4 useful things the Arizona Legislature could (and should) do this year

Get ready, Arizona.

Santa has hit the showers and the champagne has run dry.

Now celebration turns to trepidation as the Arizona Legislature returns to the state Capitol in just five short days.

Here’s where I’d normally take early aim at our leaders — at their obsession with culture wars and non-existent election conspiracies and all their new and exciting ways to stick it to the public schools.

But, it’s a new year and hope springs eternal. So, here's hoping 2024 will be a good year, a year when our leaders:

Stop playing political chicken with public schools

In 1980, Arizona voters passed a law to limit what public schools can spend.

The "aggregate spending limit" is adjusted annually to account for inflation and enrollment, but after 44 years, it’s about as relevant as blackboards and notebooks (think Trapper Keepers, not MacBooks).

Enrollment declines, technology that didn’t exist four decades ago and a 2018 decision by our leaders to move previously exempted money under the spending cap have brought our schools to the brink in recent years.

Last year, they were threatened with a $1.4 billion cut in the final months of the school year. The money was there. They just couldn’t spend it unless two-thirds of our leaders agreed to waive the spending cap.

Superintendent Tom Horne warned of the “unbelievable catastrophe” awaiting our kids — the wholesale teacher layoffs, the shuttered schools — yet still 21 Republicans, most members of the hard right Arizona Freedom Caucus, voted no.

Fortunately, enough Republicans joined with Democrats to keep nearly one million children at their desks.

But what about next year? And the year after? Our kids shouldn’t be penalized by a spending limit put in place when Pac Man was a cutting-edge video game.

Sen. Christine Marsh, D-Phoenix, has a fix. Senate Bill 1018 would allow voters to reset the base from the 1980 spending level to 2024 — to assure parents in coming years that their kids will be able to finish out the school year.The Legislature should put it on the ballot.

Get control of the runaway school voucher program

Two years ago, then-Gov. Doug Ducey and the Legislature opened wide the state wallet, decreeing that parents can now snap up $7,300 (or more) in public funds to use as they see fit to educate their child.

At the time, the program was projected to cost us $65 million this year. Instead, we are at $900 million and growing, as the parents of kids already in private school flock to the Capitol to pick up their checks.

Much to Democrats’ fury, school vouchers aren’t going away. It’s unlikely that Republicans will even agree to cap the runaway program.

So let’s move on to the politically possible.

We need more transparency, so that the public can see who is really benefitting from Empowerment Scholarship Accounts.

Is it poor and middle class kids fleeing failing schools, as our leaders claim? Or are we simply putting the well-to-do in line for better summer vacations as taxpayers now pick up part of their private school tuition tab?

And we need more public accountability, to explain just why we are paying for for $4,000 pianos and ninja lessons and ski passes to the Arizona Snow Bowl.

While they're at it, our leaders should assign the state auditor general to report how our money is being spent.

Get serious about water, and the fact that we are running out of it

In 2023, Gov. Katie Hobbs put an end to the lease of state land to grow alfalfa to feed Saudi Arabia’s cows. The Saudis, living in a desert, were smart enough to outlaw the water-intensive crop in their own land.

In 2024, the Legislature needs to follow the Saudis’ lead and get serious about water.

The Groundwater Management Act of 1980 regulates pumping in designated, mostly urban, areas of the state.In much of rural Arizona, however, you can still suck the ground dry for Saudi cows and such.

Every year, the Legislature ignores the pleas of the people who live in areas where mega farms owned by out-of-state businesses are pulling billions of gallons of water from wells drilled deeper and deeper into the parched earth to produce crops for export.

How much water: Are some Arizona farms using?

This, thanks to certain rural lawmakers in the pocket of agricultural interests and the apparent indifference of legislative leaders who could override them.

Meanwhile, we watch as groundwater accumulated over thousands of years is going, going and all too soon, it may be gone.

Demand that the clergy do their part to protect children

The story was a stunner. A Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints bishop in Bisbee stayed silent after one of his flock admitted during a counseling session that he was raping his then-5-year-old daughter.

For seven years, this bishop and his successor stayed silent, advised not to alert anyone outside the church, according to court records.

Finally, daddy dearest was arrested in 2017, tracked down by law enforcement after he posted videos of his perverted attacks on the internet. By that time, he was molesting a second daughter, just born.

In November, a Cochise County judge ruled that the church bore no responsibility for what happened.

That’s because while Arizona has a mandatory reporting law for teachers and doctors and such, members of the clergy are not required to report a confession that a child is being abused.

Last year, Rep. Stacey Travers, D-Phoenix, introduced a bill to require the clergy to report abuse learned about during a confession or confidential communication “if there is a reasonable suspicion to believe that the abuse is ongoing, will continue or may be a threat to other minors.”

It didn’t even get assigned to a committee, much less rate a hearing. And it likely won't this year either.

As House Judiciary Committee Chairman Quang Nguyen, R-Prescott, recently explained it to Capitol Media Services Howard Fischer: “The seal of confession is a sacred, sacred part of the Catholic church.”

Put another way, a rapist’s sacred religious rights trumps a child’s sacred right to be protected from a sexual predator.

If nothing else good comes out of the Legislature this year, surely, surely, surely we can change this.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @LaurieRoberts or on Threads at @laurierobertsaz.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona Legislature can (and should) do these 4 things in 2024