Journalists’ Roundtable: Education Vouchers

It’s Friday, and that means it’s time for another edition of the Journalists’ Roundtable. Joining Arizona Horizon for a look at the week’s top stories: Mary Jo Pitzl of The Arizona Republic and AZCentral.com; Howie Fischer of Capitol Media Services and Mark Brodie of KJZZ.

Top stories this week included:

• Universal school voucher program
• Cook to primary Rogers?
• County attorneys vs. Governor
• Arizona Secretary of State’s office subpoenaed by Special Counsel
• Trump souring on Lake?
• Sun City tramway and budget process

Why the price for school vouchers keeps going up

Mary Jo Pitzl: “The price tag goes up because the enrollment goes up. You’ve gotta look at this, it’s popular. It’s been one year ago today Governor Ducey signed a bill that created universal empowerment scholarship accounts which are called ESA’s or vouchers. Since then, the enrollment has just blossomed. About 47,000 new people in addition to the children that are already in the program.”

County attorneys challenge the Governor

Governor Katie Hobbs recently announced cases related to abortion in Arizona would be handled by the Attorney General of Arizona as opposed to the county attorneys. Twelve county attorneys have asked Governor Hobbs to rescind her executive order.

Howie Fischer: “There is a state law that says the governor may direct the Attorney General to take over a case in which the state is involved. As far as we can determine it has been used once before. What this governor has done is essentially said, ‘We’re gonna take away all category of cases that haven’t even been filed yet,’ and the county attorneys said to the Governor, “Well, even assuming we believe the governor has powers to assume cases, where does it say you can take away the county attorney’s power? We are elected officials too.'”