Arizona lawmakers, governor deadlock over freeways vs. light-rail funding

PHOENIX — Voters across the state might get to decide whether Maricopa County residents will be able to extend a half-cent sales tax there to pay for transportation projects.

Gov. Katie Hobbs said Wednesday she will back a proposal to put an initiative on Arizona’s 2024 ballot. It would repeal a state law that requires Maricopa County — and only Maricopa County — to get legislative approval before putting a transportation sales-tax renewal to voters.

Hobbs acknowledged that she could instead call lawmakers back to the Capitol to redo a bill on the Maricopa County issue approved late Tuesday by Republican lawmakers, which she plans to veto. The Democratic governor said the GOP plan is unacceptable, as it would provide less money for mass transit than sought by the Maricopa Association of Governments and would require two separate votes by Maricopa County voters to extend the tax.

But Hobbs said she won’t call them back because Republicans have drawn a line in the sand, in a dispute that centers on how much to spend on building freeways vs. mass transit including light rail.

“I don’t think it serves anyone’s purpose if they’re not willing to come to the table and talk about a deal,’’ she said. “And that requires some cooling off.’’

Rep. David Livingston, R-Peoria, said lawmakers won’t give Hobbs what she wants. “This is going to be the only bill that passes this session’’ on extension of the tax, he said.

Other Republicans said if Hobbs won’t accept their plan, that closes the door on Maricopa County voters having any chance to extend the levy, first approved in 1985, for another 20 years.

If that’s the case, the current tax will self-destruct at the end of 2025. All the funds it would raise — an estimated $20 billion over the next two decades — would not be collected and the projects would not happen.

‘Plan B’

That leaves Plan B, said Avondale Mayor Kenn Weise, chairman of the Maricopa Association of Governments, which Weise called the “Free Maricopa’’ initiative.

The idea now is to persuade voters statewide that residents of the state’s most populous county should not be hobbled by a restriction that doesn’t apply anywhere else, he said Wednesday.

“Maricopa County is the only county in the state that has to go through this process’’ of getting the blessing of state lawmakers to ask voters to extend the tax, Weise said. “And we’ve seen just how disastrous that can be.’’

The initiative would require 255,949 valid signatures on petitions by July 3, 2024 to put the issue to Arizona voters that November. Then, if it passed, it would be up to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to set a date for a special election in early 2025 on extending the tax after the current levy expires at the end of that year.

Livingston, for his part, said he doubts the business community would pony up multiple millions of dollars to get the signatures for the initiative and then probably $10 million or more to convince voters statewide to let Maricopa County out from under the legislative restriction.

Weise, however, said he doesn’t foresee a problem getting the necessary backing, especially in the wake of Republican legislators telling Maricopa County, effectively, that when it comes to a transit tax, it’s their way or the highway.

“When things like this happen, it has a tendency to energize and galvanize those stakeholders that are vested in this plan,’’ he said. “My hope is we would get support from the business community to move forward with this.’’

Financial issues aside, Hobbs said she believes that voters statewide would be willing to support repeal of the restrictions. “It is ridiculous that Maricopa County has to go to the Legislature to get permission to go to the ballot for something for their region,” she said.

She also warned, “If Maricopa doesn’t get this, then every other region of this state is going to be competing with Maricopa for transportation dollars.”

‘They wanted more freeways’

Livingston said GOP leaders of the Legislature decided they needed veto power over the Maricopa plan because “they thought that a government agency like MAG could have too much power. Obviously that is true because they (MAG) put something together that the people that represent the Legislature didn’t agree with.’’

He sidestepped the point that MAG, by itself, lacks the power to impose a levy. Instead, the organization, composed of elected officials, still would have to offer a plan acceptable to a majority of Maricopa County voters.

Livingston also said MAG’s new plan to go to the statewide ballot shows it never was negotiating in good faith with the Legislature.

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Ed Zuerker, MAG’s managing director, said that’s not true.

“We have given on freeways,’’ he told Capitol Media Services. “They wanted more freeways, so we increased the freeway (spending) number.’’

At the same time, Zuerker said, MAG decreased the percentage it was seeking for transit. The organization also agreed that any light rail extensions would be funded not by the half-cent sales tax but other revenues, he said.

MAG also agreed to language to require Valley Metro, which runs the bus, trolleys and light rail systems, to meet certain “benchmarks,’’ based on comparable cities, of what percentage of the operating costs would be covered by fares.

“I mean, just time after time, we have found ways to give what they say they need and ask for as much as we can while keeping the plan intact,’’ Zuerker said. “And we just have hit a limit of there’s no more to give.’’

Light rail lightning rod

Hobbs said she will be taking the lead from supporters of the renewed tax on how they want to proceed.

She and MAG want an extension of the half-cent levy for 20 years, with 40% of the proceeds going towards freeways, an identical amount to mass transit, and the balance for regional and arterial roads.

By contrast, Republican lawmakers authorized a vote on a 0.0495-cent levy, with a larger share going towards freeways. Also, they want Maricopa residents to have to approve a 0.43-cent levy and a separate 0.07-cent tax for construction and extension of light rail.

House Speaker Ben Toma said “the fact that some seem to be concerned, shall we say, about the fact that it’s split into two questions is very telling to me. They might be a little bit afraid, perhaps, that light rail isn’t going to pass while the other bucket would.’’

The question is whether Maricopa County voters, who approved the last tax extension in 2005, including funding for light rail, are still as enthusiastic about rail.

Republican Rep. Barbara Parker said construction of light rail in Mesa “not only destroyed our historic Main Street and downtown Mesa, but it destroyed lifelong businesses of families and generations of business that had been there for years and years.”

She doesn’t believe light rail is being used to any significant extent by commuters, she said. “We are funding a loser,’’ Parker said. “In our town, it’s a moving urinal and that is it.’’

But Democrat Lorena Austin, also representing Mesa, painted a different picture.

“The light rail has been absolutely transformative,’’ she said. “If you’ve been to downtown Mesa, even in just the past year, you would see that all the retails are actually booming. We can’t get businesses in there fast enough. And it has everything to do with public transportation.’’

Senate Minority Leader Mitzi Epstein, D-Tempe, told colleagues that short-changing mass transit — and light rail in particular — is not a good move.

“Light rail is the most efficient way to move people,’’ especially in areas of high density, she said. “And if we continue to have the idea that everything must be a single driver in a car on a road, we will just get to the point of having to pave every speck.’’

But Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Scottsdale, said Arizona doesn’t have the density of a place like New York, where he is from, to make mass transit and rail a meaningful way to get people out of their cars.

Senate President Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, said light rail shouldn’t be paid for by everyone who buys items subject to sales taxes throughout Maricopa County.

“If cities want to do light rail, you know what?’’ Petersen said. “They can find ways to fund it and do it.’’