate happened, and the allegation was "petty."

He explained he didn't include documentation of a piano teacher's accreditation in a request for reimbursement because he knew his staff knew the teacher was accredited. He agreed the general procedure is for the documentation to be included, but said it's not a rule. He also denied the report's accusation that he knew the two families he helped and that his help constituted a "conflict."

"They are not friends of mine. I had never met them before," he said. They were in a low-income bracket and had been waiting for months for reimbursement of expenses, so he placed them in a special queue that allowed an employee to quickly review their cases.

"Can I do that for every person on the ESA program? No. But when I met two families face-to-face and they shared this story with me, I just felt compelled to help them if I could," he said.

Auditors who spent months reviewing the program simply didn't understand what employees were telling them about the system, leaving them to believe suspicious reimbursements weren't being addressed at all. In fact, he said, they would be put in a pool of requests that employees did routinely check for problems. Ward and Horne agreed not all of the suspicious requests were checked, but blamed that on a lack of funds for more staff to do the reviews.

In another example of distrust between the department and auditors, the report stated "on multiple occasions" department employees told them they were selected 30% of orders from the pool of transactions to check, but the "observations" by auditors determined the percentage was 6.5% to 23.9%.

Ward said auditors were told employees sought to pull up to 25% of the orders for review, and that the number was "never" as low as 6.5%.