By Ben Giles | Arizona Capitol Times
Pigs aren’t flying.
But it’s probably worth another look out the window, just to check, now that a conservative Republican proposed raising taxes in Arizona.
Sen. Sylvia Allen, the typically anti-tax lawmaker from Snowflake, sponsored legislation asking voters to raise a 0.6-cent sales tax earmarked for education to a full penny. So, too, will Sen. Kate Brophy McGee, a Phoenix Republican who also sees a penny sales tax as the best solution to provide new revenues for education, particularly K-12 schools devastated by recession-era cuts to funding.
That Brophy McGee, considered a moderate Republican by Arizona’s right-leaning standards, would propose a tax hike is less surprising.
That Allen would do the same is a shock to some, though a welcome one.
After all, it was less than two years ago that Allen penned an op-ed in The Arizona Republic asking, when it comes to funding education, “when is it ever enough?” Voters don’t want higher taxes, she wrote, and the state already spends more than half its budget on education.
