Republican Treasurer Yee challenging incumbent Horne for Arizona schools chief

By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
PHOENIX -- Unable to seek reelection, state Treasurer Kimberly Yee now wants to become the top education official in Arizona.
Yee said Wednesday she believes she could do a better job as superintendent of public instruction than fellow Republican Tom Horne. A state lawmaker before being elected treasurer in 2018 -- she can serve only two four-year terms -- Yee said students in Arizona are falling behind academically.
But what appears to be driving her race -- and that of supporters at a press conference -- is that Horne has refused to allow some parents who are getting vouchers of state funds to home school their children to make expensive purchases that he said are not academically justified.
Horne has been a consistent supporter of vouchers, both for parents to use for tuition for private and parochial schools as well as those engaged in various forms of home schooling. But he has run afoul of some voucher supporters after the Department of Education, which he runs, denied reimbursement to parents for items like a $5,000 Rolex watch, a $24,000 golf simulator and even a vasectomy testing kit.
And it was that issue that Jake Hoffman, chairman of the Arizona Freedom Caucus composed of conservative Republicans, said what led to his group of conservative lawmakers to ask her to run.
Yee said Horne had no right to deny the expenses.
"I believe in school choice and an educational free marketplace,'' she said.
More to the point, Yee said that the law that created vouchers -- formally known as Empowerment Scholarship Accounts -- limits the ability of Horne or any other state school chief to overrule what a parent concludes is or is not an appropriate need for a child.
"As long as the state superintendent and Department of Education follow that law I would be supportive she said.
And if the law is not clear?
"I believe the state superintendent, if there's any question on how to administer the program, should not be making those exclusive decisions on his own,'' Yee said. "He needs to go back to the legislative process which is appropriate and work with the Legislature to additionally add those protections.''
Anyway, she said, the examples that Horne and others have cited of improper expenses are just 0.01% of the total nearly $1 billion spent on vouchers.
Horne, for his part, said he and his agency are following the law. And that, he said, is based on two principles: is the expenditure for a legitimate purpose and is it at a reasonable cost.
And in a prepared statement, Horne said the fact that the Parent Handbook doesn't specifically bar the questioned expenses does not mean he is powerless to reject them.
"In writing a handbook, who could predict that someone would ask for a $5,000 Rolex watch?'' he said.
"If the department had granted all requests as urged by the department's adversaries, it would've been big news, the public would have reacted, and the survivability of the program would be in question,'' Horne said. "Because the department strongly favors parental choice, the survivabilty of the program is a high priority.''
And there's something else.
He pointed out that any parent, denied reimbursement for an expense, can seek review by a hearing officer and, ultimately, the state Board of Education. Horne said none of those appeals have succeeded.
But Horne made it clear he recognizes the objections to the decisions his agency has made, not just from parents but also from some lawmakers.
"The department has been engaged with legislative leadership to reach a compromise,'' he said. "And it is anticipated that a revised Parent Handbook proposal that is more favorable will result.''
At her press conference, Yee also complained that student achievement has faltered under Horne's leadership and that many students who had been in schools prior to the COVID pandemic had not returned, all she said which can be blamed on the Department of Education. But Yee offered no concrete proposals for how she would change that.
The fight to be the GOP nominee comes as state lawmakers are debating whether and how to continue Proposition 123. Approved by voter in 2016, it has provided an additional approximately $350 million a year for K-12 education by making additional withdrawals from a special trust account.
That measure expires this year. And lawmakers have agreed to absorb that additional $350 million into the regular state budget.
Both Republicans and Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs want the additional trust fund withdrawals to continue to provide additional dollars to public schools.
But GOP lawmakers now want the the measure to extend the withdrawals to also include a constitutional protection for vouchers. Hobbs, for her part, has declared that to be a non-starter.
Yee declined to take a stance on the GOP plan to link the issues, saying she hasn't seen the details.
"I'll take a look at what that proposal looks like going forward,'' she said.
But Yee, in her position as treasurer -- the person who oversees the trust account -- already has registered one objection to the concept.
As crafted by Republicans, it would continue the current practice of withdrawing 6.9% each year from the "corpus'' of the trust. That overrides the basic law which sets the annual withdrawal at 2.5%.
Yee, for her part, said it would be more prudent to take out less.
"I continue to advocate for the 4% to 4.5% distribution rate which is the industry norm for an endowment such as this,'' she said.
"We don't want to raid the program,'' Yee continued. "We certainly don't want to touch the corpus of the trust.''
So far, though, both Republicans and the governor have pointed out that the trust continued to grow in the past decade even with Prop 123 using a 6.9% withdrawal rate. Yee said if they insist on continuing to use that figure for the extension, there need to be "triggers'' to be able to lower the distribution if there was a change in the economy that endangers the financial soundness of the trust.
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