Everyday my work email receives an update or an endorsement from the Yes for Arizona Schools group set up to support Prop 123, the school funding fix-all introduced by our state legislators. Well, most of them. The endorsements, even from the likes of Fred DuVall, are really not helping to win me over.
The guy ran a terrible campaign in Southern Arizona, leaving us with Mr. Ice Cream. Yes, Arizona’s public education system is seriously underfunded, but Prop 123 is not the cure-all. What about the teachers? This is what friends and family keep asking me. They are still scratching their heads because in all earnestness they want to do the right thing by our teachers—they want them to have raises, they want their classrooms to be funded and they want Arizona to be higher than 50th in per-pupil state spending.
I want all those things too, but just because they have a few Democrats on board and a few teachers in those endorsements I get in my email, I can’t support Prop 123.
The legislators who approve this proposition, and the governor pushing it through, well, I can’t stop reminding myself they don’t represent me. They are the reason we live in crazyland. They are the reason we are in this predicament and rather than do the right thing, they’ve come up with this proposition that will actually cap future spending and get the green light to ignore what voters wanted in 2000 when they approved Proposition 301 that required the state to increase funding to keep up with inflation every year. I’m also certain, that in the end, this will damage the land trust, too, which is supposed to provide revenue by spending only some of the interest. Like the way these lawmakers have cleverly swept other funds into their grubby little hands over the years, this is no different. Prop 123 isn’t the fix.
I can’t imagine that we should all of a sudden have a different attitude about this state crazyland Legislature. Yes, absolutely, trust is a factor on Prop 123 passing. I don’t trust this group to do right by our students and public education, so I’m voting no on Prop 123.
— Mari Herreras, mherreras@tucsonweekly.com
This article appears in May 12-18, 2016.
Mari: I agree with you completely re Prop. 123. It is a cynical cheap shot to chill out the need for funding public education in Arizona. I will probably vote for it, however, in the belief that half a loaf is better than none. The chances of a long-term judicial order to pay up for past defaults appear to me unlikely. This legislature and governor have the prosecutors, the funds, the infinite legal wrangling on their side, which means getting the whole loaf may never come, or not in most of our lifetimes. I hope I’m wrong.
A more constructive direction might be for you and other sane media to do deeper pieces on the background of the political and religious right engaged in deleting public education in Arizona altogether. There are complex reasons that have never been fully exposed. Thanks, by the way, for all you and the Weekly do in this town!
I disagree with my friend Brad on voting for 123 but agree completely that ‘it is a cynical cheap shot’ and that the people would benefit from ‘deeper pieces on the background of the political and religious right…’. Thanks, Mari, for truth telling. Now keep on digging.
IT’S AMNESTY, STUPID!
am·nes·ty: an official pardon for people who have been convicted of political offenses.
Why is that we, the voters, say to do one thing and then have the legislature do another and then ignore a court order, and then be asked to pilfer the states educational future to get a small portion of what the voters already required of our elected representatives in the first place. The current fiscal year is running a $660M surplus and none of this is being pointed toward education. Prop 123 is nothing more than amnesty for the rubes in Phoenix. A no vote is the only logical position.
Brad, before you vote for PROP 123, as a retired TUSD teacher (taught 30 yrs) and served 16 years on the Marana School Board, please know that the State Treasurer has a plan to fully fund Public schools without using State Trust money, or raising taxes. Furthermore Prop 123 takes away voters’ power to legislate thru referendums. PROP 123 will cap future education spending at 49% of the State General Fund Budget. This will cancel out the Voters’ Prop 301 that was passed in 2000. Prop 301 mandated that K-12 funding must be increased each year to keep up with inflation. The language in PROP 123 basically means that the State will keep up with inflation until the School Funding reaches 49% then funding will go no higher no matter the inflation amount. This means that PROP 301 becomes null and void and sets a dangerous precedent that the legislature can finagle their way out of a referendum voted on by the People. (School funding is already 42% of the General Fund. It won’t be long until we reach the cap of 49%. The State has willfully and arrogantly refused to comply with Prop 301. If we let them get off by Passing Prop 123, we have given them our permission to break the law that we mandated. Therefore the Public’s will means nothing.
Thank you, Mari for this courageous and insightful article. This constitutional amendment is indeed a political, strong-arm attempt to let the the Governor and the Legislature get away with breaking the law. Their intent is to privatize our public schools. Ducey just peeled $5 million of our tax dollars off of our surplus to fund his Koch brothers economic liberty schools—whose public mission is fully privatize public schools.
This is an ugly, unnecessarily complex and disingenuous ploy, wrapped in political subterfuge. The money owed our teachers and schools is general fund debt being wrongly pulled from a heretofore healthy Trust Fund, so that dark money Ducey can give ( as he just did) our surplus to his corrupt campaign donors and the ALEC-led lapdogs in the legislature. Please vote no on Prop 123 and tell your friends and family that we can, and should, fund our public schools from our huge surplus, before Ducey gives it all away.
You may learn more from the good people at noprop123.com, and please noted that Ducey dog-whistled the richest men in Arizona to sell this monstrosity: $4 million so far, and another $10 million for the special election. All of that money should have been given directly to our neediest schools and teachers. #noprop123
And don’t forget that just coincidentally the Sec’y of State was too busy campaigning FOR this crummy Proposition to actually get out a piece of information that laid out both sides of the argument to between 200,000 and 400,000 voters in time to inform their vote. Hmm, guess they had to find out about it on TV…Oh, who’s on TV you say? Only the YES side, but there is no corruption here, none here, move along, nothing to see here.
Oh Arizona.
Want to see public education continue its rapid decline in Arizona – it’s as easy as (Prop) 123.
It’s easy as abc, 123 baby you and me.