ASU’s College of Public Service & Community Solutions held a public dialogue on the details of Proposition 123, the proposed amendment to the state constitution that would increase education funding over the next 10 years.
Proposition 123, otherwise known as the Arizona Education Finance Amendment, would increase education funding by $3.5 billion throughout the next 10 years at the cost of putting a cap on future education spending.
The Institute of Civil Dialogue, the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, the Morrison Institute for Public Policy and the Participatory Governance Initiative at ASU attended the event to discuss the pros and cons of Prop. 123.
Prop. 123 will be voted on as part of the primary election ballot on May 17. From the proposed $3.5 billion, about $1.4 billion would come from general fund money, while $2 billion would come from the state trust land revenues, effectively sourcing the money without tax increases.
If Prop. 123 passes, an additional $50 million would be approved through the Legislature through the fiscal year 2020, and $75 million more would be approved in the fiscal years from 2021 to 2025.
However, Dan Hunting, senior policy analyst at the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at ASU, shared the nature of the lawsuit Arizona was faced with in 2010 as a result of the Legislature not paying voter-mandated inflation adjustments for K-12 funding.
The funding from Prop. 123 would allegedly settle this lawsuit by restoring 75 percent of funding previously cut by the Legislature — which is predicted to come out of revenues from Arizona’s 9.3 million acres of state trust lands.
Prop. 123 would also include a method to cap these legally-mandated increases in the future if K-12 spending becomes 49 percent of the general monetary fund. For comparison, the Department of Education made up 42 percent of the state’s total operating budget in the fiscal year of 2015, according to data from the Governor’s Office of Strategic Planning & Budgeting.
Daniel Schugurensky, director of the Participatory Governance Initiative at ASU, introduced the discussion by sharing his thoughts on some civil and political challenges.
“We don’t engage with people who think differently from us,” Schugurensky said. “Sometimes we do and when we do we get into the second challenge — the breakdown of civil discourse.”
Schugurensky said when citizens seek out their own knowledge when voting for propositions, that is when they can truly be informed to make positive, independent decisions.
“When we cast a ballot, we tend to rely on information, but sometimes we don’t have information,” Schugurensky said. “Eventually we can have dialogue with people who have different ideas, engage with them and come up with our own conclusions.”
The public dialogue was held by John Genette, president of the Institute for Civil Dialogue, and Jennifer Linde, senior lecturer at the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at ASU.
Betty Paul, resident of Gilbert, who strongly disagreed with passing Prop. 123, shared her concern for the scarcity of funding for colleges.
“It’s criminal to see what college students have to pay in loans,” Paul said. “I want to see more money going to the universities.”
Hunting said only about 2 percent of the funding from Prop. 123 would benefit colleges and universities in Arizona, while 90 percent of the estimated revenue gain would benefit K-12 education.
Other attendees of the discussion, such as Eleanor Eisenberg, felt undecided about Prop. 123 because it didn’t appear as a clear solution to the problem of scarcity in Arizona’s funding of education.
“For me it’s the choice of giving a starved person a stale piece of bread or nothing at all,” Eisenberg said.
According to the ASU Morrison Institute of Public Policy, Arizona is ranked 48 in the U.S. in per-pupil expenditures in K-12 education, while being 31 percent below the national average of per-pupil expenditures.
Preston Swan, a professor at the ASU College of Nursing & Health Innovation, strongly agreed with the proposition and said he is scared of what will happen if citizens vote against it.
Swan said the main question should be, “What are we going to do to actually fix our schools rather than how are we going to help the state pay off their debt.”
Arizonans can begin voting on Prop. 123 on April 20 when early ballots become available.
Contact the reporter at brianna.bradley@asu.edu.
