Newly elected Arizona Governor Doug Ducey gives his speech Jan. 22, 2015 at the Carson Ballroom in Tempe. (Jonathan Galan/The State Press)On March 12, Gov. Doug Ducey signed Arizona’s Balanced Budget after only 67 days in office. After keeping his campaign promises and getting his budget through the legislature in such a short amount of time, Ducey is on his way to become one of the greatest political leaders Arizona has ever seen.
During his campaign, Ducey spoke incessantly of the need for Arizona to “tighten its belt” and for government to spend within its means. He spoke of his desire to improve education standards in our state and of his partiality towards public charters schools. The former Cold Stone Creamery CEO had a résumé to back up his goals, so the people of Arizona voted him into the executive office.
Even though Ducey is upholding the objectives he ran on, there has been a flurry of controversy surrounding the new budget. Opponents of the budget have complained that the governor is not holding true to his campaign platform and that his lack of funding for higher education will scare people away from coming to Arizona. However, neither of these accusations are true.
Arizona Republic columnist Robert Robb's recent piece, “Doug Ducey did not run on this budget,” lobbies some hefty allegations against our new governor. Although the title is correct as Ducey didn’t campaign on a budget that had yet to come into existence, the content is not. As a state, we are facing a $520 million deficit this fiscal year. Cuts need to be made, and Ducey made it clear that he would cut spending as governor during his campaign.
He promised to balance Arizona’s budget without raising taxes, and that’s exactly what he did. In addition, he added indexing to income-tax brackets to account for inflation, a practice that was not done in the previous year. Ducey pledged that the money spent on K-12 education would go directly to the classroom and that has been made possible as well.
Likewise, there has been quite a bit of contention over the position Ducey took on K-12 education during the gubernatorial run. In his “Roadmap to Opportunity and Freedom,” Ducey clearly outlined his stance on education. He was honest about his inclination towards charter schools throughout his campaign and for good reason. Arizona is home to two of the most successful charter schools in the U.S.
That being said, across the board our state ranks at the bottom for public education. With these facts in mind, it’s easy to understand why Ducey’s budget favors charter schools. We need to focus on raising our educational standards, not on spending. Using the argument that more money will improve education, cities like Newark, Detroit and Chicago should have the best schools in the country. But they don’t.
With regards to higher education, many of the complaints have also been empty. The hard reality is that we can’t spend money we don’t have. There should be less concern over Ducey’s budget and more over the fact that so few Arizonans are able to grasp this concept. ASU is a top school choice for California students, and one of the main reasons for this is because it costs less to attend ASU paying out-of-state tuition than it does to attend a California institution as a resident. Ducey’s budget will not change that fact. Arizona has competitive higher education rates on a national level as well.
The biggest problem that has occurred since Ducey presented his budget is the astonishment it has placed on people’s expectations. Most people no longer expect politicians to keep their promises, and no one expects government to live within its means. This has been made clear through all of the backlash this new budget has received.
It takes courage for politicians to keep their word and really make a difference. Most of them shirk responsibility off to the next candidate down the road for the sake of their legacy. But Ducey is not just a politician, he’s a savvy business man with a passion to make Arizona the greatest state in the U.S. Many politicians have promised to make Arizona great before, but under Ducey’s leadership greatness isn’t just a possibility, it’s an imminent reality.
Reach the columnist at Joan.Lebeau@asu.edu or follow @joanlebeau94 on Twitter
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Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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