In 1996, the voters of Arizona passed an initiative measure legalizing the use of medical marijuana in the state. After receiving a 65% green light from voters, the state Legislature repealed the initiative. In a feat of democratic representation, the legislative action taken was rebuked at the polls in 1998 via a “veto referendum” (referred to as Proposition 300) which voided the Legislature’s amendments.

In response to what some viewed as legislative encroachment, Arizona voters carried Proposition 105 in 1998, also known as the Voter Protection Act. This proposition amended the state Constitution to put strict restrictions on the Legislature’s ability to amend or repeal voter-enacted measures. 

The Voter Protection Act also put restrictions on the governor’s ability to make changes to the ballot initiatives once enacted.

When looking at the upcoming election, it’s important to take this into consideration, especially when assessing Proposition 208, better known as the Invest in Education Act. 

Prop 208’s devastating consequences

As of 2020, the highest individual income tax used in Arizona was 4.5% on single filers reporting over $159,000 in income, and $318,000 for joint filers. Prop. 208 proposes an additional 3.5% on income tax filings above $250,000 for single filers and $500,000 for couples, resulting in a new 8% marginal tax rate. 

Proposition 208 affects Arizona small businesses that are organized as pass-through entities, such as sole-proprietorships, partnerships, LLCs, and S corporations. Taxes on these business’ profits are paid via the owner’s personal tax return. 

If Proposition 208 were to pass, it would disproportionately burden Arizona small businesses and deprive an economy in desperate need of oxygen. The Goldwater Institute, a leading Arizona public policy think tank, outlined some of the initiative’s disastrous consequences. Prop. 208 will cost Arizona:

• 124,000 jobs,
• $2.4 billion in local and state revenues,
• small business growth.

These policy worries aside, the utter lack of any possibility of recourse or amendment if Prop. 208 were to pass poses a larger risk yet. Voters and their elected representatives in government have little ability to change course should it pass, no matter its cost on Arizona workers, families, students, and teachers.

Voter Protection Act

Well intentioned, the Voter Protection Act now poses a threat of silencing voters, not protecting them.

Even more troubling, the language of Prop. 208 stipulates that any lost state revenue will result in cuts to other programs. Programs potentially on the chopping block include child protective services, public safety funding, and higher education spending.

Should Proposition 208 pass and negative unintended consequences result, voters won’t be able to work with their elected representatives to address those consequences. Arizonans will be stuck with a state budget that reflects the will of the out-of-state special interests bankrolling the proponents’ campaign, not the needs of the state.

While the Arizona initiative process had its shortcomings prior 1998, we must now look beyond 2020 to come together and stop approaching 21st-century governance with old tools.

Reforms should be considered to the Voter Protection Act. In the meantime, let’s come together and defend our state’s path to recovery. Let’s vote no on 208.

Diego Píña and Taylor Hersch are Junior Fellows at the Arizona ·¬ÇŃÉçÇř Foundation.

The post Prop. 208 will harm Arizona. There will be little we can do to repair the damage if it passes appeared first on ·¬ÇŃÉçÇř.

The vast majority of funding for an initiative campaign to raise income taxes on individuals and small businesses comes from out-of-state unions and interest groups, according to a . 

Since January, InvestInEd, the group backing Proposition 208, has raised more than $4.6 million, however only $31,143 have come from individual contributions made by Arizonans. The remaining 99.3 percent has come from Portland, Oregon-based Stand for Children, the Arizona Education Association, and other special interest groups. 

“Arizona’s initiative process was never intended to be a petri dish for experimental policy cooked up by wealthy special interests from around the country,” Arizona Free Enterprise Club President Scot Mussi said .

In May, InvestInEd as “A grassroots movement to restore K-12 education funding and power our economic recovery.” 

However, the group’s campaign finance records belie the claims of the initiative’s supporters that the campaign enjoys deep Arizona-based grassroots support.

Nearly all pro-Prop. 208 funding coming from special interests

The initiative campaign has raised more than $4.6 million this year from:

·      Stand for Children, Inc. Portland, Oregon-based Stand for Children is funding the majority of the initiative campaign, with over 87 percent of contributions totaling $4,081,574 coming from the group. The vast majority of their contributions have been earmarked for signature collection. The group is active in nine states and previously supported a similar Arizona ballot initiative in 2018 that failed to secure a spot on the ballot. 

·      Arizona Education Association The Arizona Education Association, the National Education Association’s Arizona affiliate, has contributed $456,780. The National Education Association, based in Washington, D.C. is the nation’s largest labor union with over 2.2 million members.

·      Children’s Action Alliance The Children’s Action Alliance, an advocacy group, has contributed more than $85,000 to the ballot initiative.

·      Arizona Individual Contributions Arizonans themselves have contributed $31,143 to the group, only .67 percent of all contributions.

·      Save our Schools Arizona Save our Schools Arizona, another advocacy group, has contributed $23,100. This group in 2018 to Proposition 305. That vote resulted in fewer Arizona families having access to private school choice. The group also to a legislative reform adopted in 2020 allowing Navajo children to access the Empowerment Scholarship Account program to attend a private school on the Navajo Nation on the New Mexico side of the stateline.

History of out-of-state interest groups funding Arizona ballot initiatives

According to Mussi, “Based on the current signature requirements and constitutional protections for paying circulators to collect signatures, it is possible to gather enough signatures to qualify a measure for the ballot for around $2 million dollars.”

Because of this relatively low barrier to entry, Arizona has had multiple ballot initiative efforts funded by out-of-state groups each election year.

In 2016, Arizonans For Fair Wages and Healthy Families used the ballot initiative process to raise Arizona’s minimum wage and impose a new paid leave mandate on Arizona employers. The group from national groups such as the CPD Action, the National Education Association, and the Sixteen Thirty Fund.

Two years later, Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona— by California billionaire and 2020 presidential candidate Tom Steyer’s NextGen Climate Action—gathered enough signatures for a proposition to require Arizona to use at least 50 percent renewable energy by 2030. Sixty-eight percent of Arizonans voted against it.

The post Few pro-Proposition 208 contributions from individual Arizona donors appeared first on ·¬ÇŃÉçÇř.

The Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that the “Invest in Ed” ballot initiative will appear on the November ballot. 

The initiative was initially removed from the ballot in July by a Maricopa County Superior Court judge who ruled that the proposition contained a “misleading” 100-word petition summary. The state Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s ruling in Molera v. Hobbs on Wednesday.

“A written opinion will follow,” said Chief Justice Brutinel, delivering the court’s order to reinstate the proposition on the general election ballot.

Opposition swells

Amber Gould, chairwoman of the Invest in Education campaign, , “Today’s ruling by the Arizona Supreme Court keeping Invest in Education on the November ballot is an important victory because it gives millions of Arizona voters the opportunity to put more resources in our schools.”

Arizonans for Great Schools and a Strong Economy, led by former Superintendent of Public Instruction Jaime Molera, has opposed the measure from the beginning. 

Following the ruling on Wednesday, Molera , “Today’s decision is a disappointment. Between now and Election Day we look forward to sharing with voters how damaging this 77.7% income tax increase on small business will be to Arizona’s economy and how it will fall far short of what proponents’ have promised the state’s teachers.”

The opposition group led by Molera has pledged to appeal the decision again, this time “in the court of public opinion.”

Arizona could become one of highest tax states in nation

If passed by voters in November, the initiative would raise Arizona’s top income tax rate by 77.77%. This raise would vault Arizona among the highest income tax brackets in the nation, between Wisconsin and New York.

It would also result in Arizona having the highest income tax bracket among its neighbor states Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado. California beats out Arizona, however. Nevada does not have a state individual income tax.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey opposes the initiative, submitted for the publicity pamphlet that is sent to voters before the election that the structure of the initiative would force small business owners to pay “a whopping amount, especially considering that our economy is recovering from recession and high unemployment.”

The post Tax hike initiative to make ballot, Supreme Court rules appeared first on ·¬ÇŃÉçÇř.

The Superior Court of Maricopa County on Friday removed the “Invest in Education” proposition from the ballot on account of its 100-word description posing a “significant danger of confusion or unfairness to a reasonable Arizona voter.”

Judge Christopher Coury based his on a 2018 decision by the Arizona Supreme Court in that prevented a similar proposition from appearing on the ballot. 

Both the 2018 and 2020 proposals sought massive income tax increases on certain taxpayers, including small businesses.

Massive tax increases

As by ·¬ÇŃÉçÇř, the “Invest in Ed” initiative would raise state income taxes on top income earners by 77.7% — moving the top rate from 4.5% to 8%. The tax increase would also affect small businesses organized as  pass-through entities, including sole proprietorships and limited liability companies.

The big tax hike was ruled to be misrepresented by the summary provided to Arizona voters who signed a petition to send the measure to the November ballot.. 

described the tax increase as follows::

“establish[es] a 3.5% surcharge on taxable income above $250,000 annually for single persons or married persons filing separately, and on taxable income above $500,000 annually for married persons filing jointly or head of household filers…”

By failing to alert voters on the impact on certain business entities and the true size of the tax increase, the Court found that the summary was sufficiently “mislead[ing]” to warrant it being removed from the ballot. 

Principal clauses

The initiative was found to completely exclude several key provisions from its voter summary.

The “No Supplant Clause” included in the proposition would lock certain funds towards specific ends, “limit[ing] the power and authority of the Arizona Legislature”, which has direct power over budgeting. Despite curtailing the power of the state House and Senate that is constitutionally assigned, it has no mention in its summary.

Furthermore, the authors of the initiative excluded the “Local Revenue Clause” from the ballot summary.

Responses to Molera v. Hobbs

Arizonans for Great Schools and a Strong Economy, the committee that took the initiative to court, for Arizona voters, students, parents, and taxpayers. 

Jaime Molera, the former state superintendent of public instruction who chairs the opposition committee, stated that “This was the right decision. As we made clear, the tax increase proponents’ entire process, from signature gathering to their 100-word summary, was flawed and misleading.”

The Invest in Ed organization, sponsored by the Arizona Education Association, as “blatantly… political.” 

Invest in Ed has pledged to appeal the ruling to the Arizona Supreme Court. 

Before the proponents announced their decision to appeal, Molera said, “Should the proponents appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court, we anticipate the same outcome.”

The post Court removes tax increase initiative with “misleading” summary from ballot appeared first on ·¬ÇŃÉçÇř.

Supporters of a ballot measure proposed by a new advocacy group in Arizona claim it will make health care more accessible by holding providers to new standards, but health care leaders in the state are having none of it.

Healthcare Rising Arizona is an advocacy organization backed by California-based labor union Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers (SEIU-UHW).

The group announced recently that it has filed a  it says will improve Arizonans’ health and hospital care by addressing four main areas: patient billing, requiring providers to offer refunds if patients are overcharged; infection control, holding private hospitals to national safety standards; new wage mandates for hospital workers, with annual wage increases for four years; and pre-existing conditions.

“This package of improvements will fix a number of major problems in our state’s health care system to ensure that everyone can get the affordable coverage and safe care they need,” said Jenny David, registered nurse and chair of the ballot committee running the initiative, Arizonans Fed Up with Failing Healthcare. “These are sensible, important changes that we need to protect ourselves and ensure quality care.”

But top health care organizations disagree, warning of rising costs and dismissing the initiative as out-of-state meddling.

“This proposal by a California-based union is the beginning of the effort to replace our quality health care provider workforce with a government-run system in Arizona,” said Jennifer Carusetta, executive director of the . “It will undoubtedly raise health care costs and threaten access to quality care for Arizona residents.”

According to the , the measure would increase patient costs across the board; mandate an increase in health care workers’ salaries regardless of performance; and claim responsibility for improvements already being made by the federal government, the state and local health care providers.

SEIU-UHW backed an initiative in 2016 to put strict limits on the compensation of hospital executives, but the proposed measure never made the ballot after the labor union was unable to secure enough valid petition signatures.

“This California-based union, famous for picketing hospitals, is asking Arizonans to vote for an initiative that won’t improve their health care and will end up costing them more,” said Ann-Marie Alameddin, president and CEO of AzHHA. “Moreover, it has a track record of using ballot initiatives not to improve health care in Arizona but to leverage its bargaining position with California hospitals.”

Arizona hospitals directly employ nearly 90,000 Arizonans and support another 120,000 jobs in the state, according to the American Hospital Association. Hospitals are often the largest employers in their respective communities, paying competitive salaries and benefits.

“Arizona has internationally renowned hospitals and specialty providers that serve our residents with the world’s best care,” said Carusetta of the HSAA. “They are on the cutting edge of medicine and helping to save the lives of thousands of Arizonans every day.”

The average wage of a full-time employee at an Arizona hospital was more than $75,000 in 2018, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services. That’s 52 percent more than the average Arizona wage of $49,290, based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Healthcare Rising Arizona wrote in a release that the ballot initiative is designed to reduce deaths and lower costs, allowing hospitals to focus on improving patient care, but Carusetta said the move is just posturing by an organization that wants to increase its involvement in Arizona.

“[The ballot initiative] is another reckless attempt by  to harm one of the brightest industry segments and largest economic drivers in the state,” Carusetta said. “This is not about improving the health care system; this is just pure union politics.”

The post Experts: Health care ballot initiative from out-of-state labor union likely to increase patient costs appeared first on ·¬ÇŃÉçÇř.