We're Looking For Ideas

The ASURA Board doesn’t meet over the summer but the committees continue to work on plans for the 2017-18 activity year.  Please put your thinking caps on and provide some ideas/input on the following:

Travel Committee – The committee is looking for ideas on local day trip destinations.  Give it some thought and tell the committee chairman where you’ve been that you think others would enjoy or somewhere you’ve always wanted to go.  Write him at:  john.brock@asu.edu

Seminar Committee – The committee wants to know kind of seminars that you’d like them to schedule.  What kind of topics would you like to know more about?  They’d really like to know.  Send your ideas to committee chair Bev Buddee at:  buddee@asu.edu

Annual Meeting – The ASURA Board is seeking ideas about where to hold the ASURA Annual Meetings besides on campus at the MU.  They would like ideas on locations that have convenient free parking and a meeting room with a capacity to hold 60 – 100 people.  Also being considered is moving this annual event to a weekday in April instead of a Saturday.   Please send your ideas and input to President Jeri Meeks at:  jeri.meeks@asu.edu

Legislative Updates

The following are two articles regarding three bills on the Citizen Initiative Process and one bill expanding the school voucher programs. 

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Arizona Legislature Passes Bills to Rollback Arizona Citizen-Initiative Limits

Angered by the Citizen Initiative to raise the minimum wage, the Arizona Legislature passed three bills to Rollback Arizona Citizen-Initiatives.  These bills are:

• House Bill 2404:   
  
  • This bill bans political committees from paying initiative circulators by the signature.  Please note:  The Legislators specifically excluded candidate committees from this requirement. 
  • The goal of this bill is to drive up the cost of gathering the necessary signatures to place a Citizen-Initiative on the ballot.
• House Bill 2244:
  
  • This bill requires the mechanics of the initiative effort — from the size of the petition to the font size of the text — to strictly comply with the law.
  • The goal of this bill is to disqualify a significant number of signatures for a Citizen-Initiative for what has up to now been immaterial matters.  For example, if a petition is not exactly the specific size, it would be thrown out.  Given when a copier makes copies of a petition, the resultant copy is somewhat smaller, all those petitions would be thrown out. 
• Senate Bill 1236:
  
  • This bill would add more requirements for petition circulators. It would hold the political committee that sponsors an initiative responsible for any legal violation a circulator might commit, subject to a fine of up to $1,000. Currently, the individual is responsible for his actions.
  • The goal of this bill is to drive up the cost to the sponsors (political committees) of any Citizen Initiative.  This also opens the door for people wanting to stop an Initiative to circulate fraudulent petitions and stick the committee with a $1,000 fine for each violation.

Protecting our Rights: Petition Drive to Stop Implementation of these Bills by Referring Them to the Ballot for a Vote

Former Attorney General Grant Woods and former Phoenix Mayor Paul Johnson are chairing the committee, which filed its paperwork with the Arizona Secretary of State's Office to refer all three of the bills to the 2018 General Election ballot.

"Arizona, since statehood, has treasured the right of the people to serve as a check on the Legislature," said Woods, a registered Republican. "It's pretty obvious they are trying to chip away at that. We're not going to let them."

The Task: 75K Signatures in 90 days

The committee needs to gather 75,321 voter signatures within 90 days after hitting the streets to qualify for the 2018 ballot. Joe Yuhas, the committee's consultant, said they will aim for 120,000 to 130,000 signatures to have a cushion. The drive will use a combination of paid and volunteer circulators.

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Arizona Legislature Passes Bill (Senate Bill 1431) to Expand School Vouchers.

The expansion of the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts program opens ESAs to all public- and charter-school students. Up to 30,000 parents could use the new program by 2022. It's scheduled to take effect 90 days after the state Legislature adjourns. ESAs had been limited to certain children, including those with disabilities and those from poor-performing schools.

ESAs are funded by diverting between 90 percent and 100 percent of a student's state school funding from their local school district to private schools or other education expenses. The money is placed in an account, which parents can use to pay for private-school tuition, uniforms, books, tutoring, educational therapies and other items.

Parent Group Seeks to Overturn Arizona School-Voucher Expansion

Public-education advocates (Save Our Schools Arizona) are launching a referendum campaign to halt the controversial expansion of Arizona’s school-voucher-style program and let the public decide to either uphold or overturn the school-voucher expansion. The committee will have 90 days to collect about 75,000 valid signatures from registered voters to qualify for the November 2018 ballot.

The Task: 75K Signatures in 90 days

Beth Lewis, a teacher and founding member of Save our Schools Arizona, said "Our public schools are starving…As a teacher and a mom of two students who are about to go to public school, I am so concerned about the state of education in Arizona…The ESA issue is the straw that broke the camel’s back. And we don’t have any choice but to start fighting for what’s right.”

Additionally, Professor Paul Bender, former ASU Law School Dean in his address to the Friends of ASU and the League of Women Voters pointed out that he believes this expansion is unconstitutional.  Specifically, Article 9, Section 10 states: “No tax shall be laid or appropriation of public money made in aid of any church, or private or sectarian school, or any public service corporation.