By Micaela Marshall | AZ Family
PHOENIX (AZFamily) — A $16.1 billion state budget passed both legislative chambers Saturday night.
Voting wrapped up in the House before 9 p.m., and the Senate got it done about an hour later, officially marking the end of the 2024 session for the state legislature.
A more than $1.3 billion budget shortfall forced state lawmakers to make tough choices about what programs and projects to kill or postpone. 16 bills passed as part of the budget package aimed at reducing spending by more than a billion dollars.
Beth Lewis is the Executive Director of Save Our Schools Arizona. She calls this budget sad and argues it gives no new dollars to public schools.
She says the ESA program has become a coupon for the rich and reform is needed to better support low income students.
“The ESA voucher program has shown in a nonpartisan report last week that it’s driving half of the budget deficit. So, you know, anything that’s driving hundreds of millions of dollars of deficit should clearly be the first thing on the table to be, you know, reined in and yet Republicans absolutely stubbornly refuse to touch that program in any way shape or form,” said Lewis.
Republican Speaker of the House, Ben Toma, disagrees.
“That’s just not true. The truth of the matter is that those dollars are being spent by the taxpayers anyway. The only question is where. The ESA program was my program. I’m the one who created it, right. Of course I’m going to defend it. But remember that we’re shifting dollars from one bucket to another, that’s not the same,” he said. “Parents want this. This is not a partisan issue outside of this building and outside of the Capitol. If you talk to Democrats, you talk Republicans, you talk to Independents, everybody loves ESAs and school choice. So, Arizona, it’s here to stay and we’ve protected it.”
