PHOENIX â Gov. Doug Ducey proposes to restore less than 10 percent of what was cut last year from state universities, give the Department of Child Safety just two-thirds of what it requested, but add another 2,000 beds to house inmates.
In his $9.5 billion budget proposal announced Friday, the governor also is putting another $90 million into K-12 education, with $224 million beyond that only if voters approve Proposition 123 in May.
But half of that $90 million is what is required by law to fund student growth and inflation.
Of the other half, $30 million is for Joint Technical Education Districts. That happens to be the amount lawmakers voted last year to cut, effective this coming school year.
But there really is less there than meets the eye.
What Ducey proposes actually amounts to $10 million a year, and for just three years. Those funds can be spent only on certain kinds of programs designed to train people for specific jobs â and only if businesses come up with matching funds or equipment.
Dawn Wallace, the governorâs education adviser, said her boss thinks this is a better use of the money.
âIf weâre going to invest in career and technical education, we also want to invest in those workforce programs that are actually going to lead these children, these students, into a job,â she said. Wallace said there are employers out there who cannot find the trained workers they need.
But Sen. Steve Farley, D-Tucson, said Duceyâs narrow focus will kill the programs.
âThe superintendents I have spoken to have said unless they get the full restoration by March 15, theyâre going under,â he said.
Farley conceded that not every JTED program leads directly to a career. But he said JTEDs have a 92 percent graduation rate, higher than regular high schools.
âSo even if you donât think it prepares you to get a job, it does get you a high school diploma which gets you a job,â he said.
He is not alone in his concerns about the future of JTEDs. In fact, there is bipartisan support for restoring the $30 million in ongoing revenues â without the strings the governor wants â with Rep. Chris Ackerley, R-Sahaurita, already introducing legislation to undo the changes made last year when lawmakers thought the state was in a $1 billion hole.
What makes this yearâs lean budget proposal noteworthy is that the state actually ended the last fiscal year not in the deficit but with an extra $312 million in the bank.
And revenues this budget year already are running $200 million above estimates.
The governorâs budget adds only $284 million to the $9.2 billion budget.
About $60 million of that is formula driven, whatâs necessary just to keep the state running at current levels. That includes things like state aid to public schools.
There is another $168 million in new spending. But more than 80 percent of that is for one-time projects, dollars that state agencies cannot count on in the future.
Ducey wants to proceed cautiously, noting the state has effectively been living off of borrowed money for the last few years, using accounting gimmicks to achieve a balanced budget as required by the constitution, said press aide Daniel Scarpinato.
âItâs very important to this governor that we maintain structural balance and reach structural balance and donât go on a spending spree,â Scarpinato said.
âSo weâre responsibly investing in these programs,â he continued. âBut weâre not going to obligate the state to a bunch of new spending that we canât afford in the years ahead.â
But Scarpinato said while Ducey wants to proceed with caution the governor will fulfill his pledge of proposing a tax cut. He said, though, the details of how much â and who benefits â are being worked out with House and Senate Republican leadership.
JTEDs are not alone in taking a hit this coming year.
Thereâs also little new money in Duceyâs budget for the stateâs university system that took a $99 million cut just last year. Overall, Eileen Klein, president of the Arizona Board of Regents, said the schools have lost close to half a billion dollars in state aid in less than a decade.
âArizona ranks today dead last in the country for funding universities,â she said. âTuition more than doubled in the downturn.â
The irony of that is Ducey may owe his election to those tuition hikes, the hikes Klein said the regents were forced to enact by those prior budget cuts by a Republican governor and Republican lawmakers. During the 2014 campaign, Ducey told voters they should be angry with Democrat Fred DuVal for voting for those increases while he was on the Board of Regents.
What Ducey now proposes is just $8 million new money, plus refunding extra cash taken from the schools last year in a math error over their share of state health insurance premiums. Klein said that small increase could lead to another round of tuition hikes this spring.
But Klein said Duceyâs budget has something that could prove more important in the long run: a commitment that the state will pay one-half the cost of educating Arizona residents â eventually.
Gubernatorial budget analysts figure the actual cost of educating an undergraduate student at $15,550. But with the state providing only $5,335 in aid, that comes out to a little more than a third.
That $8 million infusion will barely make a dent. And the university is getting that much conditional on commissioning an independent cost study to determine ways of saving more money.
Still, Klein is optimistic
âIt is terrific to have a CEO of a state touting all of the attributes of our universities and recognizing them as partners in the economy,â she said. âBut, long term ... we absolutely have to see more dollars going into the public university system.â
Ducey also proposes to give the embattled Department of Child Safety an extra $48 million this budget year, adding another $39 million next year. Aides to the governor said that should finally allow the state to get rid of the backlog of âinactiveâ cases. These are open cases where no social worker or staffer has looked at the file â or looked in on the child â in at least 60 days.
One proposal likely to draw scrutiny sets aside close to $24 million to effectively be used as a guarantee for loans made by public schools that want to build new facilities. Wallace said that fund would provide some assurances to lenders, allowing schools to borrow at lower interest rates than they could otherwise get.
Access to that guarantee, however, would be available only to schools with an A rating on their academics from the Arizona Department of Education.
Potentially more controversial is that the guarantee also would be available to charter schools. While they are public schools under Arizona law and get state aid on a per-student basis, they can be privately operated on a for-profit basis, with the schools they build with the borrowed money owned by the private companies.
Wallace insisted, though, none of that runs afoul of a constitutional provision forbidding the state from using its credit in support of private corporations.
Ducey also wants more than $31 million in new funds for his Border Strike Task Force. That includes $20 million for equipment, $10 million for ongoing staffing costs.
There also is $1.5 million that would be divided up among border sheriffs, a move that may help blunt their opposition to Ducey creating a whole new strike force rather than simply giving the money to the sheriffs who already have people on the ground.
