Hobbs calls for end to automatic repayment plan for school voucher program • Arizona Mirror

This announcement comes as the ministry is struggling to process a backlog of more than 89,000 reimbursement requests. The total cost of automatically reimbursing the vast majority of them would be about $170 million, Hobbs said in a statement Thursday.

In a letter Sent to Horne on Thursday, Hobbs highlighted instances where money from the voucher program, officially known as the Empowerment Scholarship Account program, was misused. She specifically cited the recent indictment of two people who don’t even live in Arizona for an ESA fraud scheme in which they applied to the program with the names of fake children and then used the money for personal expenses.

The ESA program works by giving parents of participating students a debit card that can be used to pay various educational fees, or by reimbursing the parents for those fees. Costs may include private school tuition, home school supplies, or money may be saved for college.

“Arizonans expect their elected officials to be good stewards of their taxpayer dollars, and not to allow fraudulent spending,” Hobbs said in the letter.

Horne, in a press release last week, said that if post-reimbursement audits show the money was used inappropriately, it can be “recovered.”

Supporters Horne and the ESA program supported the decision by pointing out that the Arizona Department of Education had operated this way in the past, conducting risk-based audits after reimbursements were made. However, the state The ESA program has exploded since that time.

The program began in 2012, but was expanded in 2022 from a limited group of around 12,000 students meeting specific criteria to a universal program accessible to all of the school’s approximately one million students. K-12 in the state. There are currently more than 83,000 students enrolled, according to the Ministry of Education.

In a news release Thursday, Horne countered Hobbs by saying this year’s state budget included the possibility of the Arizona Department of Education moving to this type of program audit. The provision does not prevent the department from investigating ESA voucher spending for suspected fraud.

“The method we are instituting, known as risk-based auditing, is specifically called for in the budget law the governor signed last session,” Horne said in the press release. “Maybe she should start reading what she signs.”

In his response, Horne added that the program is “among the most responsible” in the state. He added that the backlog problem emerged after the governor signed a bill allowing private school tuition to be paid under the reimbursement system instead of relying on a third-party provider, which which contributed to the backlog, according to Horne.

“Implementing this course of action constitutes a complete failure of ADE’s responsibility to ensure the appropriate use of public funds,” Hobbs said. “You must reconsider these actions and come up with a solution to administer the ESA program that does not provide a blank check to even more rampant fraud.” »

The ESA program has been a point of contention between Republicans, who have defended its expansion and hailed it as a successful example of school choice for other states to follow, and Democratic leaders, because the costs of maintaining of the program have skyrocketed and led to major budget battles. in the state.