PHOENIX — The state House voted 45-14 Tuesday to waive the expenditure cap that is in the way of Arizona public schools being able to spend all the money they already have for this fiscal year.
But they are not out of the fiscal woods yet. Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, said she has yet to line up the necessary votes in her own chamber.
And unless senators act by March 1, the House vote won't matter -- and schools will be barred from spending a total of more than $1.1 billion in cash they already have and need to finish the school year.
The House vote occurred with all Democrats in favor.
None of the 14 Republicans who opposed the move explained their decisions. Nor did any respond to requests after the vote by Capitol Media Services for comment.
The measure had bipartisan support.
Rep. Jennifer Pawlik, D-Chandler, told colleagues there was no reason for them to refuse the one-time waiver.
"The override is a temporary fix that will allow schools to spend the money they have already been allocated,'' she said.
"They have not done anything wrong,'' Pawlik continued. "And they certainly have not overspent their budgets.''
Instead, it simply recognizes -- as has the legislature at least twice before -- that the aggregate expenditure limit approved by voters in 1980 needs to be waived in certain circumstances.
House Speaker Rusty Bowers, R-Mesa, echoed the sentiment that the action should have been routine.
"Every year or other there's some issue that is politicized,'' he said. "No one ever said that the schools were doing something wrong.''
The delay in acting, Bowers said, was to make sure that the waiver did not affect other issues, like the fate of Proposition 208, a voter-approved measure that sought to raise an extra more than $800 million for K-12 education through a surcharge on the incomes of the most wealthy.
In an earlier ruling the Arizona Supreme Court said the funds cannot be collected if they would force schools to exceed the expenditure cap. Bowers noted, though, that issue is about the 2022-2023 school year; Tuesday's vote is about the current school year.
That leaves it to Fann to line up the votes in the Senate. And she declined to tell Capitol Media Services on Tuesday how many votes she is short.
But, even counting her own support, she needs at least six of the remaining 15 Republicans to go along.
That's because it takes a two-thirds vote of both chambers even for a one-year waiver of the expenditure cap. And there currently are only 13 Democrats in the Senate, what with Sen. Juan Mendez, D-Tucson, not having been present since the beginning of the session as he chose to stay home and avoid the possibility of infecting his newborn child.
The limit was imposed by voters in 1980 as part of a multi-pronged effort to curb government spending.
It set a baseline of total K-12 expenses, with annual adjustments for both inflation and student growth.
That growth figure, however, is based on attendance in the prior school year. And the COVID outbreak resulted in many students not attending classes.
Complicating matters is a 0.6-cent sales tax first approved by voters in 2000 to supplement teacher salaries.
The original 20-year measure put those revenues outside the expenditure cap. But when lawmakers approved an extension through 2041 they did not include the same exemption.
That action alone amounts for more than $600 million of the excess.
Education officials have said the failure of lawmakers to waive the limit by March 1 means each and every school district will need to trim about 16% of what they budgeted for the entire school year.
More to the point, those cuts will need to be made in just three months, a move that could result in having to lay off teachers and consolidate classes.
House Republicans who voted against the waiver:
Brenda Barton, Payson
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