Jonathan Hoffman: Trust the Arizona Legislature before #RedForEd

The group was successful in its initial demand, even though that demand was not made of the people responsible for teachers’ pay, but rather the state governor. The demand was made of Gov. Ducey with the threat of an illegal strike if he did not comply.

To the surprise of most, Ducey signed a bill that would send enough extra money to the school districts to meet the demand within a three-year period. After getting what they wanted, the #RedForEd folks held an illegal strike anyway.

Tucson Unified School District Governing Board — the people actually responsible for teacher pay in their district — spent much of the money on teacher pay, but also on pay increases for support staff.

What did we learn from this first go-round? First, #RedForEd acts in bad faith. It is implied with a threat that if you get what you want, you do not apply the punishment. After getting much of what it wanted, #RedForEd held an illegal strike anyway.

What else did we learn? #RedForEd is not really concerned with teacher pay. If they were truly concerned with teacher pay, they would have held the threat of a strike in reserve until the money was sent instead of squandering it in advance. They probably would not be so sanguine about sharing the raise they demanded with support staff workers, which no doubt dropped the teacher total below the twenty percent level, if the twenty percent raise was the objective.

They were OK with TUSD reducing the amount designated for teachers, but they executed an illegal strike after Ducey complied. Based on their behavior, it seems to me that they were more concerned with whipping up animus against Gov. Ducey than actually securing teacher raises.

The latest #RedForEd endeavor is to create a revenue stream for wages in the form of an additional income tax on the rich. To accomplish this, they will spurn the Legislature in favor of a ballot initiative in November.

Unfortunately, the #InvestInEd initiative is written in a way that could eliminate the requirement to index income tax brackets to inflation. Income tax brackets are currently indexed to prevent people from being pushed into higher brackets without an increase in buying power.

There is also problem with the petition language. The Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry filed suit in Maricopa County Superior Court asking that the InvestInEd initiative be removed from the ballot, citing “objectively false and misleading” language describing the initiative on the petitions. It also claimed that the boxes indicating whether or not signatures were gathered by a paid petitioner on some petitions were checked by a third party.

So, on one hand, we have a Legislature made up of elected representatives of both parties who work, often compromising, to write bills that only become law when approved by an elected executive. On the other hand, we have a red army that I think acts in bad faith, is less than honest about its motivations, flouts the law by supporting a teacher strike, does not even respect teachers’ contracts, and can’t write an initiative without attracting multiple legal challenges.

Who do you want creating the laws of Arizona?