Education advocates worry about budget hole after tax ends

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Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2011
By Bastien Inzaurralde
Cronkite News

PHOENIX – With the next legislative session approaching, education advocates are rallying to catch lawmakers’ attention on what to do after a voter-approved sales tax raising hundreds of millions of dollars for schools expires in May 2013.

Andrew Morrill, president of the Arizona Education Association, said the quality of teaching in the state will be at stake after the three-year tax of one cent per dollar expires.

“Predictable, stable, sufficient funding would create a stability in our schools that is ultimately good for students,” Morrill said. “So we should be at work right now, looking at how we’re going to achieve the long-term investment we need in our schools.”

The temporary sales tax generated $873 million in fiscal 2011, below an initial estimate of $918 million, according to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee. It’s expected to bring in $890 million in fiscal 2012 and $905 million in fiscal 2013, according to the committee.

Two-thirds of that revenue is dedicated to primary and secondary public education and one-third is for health, human services and public safety.

Morrill’s association is part of an informal group of education advocates that started meeting in recent months to explore long-term funding options for education, according to Susan Carlson, executive director of the Arizona Business and Education Coalition, who facilitates the group discussion.

The group includes organizations such as the Arizona School Boards Association, the Education Breakthrough Network and the Arizona Education Network.

Carlson said the group is studying several funding options including a new sales tax and hopes to come up with policy proposals by Thanksgiving. She declined to offer details of those options because the group is still working.

“The desire is to put something in place that is more predictable, that is more stable and that has a stronger element of accountability,” Carlson said.

She said the group may push for legislation or for a ballot proposition.

Morrill said his association would support a ballot proposition and plans on meeting with lawmakers to tell them that funding schools ultimately means helping the economy.

“If we can assume that legislators are serious about creating jobs and about building strong state economies, I’ll take them at their word,” Morrill said. “A strategy for doing so is to invest the necessary resources in our public schools.”

State Rep. Eric Meyer, D-Paradise Valley, said he would wait to see the details of any new sales tax proposal before supporting it because the current tax hasn’t addressed the issue of education funding with a long-term view.

“It was a short-term fix for the problem that’s remained unaddressed for 40 years in our state,” said Meyer, who is a member of the House Education Committee.

“Funding is the big issue because we can’t carry out initiatives unless we have funding to do it because in general they require more staffing in our districts,” he said.

According to a February 2011 report by the Arizona Office of the Auditor General, the spending per student in the state increased by 47 percent between fiscal 2001 and fiscal 2009 and declined by 4 percent in fiscal 2010. Yet in fiscal 2008, the report says, Arizona’s spending per student was roughly $2,500 less than the national average.

Rep. Doris Goodale, R-Kingman, chairwoman of the House Education Committee, said although she is worried about a potential budget hole in education she is unsure whether voters would approve a new sales tax amid tough economic times.

But Goodale said the Legislature isn’t likely to refer a sales tax to voters, meaning any ballot proposition would have to come from a citizens initiative.

“You will not see anybody make a referral for a sales tax out of this (legislative) body,” she said. “It is much too conservative.”

Zachary Smith, a regents’ professor of politics and international affairs at Northern Arizona University, said he wouldn’t be surprised to see a ballot measure.

“There’s a lot that can happen in the next year that could change political winds and make some people that are saying, ‘Well, we are not going to have any new tax under certain circumstances,’ say, ‘Well, we are not having any new tax; we’re just extending this one,’” Smith said.

Jonathan Butcher, education director for the Goldwater Institute, an independent watchdog group that promotes limited government and free enterprise, said the state can do things to support education that don’t involve more money. Those include looking at schools’ performance and addressing failing schools.

“There are ways to provide students access to better opportunities that don’t involve higher taxes,” Butcher said. “And there are ways to make our system more efficient that don’t involve asking the taxpayer to give more money.”

Pearl Chang Esau, president and CEO of Expect More Arizona, a public-private partnership aiming to increase students’ achievements, said schools may have to do more with less after the sales tax expires even as the state transitions to new national standardized tests that are more demanding.

“It is a challenge that we have introduced higher expectations and at the same time we are looking at a funding cliff when the once-cent sales tax ends,” she said.