It isn’t just the state that has Propositions on the Ballot in November. Maricopa County has one on transportation. Our cities and towns can have Propositions too.
Twenty-five cities and towns are entirely or partly within Maricopa County. Six of them, Phoenix, Mesa, Scottsdale, Tolleson, Gilbert, and Cave Creek, have a proposition on the ballot in November about Home Rule.
According to MAG, the Maricopa Association of Governments, the history of Home Rule lies with Arizona’s Territorial Legislature and the belief at the time that residents of cities and towns were in the best position to decide how to address the specific needs of their communities. At statehood, with local voter approval, cities were allowed to adopt their own charters.
Fast forward to 1980, an overwhelmingly Republican Legislature revised the Arizona Constitution to set expenditure limits on Counties, Cities, Towns, and Community College Districts. The jurisdictions can adhere to either a limit or a formula set by the state in 1980. The Constitution allows jurisdictions to effectively override the limits by securing voter approval to adopt an “Alternative Expenditure Limitation,” aka Home Rule.
The ability of Cities to decide how to spend their own money is so important, Arizona’s Republicans keep trying to eliminate it. Arizona Senate OKs asking voters to strip cities of home rule.
Expenditure limits have nothing to do with taxing. Home Rule does not create taxes, and cities must still produce balanced budgets. Home Rule simply gives elected officials in our towns and cities the right to make local decisions on how to spend the income from their citizens rather than use a formula created by the legislature in 1980.
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