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Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard on Wednesday shot down a proposal for the Arizona House to use $5 million of its surplus money to pay for vouchers for hundreds of private school students.
Goddard said the proposal by House Speaker Jim Weiers and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne involving interim funding with House money would be unconstitutional without an appropriation approved by the full Legislature and the governor.
Weiers and Horne made the proposal because there is no money in the new budget for the vouchers for hundreds of disabled and foster children.
"It's a terrible situation and I feel very badly for the families," Goddard said in a telephone interview. "Try as we might, we could not find any method that the speaker could take funds appropriated for the House and use them for scholarships."
Weiers said he was disappointed by Goddard's informal opinion and was trying to contact Horne, who is on vacation. "The important thing is that we don't stop trying," Weiers said.
In requesting the informal opinion, the two Republican officeholders said they were trying to arrange temporary funding for the voucher programs to avoid harming the students if they have to change schools.
They offered their proposal after the Arizona Supreme Court said the vouchers could continue during an appeal of an Arizona Court of Appeals decision. That ruling found that the vouchers violated state constitutional prohibitions against using state money to support religious or other private schools.
That decision overturned a trial court judge decision that upheld the two programs created under 2007 legislation.
But the new state budget approved last month didn't include continued funding for the vouchers.
That was partly because the state needed to make spending cuts to help erase a projected $2 billion shortfall and partly because the voucher program was new, wasn't using all of its allotted funding and "wasn't really fulfilling a central role of public education," Gov. Janet Napolitano said.
The budget was supported by Napolitano, legislative Democrats and a small number of majority Republican lawmakers.
The Department of Education said 189 foster students received grants for the 2007-2008 school year, with an average grant amount of $3,945. Meanwhile, 186 grants were issued to disabled students, in amounts ranging from $975 to nearly $24,100.
Tucson resident Brendan Fay, whose 14-year-old disabled daughter received a voucher during the past school year, said the law apparently tied Goddard's hands on the interim funding proposal. But he said that Napolitano's opposition to vouchers led to the elimination of the program's funding.
"It's a huge disservice to the children," Fay said, referring to the general situation and citing progress his daughter made while in a private school.
Supporters are trying to raise private donations to pay for the vouchers and will urge lawmakers to appropriate funding in 2009, Fay said.
Napolitano, a Democrat, generally opposes vouchers — full or partial tuition grants that are provided to families of students attending private schools — but accepted the creation of the programs as part of a 2007 budget compromise that gave her wins on other issues.
Asked about the Weiers-Horne funding proposal before Goddard released his informal opinion, Napolitano expressed qualms about using money appropriated for the Legislature "to fund a program that was not specifically not funded in this budget."
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