Some lawmakers with a passion for school choice are putting proposed legislation on hold while they await an Arizona Supreme Court ruling that could nix two school-voucher programs.
Supporters of the state-funded vouchers — cash grants provided to parents who wish to send their children to private schools instead of public — are eager to expand and improve the programs, which provide vouchers for disabled students and foster children, but some don’t expect the Supreme Court to issue a ruling on the case until after the legislative session ends.
Opponents believe the voucher programs violate the Arizona Constitution’s gift clause, a prohibition on giving state money to religious organizations, private schools and other non-governmental groups, an opinion that was shared by the state Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court heard arguments on the case in early December, and must now decide whether to uphold the appeals court’s ruling.
Until the Supreme Court makes its decision, many voucher supporters are hesitant to pursue legislation that may be declared unconstitutional before it can even be implemented. Sen. John Huppenthal, chairman of the Senate Education Accountability and Reform Committee, said everything is on hold until the constitutionality of the programs is established.
“I think in this session… our objectives are a little bit more limited until we know the outcomes of that case,” Huppenthal said.
Lawmakers have had this debate before. During the 2008 session, Gov. Janet Napolitano vetoed bill that would have allowed the Department of Education to sidestep some eligibility requirements for the students-with-disabilities program. In her veto message, Napolitano said the continued existence of the program is unpredictable, and it would be premature to expand the program during the ongoing legal challenge.
Rep. Steve Yarbrough, a Chandler Republican, supports the voucher bills but said he understands the logic behind Napolitano’s veto.
“Everybody is probably going to take a deep breath and wait and see what the Arizona Supreme Court does. I don’t know if voucher bills will advance in this session. With the question hanging there as to what the Supreme Court is going to say, I suppose it would be fairly hard to advance those,” he said. “Individual members may feel differently and they may want to take a run at it, but you’re constantly going to be hit with the argument (over the court case).”
Indeed, some members aren’t waiting for the court. Rep. Andy Biggs already has submitted two bills dealing with vouchers. One would lift the 500-student cap on the program for foster children, while the other would establish a new voucher program for students who attend schools that have been officially designated as failing.
While Huppenthal and Yarbrough don’t expect the Supreme Court to issue a ruling until the legislative session is over, Biggs said it will be much sooner, perhaps as early as February.
“I decided to go ahead and file it because odds are the Supreme Court will probably make a pretty quick decision … and I felt like I should just go ahead and do it,” the Gilbert Republican said.
Arizona Education Association President John Wright, a staunch opponent of school vouchers, is confident that the Supreme Court will uphold the appeals court ruling. But he is concerned about other legislation that school choice advocates may pursue during the 2009 session that doesn’t depend on the constitutionality of vouchers.
Among those concerns are tax credits available to individuals and corporations that donate money to school tuition organizations, or STOs, which use the money to provide tuition scholarships for students to attend private schools. Wright and the AEA are also opposed to a law that allows people to claim a tax credit for donations made to public schools’ extracurricular programs. Wright said he wants the law changed so that donors to extracurricular programs would get a partial tax deduction, instead of a dollar-for-dollar tax credit.
Yarbrough said he plans to submit several bills on tax credits this session, including legislation that would end the sunset provision on the corporate tax credit, which is scheduled to expire in 2011, and to make it easier for individuals and insurance companies to donate to STOs. He submitted similar bills in 2008, but was unable to get any approved by the Legislature.
“They’ve all had a history, more in the House than in the Senate. But hopefully, maybe, this time we’ll get them all… home,” Yarbrough said.
Wright said it would be irresponsible to divert state revenue to the tax credits at a time when the possibility of massive budget cuts loom over Arizona’s schools like a dark cloud. The state is facing a $1.6 billion shortfall on its $9.9 billion budget for fiscal year 2009, and 2010 is expected to bring further revenue declines.
Taking away money from classrooms to give tax credits for extracurricular activities would be especially worrisome, Wright said.
“I know that’s going to be hard, and that’s not going to be popular with many neighborhood schools,” Wright said of eliminating or reducing the extracurricular tax credit. “But when you’re talking about cutting teaching positions, eliminating academic programs, increasing class size and the variety of other potential harm that could come to our public school classrooms, maybe this is not the time for the state of Arizona to be paying for extracurricular activities out of its general fund.”
Both sides argue that their proposals would save the state money, while the other side’s ideas would only exacerbate the budget crisis. Wright said eliminating the corporate tax credit would put another $125 million into the budget.
On the other hand, Matthew Ladner, vice president for research at the Goldwater Institute, argues that the tax credit-fueled scholarships allow the state to reduce its per-pupil spending.
“If you can basically get a kid into a private school for less money than it takes to get them into a public school, the state can realize the savings,” Ladner said.
Should Yarbrough, or others, manage to get tax credit bills through both chambers of the Legislature — others have submitted such legislation as well — they still will have to get the governor’s signature. The school-choice debate has often been divided along partisan lines, and some advocates feel it will be easier to get such bills signed once Napolitano, a Democrat, is replaced by Republican Secretary of State Jan Brewer.
Brewer was a state senator in 1993 when Arizona first approved charter schools, and Huppenthal, who served with her, remembers her as being supportive of the proposals. Now that Brewer is looking to spend the next two years or more on the Ninth Floor, school choice advocates are hoping she will be amendable to their cause.
“I would hope that, since school choice is truly a Republican-platform issue, and Republicans have always been for the best education possible for kids, that I’d have a good chance of getting these bills signed were they to get out of the Legislature,” Biggs said. “But who knows?”
Yarbrough is hoping Brewer will have a more favorable attitude toward school-choice issues than her predecessor, citing Napolitano’s veto of the corporate scholarship tax credit before she allowed it to become law without her signature.
“Governor Napolitano, she kind of always had to be bargained with on issues of school choice,” he said.
But, Ladner said, Napolitano did allow it to become law in the end. And both men noted that she signed off on the voucher programs that led to the case before the Supreme Court. Ladner said Napolitano was the first Democratic governor in the United States to sign new school-voucher l
egislation.
“Ultimately, Governor Napolitano deserves some credit on the choice issue,” Ladner said.