CAITLIN SIEVERS AND JEROD MACDONALD-EVOY
Arizona Mirror
In a defeat to the Arizona Legislature’s conservative Freedom Caucus, both chambers on Monday passed a bill that will ask voters in Maricopa County to continue Proposition 400, a half-cent transportation tax that funds roads and public transportation.
The passage of Senate Bill 1102, which will put Prop. 400 to the voters for the third time since 1984, when it was initially approved, also marked the end of a drawn out and contentious legislative session that lasted a record 203 days.
Once Gov. Katie Hobbs signs the bill, which she is expected to do, it will direct Maricopa County to hold a countywide election to ask the voters to extend the transportation tax for two decades. The tax funds street and highway projects, along with public transportation, a point of contention for those in the Freedom Caucus.
But the legislation impacts residents all over the state, not just in Maricopa County, because if Prop. 400 fails, all of the other counties will have to compete with Maricopa for limited state transportation funding.
The bill includes a $24 billion plan over 20 years, with 40.5% allocated to freeways and highways, 37% to public transit and 22.5% to roads and intersections.
Voters last approved the tax in 2004 and it is set to expire at the end of 2025. It has funded projects like the light rail, State Route 51, State Route 24 and Loops 101, 202 and 303.
Both houses of the legislature previously approved a different version of SB1102 in June favored by Republicans, passing it along party lines, but Hobbs vetoed that bill, saying it was time to come together to create a bipartisan solution.
The original version tasked Maricopa County with putting two separate questions to the voters: One asking if they would continue putting the majority of the tax money collected to support roads projects and another asking if they would back putting the remainder of the funds toward public transportation.
Members of the Freedom Caucus were not happy that those two questions were consolidated into one question in the final version of the bill, with Rep. Alexander Kolodin, of Scottsdale, asking why such a large portion of the tax money was going to pay for public transportation when only 1% of Arizonans use it.
“This denies the voters of Maricopa County a real choice,” Kolodin said. “This holds road funding hostage.”
