By Howard Fischer | Capitol Media Services via Arizona Daily Star
A federal judge ruled Monday that the funding plan used by Gov. Doug Ducey to increase aid to schools is unconstitutional.
In a 35-page order, Judge Neil Wake said the federal Enabling Act that made Arizona (and New Mexico) a state in 1912 and gave it lands to hold in trust for schools allows the state to use only the interest off the money earned. The idea, Wake explained, was to preserve the body of the trust — and the interest it would earn — for future generations.
But Wake said Proposition 123, crafted by the governor as a method to settle a lengthy lawsuit over school funding, clearly ran afoul of that federal law.
“Nowhere in the history does anyone request or suggest that Congress give unfettered discretion to either state or that it was abdicating its oversight obligations under either state’s Enabling Act,” the judge wrote.
But Mike Liburdi, the governor’s attorney, said there is a provision buried in recent federal legislation that not only authorizes future payments from the trust that go into the school-finance formula but effectively ratifies the $344 million in prior payments that Wake said Monday were illegally made.
