The Daily Agenda: Shaky math causes ESA spike

Nobody knows what they’re talking about ... Back in Chad's day, Dems were a superminority ... And on her second try, she hangs them high.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne’s office announced it expects the cost of Arizona’s universal school voucher program to balloon to $900 million in the upcoming fiscal year. 

That’s almost 15 times more than the $65 million lawmakers believed it would cost when they approved the voucher law last year and $350 million more than the Joint Legislative Budget Committee (JLBC) estimated it would cost just a few months ago.

Horne’s voucher director sent lawmakers a three-paragraph memo that fulfilled the office’s legal obligation to provide an annual update on enrollment and the cost of the ESA program. But the memo wouldn't fly in a basic high school math class, as Empowerment Scholarship Account Program Executive Director Christine Accurso failed to show her work on how she arrived at those numbers. 

The speculative numbers set off a multi-day Twitter battle between Republican legislators and officials who support school choice and their Democratic counterparts who say the program will bankrupt public education in Arizona. 

One of the reasons we end up with such seemingly disingenuous and inane discourse about public education funding in Arizona is that our funding formula is insanely complicated. Only a handful of people in Arizona truly understand the ins and outs of school funding. Most politicians just pick whatever numbers support their arguments and run with it. 

Right now, about 58,000 students are enrolled in the ESA program, Accurso told lawmakers in the memo. But by the end of the year, she expects about 100,000 students will be enrolled. 

But nobody knows how Accurso, a longtime champion of the ESA program, came up with those numbers. 

Accurso’s memo didn’t include “enough actual data” to back up her assertion that the program would hit the $900 million mark, according to JLBC, which responded with its own memo that cast doubt on Accurso’s numbers. Lawmakers also had a hard time believing her projections. House Speaker Ben Toma told Capitol scribe Howie Fischer that his calculations put the total number of students this year at about 68,000, rather than 100,000. 

“ADE’s new round-number estimate provokes natural skepticism,’’ Toma said. He said he wants legislative staffers to review the data and methodology “before we can comment on it further.’’

The memo also doesn’t answer a key question that will determine whether vouchers are ultimately a huge drain on the state’s finances, or a minor blip in the budget: What percent of those kids are already enrolled in private schools? 

That’s because if a child drops out of a public school and gets a voucher for private school instead, the voucher costs taxpayers about the same as the state would have spent in per-pupil funding. That means the cost is essentially a wash. 

But if every kid already in a private school starts getting a voucher from the state to pay for it, it will blow a huge hole in the state budget. 

So far, the clear trend has been toward students who already were enrolled in private schools. But Horne’s office says that’s slowly changing, telling 12News that initially, 8 out of 10 universal voucher recipients had never attended public schools, but now that’s down to about half of the new applicants. Still, there are only so many private school kids. Once they all receive vouchers, the cost of the program will likely flatline in the long term.

Horne’s office, of course, argues ESAs are already saving the state money. And amid yesterday’s Twitter debate, the office pointed to a report noting that public school enrollment is dropping, leading to $639 million in savings annually for taxpayers. But the report, from the Common Sense Institute Arizona, notes they don’t actually know if those kids are getting vouchers. 

 “These students could have enrolled in public charter schools, private or online schools, started homeschooling, or could also no longer live in the state,” the report reads.

If we’re going to have a thoughtful debate about the cost and benefits of school vouchers, rather than just cherry-picking numbers that support one side or another, we need better data. 

Luckily, there may be some hope on the horizon. Hobbs and the Republican leaders in the Legislature cut a deal as part of the compromise budget to form a study committee to figure out the right way to use metrics from the Arizona Department of Education to get a full accounting of the ESA program. The plan is for them to submit a report on or before Dec. 31 that includes basic info like how many students are from each eligibility category, their grade levels and zip codes. 

The study committee is a start. But it appears universal school vouchers are here to stay, and whether it costs $30 million or $900 million, it will be more than enough to attract fraudsters. Without more oversight and an accurate accounting of how the money is moving, we have basically no shot at stopping them. 

Newish faces: Gov. Katie Hobbs named Chad Campbell as her new chief of staff after her old chief of staff abruptly “resigned.” The former House Democratic leader turned consultant is a longtime ally of Hobbs’ and the two served in the Legislature together representing the same downtown Phoenix district¹ for four years starting in 2011, Axios Phoenix's Jeremy Duda reports. Meanwhile, Republicans on the Senate committee on director nominations shot down former lawmaker Martín Quezada as Hobbs’ appointee to lead the Registrar of Contractors, accusing the longtime Latino leader of being a racist. 

But you can grow all the cactus you want: The Phoenix metropolitan area doesn’t have enough water to meet growth demands over the next 100 years, according to a report from the Arizona Department of Water Resources, Hobbs announced Thursday. U.S. Supreme Court justices are expected to rule in the coming days on a long-running case in which the Navajo Nation argues the federal government has failed to protect its water rights, the Republic’s Joan Meiners reports. And Arizona farmers were hurting from water cuts long before the new interstate deal to reduce Lower Basin Colorado River water-dependent states’ use by 13% (and Arizona’s use by more than 20%), Nina Lakhani writes in a profile of Pinal County farmers in the Guardian. While some farmers are switching crops or techniques to use less water, others are not.

“I’m not saying the drought is over, but to see the dam so full is thrilling. Agriculture is food security and freedom,” Pinal County alfalfa farmer Nancy Caywood said. “I still wake up at night worrying about water, but the problem isn’t man-made, it’s cyclical.”

It’s a really bad job: Maricopa County Republican Supervisor Bill Gates is not seeking re-election in 2024, he told The Washington Post’s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez. All five members of the board are up for reelection next year, and the four moderate Republicans who have defended the county’s elections from Donald Trump and Kari Lake’s fury face challenges from the election-denying right. 

“I’m at peace with this,” Gates told Wingett Sanchez.

Speaking of horrible work environments: Journalists at Gannett, the largest newspaper chain in the country which is near universally hated by its reporters, are walking off the job next week, The Washington Post reports. The walkout is to protest budget cuts and to pressure shareholders to issue a vote of no confidence against CEO Mike Reed. Journalists at the Republic, which Gannett owns, will join in on what will be their second walkout in the past year.

Please support the Arizona Agenda so we never have to work at another Gannett paper.

They’re all running: Phoenix Councilwoman Laura Pastor announced she’s joining the increasingly crowded Democratic primary for Congressional District 3 to replace U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego. Her father, Ed Pastor, represented the area for about 25 years, and she considered running for his seat when he retired in 2016 but ultimately didn’t get in the race. 

Juvenile criminals don’t pay: Hobbs signed a bill from Republican Sen. David Gowan and Democratic Rep. Alma Hernandez to ban juvenile courts from charging fees for most crimes as part of a nationwide movement arguing they can prevent kids from clearing their juvenile records and moving on with their lives, the Republic’s Madeleine Parrish reports. The bill would also wipe existing debts clean for juvenile offenders. 

Ask where she was on January 6: Republican Rep. Janae Shamp spread QAnon slogans and conspiracies online before she invited a bunch of “experts” with deep ties to the movement to present COVID-19 conspiracies at the Legislature last week, Jerod MacDonald-Evoy and Ryan Randazzo write in the Mirror and Republic, respectively, based on a report from Media Matters. Shamp said it’s just a big coincidence that the committee’s acronym, NCSWIC, is also frequently used by the QAnon crowd to mean “nothing can stop what is coming.”

The political spectrum is a circle: The U.S. House overwhelmingly approved a measure to lift the debt ceiling ahead of the Monday deadline, which if approved by the Senate, would stave off economic catastrophe. But that’s no thanks to Arizona’s congressional delegation, which voted 5-4 against the deal, with far-left Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva joining far-right Republicans Andy Biggs, Eli Crane, Paul Gosar and Debbi Lesko, the Republic’s Tara Kavaler reports. Republican Rep. Juan Ciscomani joined the state’s remaining congressional Democrats in approving it. 

When then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs hung a big rainbow flag from the Old Capitol building to celebrate Pride Month in 2019, it was immediately pulled down. 

Hobbs accused GOP legislative leaders of pressuring Legislative Council, which controls the building, into pulling it down because they didn’t like the message. (Legislative Council’s executive director said nobody pressured him and he removed it because it violated the building’s rules.)

But now that Hobbs is sitting at the top of the Executive Tower, she makes her own rules for the building.  

1. Kyrsten Sinema was the district’s senator for part of that time.