For years, Arizona has been a target of out-of-state special interest groups that want to put their radical ideas in our state. The process usually goes something like this.
Liberal groups from outside Arizona take an issue that is unpopular with the electorate, like tax hikes.
They come in and hire an army of paid circulators to flood the streets of Phoenix and Tucson to collect their signatures—hardly bothering with the rest of the state.
Bad policy and sweeping reforms are placed on our ballots with only a small fraction of the state’s support.
One of the most recent examples of this was Prop 208, which narrowly passed in 2020. Out-of-state teachers’ unions spent more than $30 million over four years in their effort to buy the largest tax hike in history—lying to Arizona voters to get signatures and lying to get the slimmest of majorities to approve it. Had it not been for the court system killing Prop 208 once and for all, Arizona would be a high tax state today.
Now, a proposed constitutional amendment sponsored by Arizona Senator J.D. Mesnard would put a stop to this abuse. SCR 1015 would require that any initiative looking to qualify for the ballot is required to collect signatures from all 30 legislative districts in the state. This means that anyone who thinks they have a good idea that should be on the ballot won’t be able to rely solely on signatures from large cities like Phoenix and Tucson. They will also need to talk to voters in Buckeye, Kingman, Yuma, Wilcox, and more.
This is a commonsense reform that would require a percentage of registered voters from each legislative district to express their support of a ballot initiative before it could appear on a ballot.
Signatures from 10 percent of the qualified electors from each legislative district would be needed to propose any statewide measure.
Signatures from 15 percent of the qualified electors from each legislative district would be needed to propose any constitutional amendment.
Signatures from 5 percent of the qualified electors in each legislative district would be needed to propose a statewide referendum.
Most other states that have an initiative process also have a geographic signature distribution requirement just like this one. And it’s time that Arizona has one as well to make sure that our initiative process is for all Arizonans—not out-of-state special interests.
SCR 1015 will be on the ballot in November 2024, and as you might expect Democrats like Rep. Athena Salman are already busy gaslighting the people of Arizona (while fully mased, of course). And just like with Prop 132 last year, out-of-state unions and liberals will look to spend big to defeat the measure. But Prop 132 passed, which means that a 60 percent majority vote of the people is now required on any ballot measure that seeks to raise your taxes. Let’s ensure that SCR 1015 meets the same fate so that a more representative group of Arizona voters has a say in what appears on the ballot.
Help Protect Freedom in Arizona by Joining Our Grassroots Network
Arizona needs to have a unified voice promoting economic freedom and prosperity, and the Free Enterprise Club is committed to making that happen. But we can’t do it alone. We need YOU!
Join our FREE Grassroots Action List to stay up to date on the latest battles against big government and how YOU can help influence crucial bills at the Arizona State Legislature.
The Prop 400 package put together by the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) is in serious trouble at the legislature, and Katie Hobbs and the transit lobby knows it. So, in a desperate attempt to rescue their defective plan, they have phoned a friend to see if a little legacy media pressure will improve their flagging fortunes at the Capitol.
In recent weeks, the AZ Republic has unleashed a torrent of articles and opinion pieces attempting to scare the legislature into sending their transit slush fund package up to Hobbs’ desk. Most of their writings have been nothing more than recycled talking points from MAG and transit industry lobbyists attacking conservative lawmakers and critics (like the Club) for opposing a plan that slashes freeway funding and increases traffic congestion in the region.
A couple weeks ago it was in the form of an editorial that claimed to disprove our Prop 400 criticism by “relitigating” the merits of bus and light rail and proving its value in the region. And now over the weekend, their opinion writers couldn’t race out fast enough to promote the press release issued by Katie Hobbs and the transit lobby that the legislature needs to adopt a fake “compromise” MAG plan.
In short, their efforts to “relitigate” the merits of transit or to declare that there is any type of “compromise” only demonstrate how radical their position really is.
Here are just a few examples of how the Republic has veered from journalism to being nothing more than a lobbying arm of the transit lobby:
There Is a Compromise? With Whom?
Over the weekend a choreographed social media blitz was launched by Katie Hobbs and MAG, with their allies at the Republic eagerly playing along. They claimed that Republicans are refusing to move a “compromise plan” that made over 30 concessions, including reductions in light rail spending.
It sounded great, except for one problem: their compromise plan is no different than the plan vetoed by Governor Ducey last year.
That “big concession” about taking light rail out of the plan? What a farce. Light rail expansion isn’t going away, their plan just shifts bus expenditures from municipalities to the regional tax, which then frees up city money to pay for the rail.
These type of cheap accounting tricks are not surprising to those that have been engaged in the Prop 400 debate at the legislature. MAG and the transit lobby have been adamant for over a year that they won’t negotiate, and that their Momentum Plan cannot be altered. Don’t believe us, just watch one of the MAG transportation meetings from the last couple of months where they have restated this position on several occasions.
And given that intransigent position, it is easy to see why they ran to the Republic to reframe the narrative by peddling their bogus compromise.
Does the Republic Know That Transit Ridership in Metro Phoenix Has Collapsed?
On several occasions the Republic has bragged about transit ridership in the region, even boasting about “32 million annual rides on public transportation.”
One wonders if they even know what that figure represents, because that averages out to only 40,000 people a day using transit in the region, in a metropolitan area of 5 million residents. One 4-lane arterial road will carry more people on a given day than ride a bus or take the light rail.
Also conveniently missing from the Republic editorial is that transit ridership has been in decline for over a decade and fell off a cliff during the pandemic (ridership is still half of what it was pre-pandemic). There are now fewer people riding transit today than were riding in 2005, before 33% of the Prop 400 tax was diverted to transit. Voters were promised twenty years ago that spending billions on light and bus would increase transit use, yet the opposite has occurred, all while the region grew in population by over 1.5 million residents.
Other Cities Waste Billions on Transit Too!
The Republic has also taken the time to point out that “other top 10 metropolitan areas in the country all support buses and rail…in equal or greater magnitude.”
This analysis of course leaves out two important details:
The only transit systems not going bankrupt have either imposed performance metrics or are using private operators that are interested in making a profit. Right now fares being collected by Valley Metro are covering only 7% of the cost to operate our buses and light rail. In 2005, they promised voters that fare recovery would be at least 30%. Promises made, promises NOT kept.
Prop 400 Funds Roadway Repairs and Maintenance? Spoiler Alert: It Doesn’t
Another argument promoted by the Republic editorial board is that “a big chunk of Prop 400 proceeds—42% of the projected $14.9 Billion—are to repair and maintain our freeways and roads.” They proceed to state that the entire debate over 400 is “an indictment not of local or regional planning but of the legislature…if the obstructionists at the Capitol truly want to fix potholes and service freeways and streets, then they put their own house in order and raise the gas tax.”
This criticism would be scathing if any of it were true. All of the funding for maintaining and repairing our freeways comes from the state HURF monies and federal dollars. Every dime of that funding is legally required to occur irrespective of Prop 400 moving forward or not.
It’s understandable for someone that is unfamiliar with Prop 400 to make this mistake. But the Republic should know how 400 works, specifically that the proposed tax is slated to only be used toward new freeway and roadway projects.
Clearly they don’t, especially since they proceed to argue that major freeway projects like expanding the I-17 and I-10 should be paid for by the state through a gas tax increase. Really? The only reason the tax exists is to build freeways! MAG’s proposed 400 plan slashes freeway funding by 30%, and the Republic thinks that is a big win for motorists.
MAG Will Only Have Themselves to Blame if 400 Is Not Extended.
Republicans at the legislature aren’t interested in the funding gimmicks or fake concessions promoted by MAG, which is why no agreement has been reached. And now we are nearing the end of the legislative session, which means MAG is running out of time if they want a Prop 400 plan passed at the Capitol.
If they are really interested in seeing something get done, the transit lobby needs to accept that significant changes need to be made to their plan, and no amount of editorials from the Republic is going to change that reality.
Help Protect Freedom in Arizona by Joining Our Grassroots Network
Arizona needs to have a unified voice promoting economic freedom and prosperity, and the Free Enterprise Club is committed to making that happen. But we can’t do it alone. We need YOU!
Join our FREE Grassroots Action List to stay up to date on the latest battles against big government and how YOU can help influence crucial bills at the Arizona State Legislature.
We all know it’s been a rough start for Governor Katie Hobbs as Arizona’s Chief Executive. Along with high-profile staff exits and breaking the veto record after killing the bipartisan “Tamale Bill,” Hobbs alienated many Democrats when she signed the budget sent to her by the Republican-led legislature.
Not to be outdone, Attorney General Kris Mayes has come along since taking office with one clear message to Hobbs: “Hold my Bud Light.”
Mayes has been occupying the AG office for a couple of months, and she has already figured out a way to abuse her power and violate her attorney client obligations. All driven by her desire for headlines and trying to claim the mantle as top Democrat demagogue in the state.
Her antics began in April when she decided it was a good idea to threaten action against the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR), demanding that the department supply her with documentation showing that the agency is in compliance with its responsibilities.
Then she kicked off last month by falsely claiming that the budget agreement that protected universal school choice would bankrupt the state, despite the expenditure data showing that the growing and wildly popular Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program saves the state money.
When her social media blustering against ESAs didn’t stop the budget from being signed by Governor Hobbs, Mayes doubled down on her ESA assault by announcing her intent to investigate parents and the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) over the ESA program.
Kris Mayes has always had a reputation of trying to bully other people around (just ask anyone that dealt with her at the Arizona Corporation Commission), but one would think she would at least confer with legal counsel in the AG office before engaging in behavior that can get you disbarred. After all, making public threats as a lawyer that you want to investigate your own client (ADWR or ADE) and accusing them of illegal behavior is a severe ethical violation. But Mayes wanted the headlines and adoration from Red For Ed. Well she got it, and her reward is a formal complaint filed against her with the State Bar of Arizona demanding an investigation.
We believe a comprehensive investigation by the State Bar is necessary to hold AG Mayes accountable for her reckless behavior. At a minimum, a closer look at her inappropriate behavior should bring to a screeching halt any rogue investigation that Mayes was planning on conducting—without evidence—against the ESA program at the Department of Education.
And despite the rhetoric coming from Mayes, Hobbs, and other leftists like Rep. Andrés Cano that ESAs will bankrupt our state, the opposite has proven to be true. Arizona’s bet on universal school choice has been paying off in spades. During this fiscal year, the ESA program has exploded with more than 58,000 now enrolled.
But if you believe the lies of Mayes, Hobbs, Cano, and their allies in the teachers’ unions, you would think that Arizona would be suffering from a severe budget deficit. Instead, the nonpartisan Joint Legislative Budget Committee has estimated a revenue surplus by an extra $750 million—a surplus that has increased as ESA program enrollment has increased.
The fact is that a typical ESA scholarship award is around $7,000 per student. But public schools spend roughly twice that per student to the tune of $14,000 per year. This means that any time a student is awarded an ESA, taxpayers get a 50% discount. No wonder Arizona families will be getting some cash back from the state later this year. The ESA program is not only sustainable, but it puts money back into the wallets of taxpayers!
Once again, the left proves that it’s really bad at math. They can’t count signatures, and they think that spending less per student will lead to bankruptcy. No wonder they’re trying to prevent Abe Hamadeh’s challenge to the Arizona Attorney General Election. They’re worried that the over 9,000 provisional ballots remaining will put them on the wrong side of the count once again. And that would be the final straw for Kris Mayes.
Help Protect Freedom in Arizona by Joining Our Grassroots Network
Arizona needs to have a unified voice promoting economic freedom and prosperity, and the Free Enterprise Club is committed to making that happen. But we can’t do it alone. We need YOU!
Join our FREE Grassroots Action List to stay up to date on the latest battles against big government and how YOU can help influence crucial bills at the Arizona State Legislature.
Last legislative session our organization led the opposition to the Maricopa Association of Governments’ (MAG) Prop 400 sales tax extension, SB1356, criticizing the plan for its massive expansion of transit spending, lack of oversight, and vague allocations of spending that amounted to a slush fund for government bureaucrats. It was astonishing the lack of answers we received to simple questions about the plan and how funds would be spent.
We suspected at the time that we weren’t being told the whole story and that ulterior motives were at play. Only now do we know how right we were.
Governor Ducey’s veto of MAG’s defective Prop 400 plan provided a reset of the Prop 400 debate. Coupled with new legislative leadership not beholden to MAG and the transit lobby, they could no longer avoid a debate of their unvetted proposal. So, after several months of legislative hearings and substantive meetings at the Capitol, what critical information has MAG been hiding from lawmakers and the public?
MAG’s Plan is a Bailout for a Bankrupt Transit System
The debate around the last extension of the Maricopa County transportation tax in 2003 hinged on the idea of shifting billions of dollars away from freeway construction and into public transit. This was a major deviation from the intent of the original tax adopted in 1985 which funded 100 percent freeways. Appeals from the transit-lobby were ultimately successful and resulted in 33.3 percent of the tax being diverted to fund expanded bus operations and a new light rail system in Phoenix, Mesa, and Tempe.
Now under their new “Momentum Plan”, MAG wants over 40 percent of the tax to go toward transit, siphoning off billions from much needed freeway and roadway projects throughout the valley. MAG and Valley Metro claimed that demand for expanded bus service was the rationale for taking a larger share of the Prop 400 pie, but that wasn’t it. Through record requests and inquiries by State lawmakers, it was discovered that (unsurprisingly) the Valley Metro bus system is bankrupt, and that billions are needed to make up the shortfall. So why is the existing system bankrupt? Two reasons: a massive decline of ridership and plummeting fare recuperation.
For a variety of demographic and socioeconomic reasons, bus ridership in Maricopa County has been in decline for over a decade. And after the Covid-19 pandemic, transit ridership fell off a cliff, dropping by over 50 percent and has yet to recover. As of today, transit ridership as a share of urban travel is lower than it was twenty years ago, despite massive population growth and record amounts of money spent on bus and light rail. And if almost empty buses and light rail weren’t bad enough, the revenue being generated by fares from the remaining customers is almost non-existent. When the current Prop 400 tax plan was being sold to voters twenty years ago, Maricopa Association of Governments included benchmarks for “farebox” recovery for the region’s transit provider, Valley Metro. They promised that fares would cover 30 percent of operational costs for local buses, 25 percent for express/Bus Rapid Transit, and 45 percent for light rail. What was fare recuperation for Maintenance and Operation in 2022? A paltry 7 percent.
This is why MAG’s 400 plan is demanding a higher share for transit. They want a taxpayer bailout.
MAG’s Plan Hid Massive Spending for Green New Deal Programs
One of the larger mysteries rolled into the MAG plan was the creation of a new “regional programs” bucket to fund an undefined list of “transportation projects that are selected through a performance-based process for arterial improvements, active transportation, air quality, emerging technologies, intelligent transportation systems, safety and transportation demand management.”
This hodgepodge list was basically carte blanche authority to spend taxpayer money on – whatever. More involved conversations with MAG have not assuaged lawmakers but instead incited more unease. With the current agenda being broadcast in plain sight to move people out of their cars, forcing them to walk, bike, and take transit instead, the inclusion of this “slush fund” and the over $2B allocated to it, has understandably raised many questions. One of those questions being what specific projects does MAG intend to finance? They have refused to provide such a list aside from paving dirt roads and buying street sweepers, neither of which require billions.
This fall it was revealed that MAG intended to use the Regional Program slush fund to pay for the region’s air quality program. This was a concerning revelation, especially after MAG rolled out their proposed recommendations in early March as remedies to contend with unrealistic EPA air quality standards. Notably, it included California-style measures to ban the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035, ban gas appliances, and ban gas-powered lawn equipment. Because MAG’s bill didn’t include any other safeguards or clarification on what “air quality” projects meant, it can be assumed it would be used in the future for such things as “cap-in-trade” like programs for carbon offsets, forced electrification, or expensive incentives or disincentives for reducing vehicle miles traveled.
MAG’s Plan Prioritized Ideological Agendas Over the Interests of Motorists
Last year we failed to recognize why there was such a radical shift in the kind of transportation policy being funded by MAG’s 400 extension plan. Only after broader investigation did we realize that an ideological agenda has infiltrated all levels of transportation planning, MAG’s plan being no exception.
This multi-dimensional effort by climate alarmists, urban planning bureaucrats, corporations poised to financially benefit, and the social justice warrior academics and activists, aims to use transportation and land use to reorient the way the majority of people live. Center of that fight is the personal automobile; as this cabal of interests would love nothing more than to see people forced to walk, bike, or rely on public transit and therefore relegated to dense urban environments, not conducive to how the majority of people live in the Valley.
That is why MAG doesn’t want to build new freeways, at least not the way normal people think about freeways. The only new freeway considered in the current MAG plan is the construction of SR30 in the west valley, a project that was supposed to be built under the existing tax but was scrapped because transit funding was prioritized instead. MAG has begrudgingly included funding for the SR 30 in the new plan, but only for a portion of the freeway and only in the 25th year (all but certain to be deferred, again).
And if that isn’t bad enough, the project design that won approval from MAG is called the “State Route 30 Active Transportation Conceptual Plan.” Surveys were conducted by MAG, giving respondents design options that included integrated bike paths and pedestrian walkways then feigned to ask what might concern someone riding a bike on the freeway by which most respondents replied with the number and speed of vehicles. Choosing a freeway without these features was not an option. Obviously, the only kind of freeway MAG will consider building at this point is a bastardized version that limits capacity and slows speed, contrary to the whole point of a freeway.
Lawmakers Should Bring Back the Sanity to Prop 400
The origination of the Maricopa County half cent sales tax in 1985 was a blessing to the valley. It octupled the number of freeway miles which created an abundance of connections between communities across the county. It made the economic flourishing, influx in population growth, and diversification of businesses possible in the following two decades.
A continuation of the tax could be nearly as valuable if it focused on simply supporting the free movement and mobility choices of people and freight, instead of a costly attempt to foist ideological value judgements on the way bureaucrats wish people would live and move. The Republican majority thus far has held the line on insisting any Prop 400 extension that proceeds is good for residents, businesses, and taxpayers.
Help Protect Freedom in Arizona by Joining Our Grassroots Network
Arizona needs to have a unified voice promoting economic freedom and prosperity, and the Free Enterprise Club is committed to making that happen. But we can’t do it alone. We need YOU!
Join our FREE Grassroots Action List to stay up to date on the latest battles against big government and how YOU can help influence crucial bills at the Arizona State Legislature.
Recent Comments