by Cole Lauterbach
Proposition 400, a statewide sales tax set aside for local infrastructure projects, will expire in 2025 unless either lawmakers opposed to it and Gov. Katie Hobbs can agree on an extension or local leaders go around them and ask voters to approve it.
The Republican-led Legislature sent Hobbs a version of the sales tax originally approved in 1985 that restricts ways the tax dollars can be spent, including money going toward expanding the valley’s polarizing light rail line.
“We took out the holes,” Senate President Warren Peterson, R-Gilbert (pictured above, right) said in a floor debate Tuesday. “This is actually very close to what has been put out there, but there were these loopholes in there that we cleaned up.”
Hobbs told reporters on Tuesday that she would likely veto the measure.
While a half-cent may seem insignificant, the Maricopa Association of Governments said Prop. 400 cost taxpayers $664.8 million in fiscal year 2022. That’s an increase of more than $107 million from the prior year when the economy was still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Should that avenue fail, mayors who face losing that money say they’ll force the issue to be decided on the ballot.
“These lawmakers, spouting the half-truths of fringe special interests, have not been negotiating in good faith and their priorities involving transportation just don’t mesh with the realities of where we are as the fastest-growing county in the U.S.,” a group of Maricopa County mayors wrote in an open letter saying a loss of those funds would bring “California-style gridlock and congestion” to the valley. “We are unalterably opposed to their plan, and if no solution is reached, we will have no choice but to pursue another avenue to get this before voters in 2024.”
Success at the ballot box is a steeper climb than it used to be. Voters in 2022 approved Prop. 123. Ironically approved by just over half of voters, the change now requires a 60% threshold for ballot initiatives to succeed.
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Cole Lauterbach is a managing editor for The Center Square covering the western United States. For more than a decade, Cole has produced award-winning content on both radio and television.
Photo “Katie Hobbs” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0. Photo “Warren Petersen” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0. Background Photo “Arizona Capitol” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
