With a pandemic on, the Arizona Legislature is enjoying less oversight from the public than usual (and that isn’t all that much to begin with), so the narrow Republican majority is doing all it can to mess with voting rights, cut taxes for the wealthy and screw over schools.
We’ve yet to see the tax plans, though the latest rumors suggest there will be a billion-dollar tax cut over three years and a move to a flat tax that will, as usual, give breaks to Arizona’s wealthiest residents and hose the rest of us.
On the school front, SB 1452, which is a massive voucher expansion, has already passed the Senate on a 16-14 party-line vote and is now awaiting action in the House of Representatives. Arizona voters rejected a similar measure at the ballot box in 2018, but most GOP lawmakers are always happy to undermine traditional schools.
Speaking of ignoring the will of voters: SB 1783 would create an “alternative” tax bracket to let wealthy Arizonans dodge the income-tax surcharge on Arizona’s top earners created by the voter-approved Prop 208, passed by voters last year to boost education spending. That bill also passed the Senate on a party-line vote and is awaiting action in the House of Representatives.
Then there’s the war on voting. One of the worst voter-suppression bills this year passed the Senate this week, again on a 16-14 party-line vote. SB 1730 would require voters who cast ballots by mail to include an affidavit that has some kind of supporting documentation, such as the voter’s driver-license number, a copy of a utility bill, a bank statement or some other piece of paper.
Given that three-fourths of Arizonans now vote by mail, this is just an effort to suppress the vote by finding chickenshit ways to disqualify ballots or make it more difficult for someone to send their ballot back in the first place.
It’s also totally unnecessary. Voting by mail has been happening for nearly three decades in Arizona and has been growing in popularity, especially during this last year of a pandemic. In all that time, there have been no documented cases of major fraud occurring with voters casting fake ballots. It just doesn’t happen.
This legislation, sponsored by state Sen. J.D. Mesnard, is driven by one thing: Republicans have started to lose statewide races to Democrats and have a narrow margin in the Arizona Legislature. In all likelihood, the Independent Redistricting Commission will redraw lines restoring the GOP advantage in legislative districts—there’s a reason Gov. Doug Ducey stacked the judicial commission that chooses the nominations of the IRC members with his pals—but the GOP has to make it harder for Democrats to vote if they’re going to hang onto power in Arizona. The only other alternative is running candidates that are more appealing to voters, and why would Republicans take that route?
The Skinny mentioned last week that three-term Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik had picked up a primary opponent when University of Arizona academic advisor and KXCI community radio DJ Miranda Schubert launched her campaign to unseat him.
Now a third Democrat has their eye on the Ward 6 seat: Andrés Portela, who works as a policy and community development director for Kozachik’s colleague, Ward 1 councilmember Lane Santa Cruz. A Sierra Vista native who attended Buena High School, Portela said on Facebook that he is running “as a progressive Democrat with an emphasis on H.O.M.E. Housing, Opportunity, Mobility Justice and Environmental Justice.” We’ll see how that plays out with his platform, but at first blush, it seems pretty similar to what Schubert is talking about on the campaign trail, which means the two challengers could end up splitting the anti-Koz vote.
So far, no Republicans have filed to seek a seat in November.
Candidates have until April 5 to file nominating petitions—assuming, of course, that the Arizona Supreme Court doesn’t uphold a state law that would require Tucson to move its election to line up with presidential and midterm elections. Arguments in that case have wrapped up and a decision from the high court is expected soon.
This article appears in Mar 11-17, 2021.
Republican’s war on education in one snapshot.
According to the National Education Association’s Rankings and Ratings, New York is the top state in the nation for funding education at $24,000 per student per year. Also, Arizona ranks 49th at $8,700 per student per year.
Here is a comparison of 8th grade math scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the gold standard for comparing states:
…………………………………………………Arizona………………New York
Blacks………………………………………..267………………………258
Hispanics…………………………………..269……………………….263
Whites……………………………………….295……………………….292
Asian………………………………………….314………………………309
Not only has New York’s education spending not had a positive effect on their achievement level, it has had a totally destructive effect on their job creation. According to the St Louis Federal Reserve Bank data system, Arizona has had nine times the job growth of new york since 2000, over 130,000 jobs available in 2018 for our 80,000 high school and college graduates in one year alone.
Not that long ago, New York had more jobs than Texas. Now, Texas has 3 million more jobs than New York. 30 states don’t have 3 million jobs total much less 3 million more.
Republican war on education? Hell no!!!! Republican war on using district monopolies to educate the public.
Districts evolved after the Civil war as a systematic racist way of depriving Blacks of access to a quality education.
That still is the purpose of districts: to maintain White Supremacy, to deprive minorities of the ability to pick a better school. We just conveniently forgot where districts came from.
District education is not public education. It is an abomination. Tucson is still trapped by it.
Just look at what has happened over the last year. Rich teachers in TUSD have been able to deprive poor students of an education because they were allowed to use the Covid excuse and go vacationing in the Bahamas. Meanwhile, many charters, opening their schools full-time to students, were able to show that, not only did they not represent a risk to students and staff, they kept students and staffs safe from community transmission.
After witnessing the collapse of our public school system at the hands of the Teachers Unions, I now support vouchers. We must let parents have the choice of staying in a failed system or getting their kids and their money to go elsewhere. We can no longer deny it. Plus the State should provide pension plans for the teachers outside the public system.
It was my understanding that Mr. Portela was no longer at the Ward 1 office. But I could be mistaken on that.