Jim Christ: Bible’s Esau did better than Prop. 123

The Star is recommending a ‘yes’ vote on Prop. 123.

Has the Star gone mad?

Until recently, the story that best exemplified shortsighted bargaining is the Old Testament story of Esau. You’ll recall, Esau was Isaac’s elder son who traded his inheritance for a bowl of lentil soup, a bargain beyond foolish.

But Arizona education leaders, who helped negotiate the deal that takes money out of the state land trust, have made a deal much more fatuous than the one struck by Esau, who at least got everything he asked for from his younger brother and went away immediately well-fed.

What did the Arizona Education Association and the Arizona School Boards Association get for the children of Arizona when they caved in to coercion by Gov. Doug Ducey and state Senate President Andy Biggs to settle the education funding lawsuit with Prop. 123?

Prop. 123 sounds impressive: $3.5 billion over the next 10 years, and $625 million from the general fund and a promise to raise funding annually for inflation. But additional funding is not really immediate, especially if state Treasurer Jeff DeWit files suit to protect the state land trust, as he has said he will do.

And now the Legislature has passed a budget that starves our schools in favor of more corporate tax giveaways, reflecting their cynical belief that passage of Prop. 123 will fulfill their duty to education.

But the Prop. 123 dollar amounts are not as impressive as they sound. School leadership is settling for about 70 percent of the what the court says the Legislature owes to the children these school leaders are supposedly advocating for, which leaves the kids merely malnourished. It’s like Esau trading his birthright for two-thirds of a meal.

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That’s better than nothing, right? Well, perhaps, but only if you don’t consider what school leaders gave away, and they gave away plenty. They gave away constitutionally mandated inflation increases if the state education budget ever exceeds 49 percent of the state’s general fund, and they gave away increases if sales tax revenue falters. These huge giveaways were not what we voters intended when we passed Prop. 301 15 years ago.

Like Esau, the school leaders we were depending on gave away a birthright — worse than Esau, they gave away their heirs’ birthright. They agreed to permit the state land trust to be plundered at the rate of 6.9 percent per year. Yet, Arizona’s Board of Investment and Republican DeWit insist that the maximum amount that can be safely withdrawn is less than 4 percent.

DeWit knows, as do all the previous state treasurers except Ducey, that excessive withdrawals from the state’s land trust will in fact endanger the trust.

What Ducey and Biggs are doing is stealing from tomorrow’s school children in order to provide for today’s needs, having duped our education leaders into promoting their plan, all the while sitting on budget authority that could provide sufficient aid to schools now without even touching the land trust.

One must admire the strategy of the Republicans who engineered this deal, if one can admire guile. Their cunning makes Jacob look like an amateur when he tricked Esau. Getting the AEA and the ASBA and the other plaintiffs to pretend they’ve won a victory by this sellout is genius.

Now, even the Star editorial board is naively telling us that passage of 123 is a “necessary first step” that will somehow lead to adequate funding of Arizona’s public schools. If you actually believe that, you should go to Bernie Madoff for additional investment advice.

The only rational vote on Proposition 123 is ‘No’!