Arizona House OKs school spending cap waiver; Senate delays

PHOENIX (AP) — The Arizona House voted Tuesday to avert a shutdown of the state's K-12 public school system by approving a waiver of a constitutional cap on spending that would be exceeded by March 1. But the Senate president says she does not yet have the votes.

The 45-14 vote provided the required two-thirds majority to give schools the ability to spend $1.54 billion lawmakers appropriated last year that would have put them over the constitutional spending limit. All 28 Democrats present voted for the waiver, but 14 of 31 Republican House members voted no.

Republican House Speaker Rusty Bowers said he had vowed to push through the override but that it had become caught in a political struggle over a voter-approved tax on the wealthy.

Republicans were leery of approving the waiver of the aggregate spending limit for fears it could breathe life into Proposition 208, the 2020 voter-approved tax on the wealthy that the state Supreme Court ruled in August was unconstitutional if it put spending over the cap.

A trial court judge is considering whether that would be the case, but has delayed issuing what tax opponents say is a certain ruling that the new revenue would exceed the cap. Bowers and Republican Senate President Karen Fann asked the Supreme Court last week to step in and kill Proposition 208 for good. The court could act next week on that request.

"Every year there's some issue or the other that is politicized," Bowers said. “No one ever said that the schools ... were doing something wrong. We simply said we want to make sure that there is no linkage between this issue and other issues.”

Traditional district schools are expected to hit the “aggregate expenditure limit” by early next month. Minority Democrats have been railing for weeks that schools could be...