Lesko ponders sneak attack on vouchers’ foes

Commence the dirty tricks. As a citizen drive to block Arizona’s new universal school voucher law charges into its final weeks, our leaders are making a few plans of their own. Sen. Debbie Lesko, the Peoria Republican who sponsored Senate Bill 1431, is pondering an end run on the 75,000 Arizonans who would dare to exercise their constitutional right to try to overturn the work of the Legislature.

Lesko is rocketing to DEFCON 1 after hearing that organizers of Save Our Schools Arizona this week hired paid petition circulators for the final few weeks of the campaign.

Nobody in power worried about this referendum when petitions were being carried solely by volunteers. It would be unheard of for volunteers to collect 75,321 valid signatures by Aug. 8 in order to freeze the expanded voucher law until voters can decide it in 2018.

But bring in a few paid professionals for the final few weeks, and suddenly Lesko is beginning to sweat.

Commence Operation Repeal and Replace.

Lesko is now floating the idea of the Republican-controlled Legislature repealing the universal expansion of vouchers (aka Empowerment Scholarship Accounts) if the signature drive is successful. Such a move would void the referendum as there would be no law to refer to the November 2018 ballot.

Lest you think Lesko is being responsive to citizen concerns about siphoning money from underfunded public schools ... or to the concern that a universal voucher program will create two systems — a private one for the haves who can use ESAs and a public one for the have-nots who can’t ... Think again. After repealing the on-hold voucher law, Lesko — and her dark-money handlers at the American Federation for Children — would then ask her colleagues to pass a new voucher expansion law with minor changes.

Translation: Citizens who oppose using public money to pay for private schools would have to start from scratch with a new referendum campaign to stop the new law.

“All options are on the table,” Lesko told Capitol Media Services’ Howard Fischer. They wouldn’t dare, you say? Yeah, they would. And they have. Remember 2013, when the Legislature passed a series of election “reforms” aimed at making it harder to mount citizen initiatives and recalls, harder for third-party candidates to get on the ballot and harder for civicengagement groups to mobilize new Latino voters?

When a referendum drive was successful in putting that new law on hold, our leaders simply came back in 2014 and repealed it. Then they passed new laws that made the same changes.

It’s sneaky. It’s slimy and it shows just how little regard some of our leaders have for the citizens of Arizona. It also works. And the galling thing is, Arizona voters will send most of these people back to the Capitol in next year’s elections.