Many will pooh-pooh state schools chief Diane Douglas’ call for an extension and increase of the Proposition 301 education tax.

The reasons vary: It’s an attempt by a weak incumbent to score political points. She is a party outsider whose words carry little cachet. She’s weighing in late in the legislative session to effect any meaningful action.

Yes, yes and maybe. But two other points can be made.

Douglas' call illuminates Ducey's vulnerability

First, Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton may have been looking last week to make the education sales tax an issue in next year’s gubernatorial race. But it’s Douglas who made the more full-throated declaration.

Second, by calling for the Prop. 301 tax to be increased to a full cent (from the current six-tenths of a cent), Douglas puts into clarity the one potential vulnerability of Gov. Doug Ducey.

The governor has said he favors renewing Prop. 301, which is set to expire in 2021, and is opened to the idea of an increase. But to date, he hasn’t committed to such a concept. Nor has he indicated how much of a hike would be reasonable.

An increase in the rate is a quandary for a governor who ran on a platform of no new taxes. 

A quandary for Ducey -- of his own making

Ducey’s reasoning that a rate increase wouldn’t be a tax hike — “This is a funding program, and we’re going to continue a funding program,” he said last month — is nothing more than verbal gymnastics. 

Anything beyond Prop. 301’s six-tenths of a cent would in essence be a new tax.

DIAZ: Why aren't teachers cheering Diane Douglas?

It’s a quandary, too, of Ducey’s and the Legislature’s own making.

The governor vowed in the selling of last year’s Prop. 123 — which settled a lawsuit over the underfunding of Arizona schools during the Great Recession — that it would be a first step toward boosting funding for education.

Lost momentum, focus after Prop. 123 passage

After a razor-thin win, however, the focus shifted elsewhere.

A Classrooms First panel that Ducey put together yielded little more than talking points. And the governor’s proposed additional resources amounted to incremental efforts, most notably a 2 percent pay increase for teachers — stretched over five years.

Instead, the powers that be applied their muscles largely to expand Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, or vouchers, for traditional public school students to attend private schools. 

Regardless how folks feel about ESAs and their true impact the expansion may have on traditional schools’ finances, it left a bitter taste of betrayal to many educators and advocates who held their noses and voted for Prop. 123.

No dispute public schools need help

The anger on vouchers, however overblown, however limited, is real.

The governor and legislative leaders would have been wiser to first settle the education tax before the divisive issue of vouchers. It was a wasted opportunity to build political capital.

Undoubtedly, Ducey and state lawmakers alike acknowledge there are systemic problems with K-12 education. 

One of the bills passed by the Legislature and signed by Ducey, Senate Bill 1042, would ease the rules for individuals to qualify to become a teacher — a nod to the teacher shortage the state faces.

Risky to oppose an education-tax hike

Douglas’ support to use the lion’s share of an education tax increase for teacher pay — she is the first statewide-elected official to back such a tax hike — ups the ante.

Granted, Douglas doesn't carry the necessary political weight; in that regard, Stanton's challenge to business leaders to advocate for a tax increase holds more sway. And one can bicker about her motive and timing,  which comes awfully late in the session.

But it certainly doesn’t preclude action by the Legislature next year to put the full-cent idea on the 2018 ballot (and yes, it's no sure thing lawmakers would refer a measure that would go beyond a six-tenths of a cent extension).

Which gets back to pressure it puts on Ducey. It’s one thing to champion against a 1-cent sales-tax increase (largely) for education in 2012, which Ducey did at the time, and prevailed, as state treasurer. It’s another to repeat that stance in 2018.

It’s doubly so when he, too, presumably will be on the ballot.

Email Kwok at akwok@azcentral.com. Twitter: @abekwok.

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