The attorney who is trying to block $15.3 million in state funds for the Prescott Rodeo is deriding House Speaker Ben Toma for his justification of why the spending is legal.

Nicholas Ansel said the position of the Legislature is that the appropriation is legal because, strictly speaking, the money was not given directly to Prescott Frontier Days but instead to state Treasurer Kimberly Yee. And she, in turn, was instructed to provide funding for the association that operates the rodeo.

Ansel told Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney, originally appointed by then-Governor Doug Ducey, that the explanation makes no sense.

Consider, he said, if state lawmakers decided to put a line in the budget giving $15.3 million to a specific McDonald’s restaurant in Phoenix. That, he said, would violate a constitutional provision that says that the general appropriations bill – the annual budget enactment – can only have funding for state agencies.

What Toma is proposing, Ansel said, is a workaround.

“According to the speaker, so long as the Legislature changed the appropriation to say ‘$15.3 million is appropriate to the treasurer to distribute to the McDonalds at Seventh Avenue and McDowell,’ then it magically become an appropriation ‘for’ the state treasurer,” he said.

“The court should reject this nonsensical position,” Ansel said. “Arizona law is clear: The Legislature cannot accomplish indirectly that which it could not accomplish directly.”

Ansel, who works for the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest, said even if that constitutional hurdle could be overcome, there’s another: the “gift clause” which bars lawmakers from giving money to private organizations without getting something in return.

The issue traces its roots to the budget adopted by lawmakers in 2023.

Flush with cash, legislative leaders gave each lawmaker a certain amount of cash – often between $20 million to $30 million – to allocate for projects.

Some of that $2 billion went to road improvements in their districts. Several pooled their cash for a one-time family tax rebate.

But there were other priorities, including $15.3 million for “a nonprofit volunteer organization that operates a rodeo at the Yavapai County fairgrounds.” But the understanding – not stated in the legislation – was the dollars were supposed to go to a $40.7 million master plan to renovate the rodeo grounds, which Prescott Frontier Days leases from the city.

Those dollars came from allocations given to state Reps. Quang Nguyen of Prescott Valley and Selina Bliss of Prescott.

That provoked a lawsuit filed in June 2023 by the Arizona Center for the Law in the Public Interest on behalf of Prescott residents Howard Mechanic and Ralph Hess, the latter a retired Yavapai County Superior Court judge. They charged it violates the Gift Clause because it “is not supported by any consideration, let alone a promise of significant direct benefits that serves a public purpose as required by … the Arizona Constitution.”

Ansel, however, said there’s a more immediate threshold issue: Was it even legal to put the spending into the budget in the first place.

Lawmakers apparently were aware of the issue: They worded the funding not to go directly to Prescott Frontier Days but instead to the treasurer who would give the money to that nonprofit that operates a rodeo. Ansel said the treasurer, having determined that Prescott Frontier Days was the only entity that would receive the funds, had planned to forward it the cash on July 1, 2023, the first date of the new fiscal year.

All that came to a halt when the lawsuit was filed nine days earlier.

Ansel told the judge that what Toma was saying was that this appropriation was no different than when lawmakers direct the treasurer to allocate funds for certain state agencies, something that is legal.

“According to the speaker, so long as the treasurer is tasked with paying out specific sums of money, the Legislature may include it in the general appropriations bill for any purpose whatsoever,” he wrote. “A billion dollars to the King of England? No problem, so long as the treasurer writes the check.”

Ansel does acknowledge the Legislature can appropriate money to non-governmental entities – as long as that is done in a bill separate from the general state budget to allow lawmakers to vote independently on the issue.

But he said even if lawmakers were to redo the allocation as separate legislation, that still wouldn’t make what is going on here legal. And that involves the Gift Clause of the Arizona Constitution which prohibits the use of public funds for private purposes unless the state gets “consideration,” meaning something in return.

Put another way, Ansel said lawmakers lack authority to just give away public dollars.

The state is fighting back with an argument that this isn’t an outright gift but simply authorization for Yee, as the treasurer, to award a grant that could have certain conditions.

That argument is flawed, Ansel said, because that’s not what is in the legislation which simply directed Yee to give the money out with no standards or policies. Nor does the measure delegate to Yee the power to enter into a contract where she would get to unilaterally decide what constitutes a public purpose.

What is going on, Ansel said, is an effort to argue that the ongoing fight to get the dollars to Prescott Frontier Days “with no strings attached” is something it is not – and never was.

“It was only after the Legislature was caught red-handed gifting away public monies – after this lawsuit was filed – that a team of attorneys concocted a plan to create a different deal and – without any legislative guidance or authorization – attach spending conditions and parameters to the rodeo appropriation before disbursing it,” he wrote. “But even well-meaning attorneys cannot retroactively authorize the treasure to do that.”

No date has been set for a hearing.