PHOENIX — Gov. Doug Ducey inked his approval Friday to a nearly $9.82 billion spending plan for the new budget year that begins July 1.
Overall pending for the coming year will be about $208 million more than in the current state budget.
The largest change is in K-12 education.
Most of that is $127.9 million just to keep schools where they are now. The figure includes required increases to compensate schools for higher enrollment as well as the legally obligated additional funds for inflation.
There’s also $34 million for a 1.06 percent state-funded teacher pay raise, above and beyond whatever raise local school districts can provide.
Lawmakers have promised an identical increase for the next school year, subject to approval by the 2018 Legislature.
Another $37.6 million is set aside for “results-based funding.” These are additional dollars that go to high-performing schools.
And there’s $8 million to provide state-funded full-day kindergarten — with a promise of $12 million next year — for a handful of schools that serve the most needy.
Legislative budget analysts are still computing how much the new education dollars mean in per-student funding for the new school year and whether this may reverse a decade-long slide.
Another big increase in spending this year comes in the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, where a growing number of people eligible for care translates to an additional $44.1 million in state dollars.
The three state universities are getting an additional $15 million in one-time funding above basic state aid formulas. This, however, is actually a reduction in revenues, as lawmakers provided a one-time $19 million infusion for the current fiscal year.
The $15 million has strings attached, with the University of Arizona having to use $1 million of its $4.2 million allocation to fund a so-called “economic freedom school,” which was started with seed money from foundations run by the Koch brothers. There’s an identical $1 million earmark out of the $7.6 million for Arizona State University; Northern Arizona University gets $3.2 million in one-time dollars.
Ducey has a separate bill on his desk to authorize the state’s three universities to borrow $1 billion for needed construction and repairs. That is not part of the budget, as the first funding won’t come until the first payment of $27 million is due the following fiscal year.
The budget also includes an additional $33 million specifically to increase what the state pays to private firms that provide services to the developmentally disabled.
These companies negotiated contracts based on being able to pay their workers as little as the minimum wage, which was $8.05 last year. But that was before voters mandated an immediate increase in the minimum wage to $10, going to $12 by 2020.
There is $30 million in the budget for local road construction and repair. But that simply offsets the money the budget takes from gasoline taxes and vehicle registration fees to fund the Department of Public Safety.
