The families of state or local police officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians killed on the job as the result of a criminal act will get an extra $250,000 payment on top of already robust benefits if voters approve Proposition 311 in November.

But politics, as well as money for survivors, is involved in the measure. Backers tout it as a way for Arizona voters to send a message of support for police in the wake of years of rising public concern about law enforcement officers who improperly use the power of their badges. 

And the estimated $1 million yearly cost of the new benefit put on the ballot by the Legislature will come out of the pockets of every person convicted of a crime in Arizona through a new $20 surcharge they’ll have to pay. That gives most voters a way to support greater payouts without taking on any added burden themselves.

The measure also boosts criminal penalties for people who assault police, firefighters and other first responders, imposing longer prison sentences, something lawmakers could easily have done without voter approval. 

Dubbed the “Back the Blue Act,” lawmakers decided last year to send it to voters with bipartisan backing in the state House but only from Republicans in the Senate after a two-year lobbying effort by police unions and advocates. 

The new payments will add to state benefits that already fully replace a fallen public safety employee’s salary for a surviving spouse and a smaller amount for their children, including while they are attending college. They also get subsidized state health insurance coverage.

And survivors get a federal cash benefit of more than $437,000 plus federal funding for up to four years of college tuition for their children. Local and state agencies also provide basic life insurance and the option of buying supplemental coverage.

Police unions and advocates for law enforcement told lawmakers that the new benefit is needed to help recruit officers at a time when public safety agencies are struggling to fill positions despite decent middle-class salaries and retirement benefits that far outstrip those available in the private sector.

But backers argued that there was a political reason to put the issue before voters as well. 

Proposition 311 emerged in the wake of the national backlash and protests over police misconduct following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. Proponents testified in the Legislature that Arizona voters needed a way to show they disagreed with protesters and show that they backed police and the new death benefit was a way for them to do that.

Sydney Hay, a lobbyist for the Back the Blue committee, testified that assaults and shootings of police officers, firefighters and paramedics in Arizona demonstrate the need for the measure, if only for voters to send a message of support for public safety workers.

“So this bill is going to be put on the ballot to show Arizonans have the ability to change the narrative in the whole country, that the people of this country support law enforcement, we support our first responders and that we are on the side of cops,” Hay told a House committee last year. 

Opposition came from Democrats who balked at paying for the new cost by adding new fees for people convicted of crimes. The state already adds fees and surcharges that can nearly double court-imposed fines to help pay for a variety of state programs.

An earlier version of the proposal rejected by the Legislature in 2022 would have paid for a similar expanded death benefit by adding new fees not only to criminal convictions but to civil violations like speeding tickets, something that proved to be politically unacceptable. The reworked 2023 version that will go before voters in November doesn’t apply to civil offenses.

Former Rep. Athena Salmon, D-Tempe, complained about the funding source in a Democratic caucus meeting, saying that loading more fines and fees onto people who are typically lower income will add to inequity they already experience.

“We see across the country through states and even through Congress a movement to move away from fees because of the disproportionate impact on low-income individuals,” Salman said. “This legislation goes in the exact opposite direction of that by imposing fees to fund this.”

She noted that the Legislature’s analysts found an average of four Arizona public safety workers a year lose their lives and said there were other ways to find the program.

State Sen Lela Alston, D-Phoenix, also opposed the funding source, noting she had always supported death benefits.

“I do have a problem with this bill, and that is that it creates another fine that is disproportionate to certain members of our population,” she said during last year’s Senate vote. “And it would be a preferable option to me if we were to pay that death benefit directly out of the general fund to the family of the firefighter or police officer who was killed and not do any more fines in our legal system.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona also opposed the measure because of its funding source.

A review of Proposition 311 by the Legislature’s budget analysts estimated that 137,000 people will likely be charged the extra $20 fee needed to fund the new benefit each year, but only half will actually pay it, leading to $1.4 million in annual revenue. That’s based on information provided by the state court system on convictions and the current collections of fines, fees and surcharges levied on people convicted of misdemeanor and criminal offenses. 

The estimated $1 million in yearly payouts analysts anticipate is based on an average of four deaths a year the state’s public safety retirement system paid out between 2018 and 2020 for line-of-duty deaths. Not all of those would be covered by the new measure, because it requires a death be the result of someone else’s criminal act.  

Arizona lawmakers and voters have added fees and surcharges to civil and criminal convictions over the past two decades, tacking on so many of them that the underlying fine is more than doubled in many cases. A $100 fine, for example, can end up costing $224 when the extra fees, surcharges and assessments are added. 

The state collected nearly $76 million in extra fees and surcharges in 2018, according to the most recent report from the Legislature’s budget analysts. The extra payments finance police, victim services, various health funds and the state’s Clean Elections fund, which provides public financing for candidates who don’t take special interest donations, among a myriad of other uses.

Under Proposition 311, the Legislature would be allowed to spend money for police officer training and equipment, or to boost benefits for injured first responders, if the fund that collects the new $20 fees rose over $2 million.

There is no apparent organized opposition to the measure. The Back the Blue Committee led by former Phoenix City Councilman Sal DiCiccio has collected nearly $132,000 to fund a campaign supporting Proposition 311, according to their campaign finance filings. About $100,000 was still available as of mid-July. 

The vast majority of the contributions came from the Virginia-based Liberty Initiative Fund.

Its website says its goal is to “rally Americans to restore greater citizen control of government by assisting citizens in taking the initiative or referendum or recall process to increase our liberty especially by placing measure on state and local ballots.”

It is known for its support of ballot measures for both term limits and changes in government pensions. It also provided funding for an unsuccessful 2013 effort to overhaul Tucson’s pension system for employees.