Page 17 - The Edge - Winter 2016

ARIZONA CAPITOL TIMES CONTRIBUTING ARTICLE

BY: JEREMY DUDA

Eye to Eye: Evolution of the School Finance Deal

A settlement five years in the making was resolved in a their staffs. The two sides had spent more than a half year in
matter of about three weeks once both sides in the ongoing K-12 mediation, but had never sat down face-to-face, instead using
funding lawsuit sat face-to-face for the first time. the appellate court judges as a go-between.
But getting from that point to the special legislative session Everyone involved described that first face-to-face meeting
that, pending voter approval, will end years of litigation over between the two sides as a turning point in the discussion.
education funding was an arduous task. Following years spent “When we can actually get in the room with those plaintiffs,
fighting in court over K-12 spending, legislative leadership and and look at them in the eye, and they can look at us in the eye,
a coalition of education groups spent another seven months in that really cleared some of the communication. That’s not
fruitless mediation at the Arizona Court of Appeals when the to denigrate some of the previous process, but that is a big
wheels finally came off. difference, when we’re sitting down looking at you eye-to-eye
That’s when Gov. Doug Ducey stepped in. and their looking at me eye-to-eye,” Biggs said.
On Labor Day, Ducey’s deputy chief of staff, Victor Riches,
met with Janice Palmer, a lobbyist for the Arizona School Boards
Association, one of the plaintiffs in Cave Creek v. DeWit. The
meeting kicked off several weeks of meetings between the Ninth
Floor and the plaintiffs. While his staff met with the three CONTINUED ON PAGE 25
education groups who were suing the state, Ducey kept in close
contact with Senate President Andy Biggs and House Speaker
David Gowan.
Kirk Adams, Ducey’s chief of staff, said meetings with
the education groups weren’t negotiations. Rather, the
administration dubbed them “conversations” aimed at gauging
everyone’s willingness to come back to the negotiating table.
Those talks, Adams said, focused on one critical question – do
you want to find a way to settle the lawsuit?
“It was more like, ‘You know, if you saw something like this,
would you be interested in talking in detail?’” Adams said of the
initial talks.
Those talks set the stage for the negotiations to begin in
earnest. Around the beginning of October, Biggs, Gowan, their
staffs and representatives of the three plaintiff groups met at the
Governor’s Office with Ducey’s staff.
The negotiations began with several “foundational principles”
that the plaintiffs had agreed to during the preceding weeks.
Adams said those included an agreed-upon need for inflation
funding, additional general fund money and a formal resolution
to the lawsuit.
“That was good enough to get everybody in the same room,”
Adams said.
Around the beginning of October, Ducey got everyone
together at the Governor’s Office for the first time. With
gubernatorial staffers mediating, the three plaintiffs – the
Arizona Association of School Business Officials, the Arizona
Education Association and the Arizona School Boards
Association – sat down with Biggs and Gowan, along with

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