Using the Roosevelt School District as the lead plaintiff, Hogan represented 40 to 45 low-wealth school districts protesting their inability to build new schools because they didn't have high enough property value in their districts to secure the bonds, and when they did, they tended to have to impose higher property taxes than in wealthy districts.
In studies done in 1990, the disparity was so great that the Ruth Fisher Elementary School District near the Palo Verde nuclear power plant had an assessed valuation per pupil of $5.8 million, while the San Carlos school district in Gila County had an assessed valuation per pupil of just $749.
Hogan lost the case in the trial court because of a similar case that had set precedent in 1973, but the judge admitted that there were gross inequities in the way the state built schools. Hogan appealed the case to the Arizona Supreme Court, argued it in late 1993, and got the court to decide in his favor in 1994. The school-finance system was ruled unconstitutional and the Legislature was to remedy the situation.
Then-Senate president John Greene had no intention of meeting the court's instructions and instead asked, "What are they going to do to us?" And the answer, at first, was nothing.
The Legislature didn't actually pass a school-finance bill until 1996, one that was woefully inadequate. It did not eliminate bonding and anted up a paltry sum of state money, $30 million toward more than $1 billion worth of problems. Hogan took that plan to Superior Court and got Judge Rebecca Albrecht to rule that it was not an adequate solution. Furthermore, Albrecht set a deadline of June 30, 1998, to reach an acceptable plan or she would shut down all the schools.
Symington appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court, but the high court upheld Albrecht's decision. A year later, Symington and Senator Marc Spitzer unveiled their "Assistance to Build Classrooms" program, which still based itself on bonding and state supplements, which Hogan argued was still unconstitutional. Again, the courts took his side.
Then, with Symington out of the picture, Speaker Groscost and Governor Hull and Superintendent of Public Instruction Lisa Graham Keegan and other legislators cloistered and came up with the current bondless system that would fund schools out of the state's sizable coffers. Groscost began telling reporters that a faulty finance plan would never get past Hogan, who would pronounce the plan unconstitutional.
"He's made those assertions twice before, and he's been right," Groscost told the Arizona Republic.
"I'm in committee hearings last week and I hear conservative Republicans talking about how if bonding is reintroduced, it's going to create an unequal system," Hogan says. "What kind of a reverse universe have I fallen into?"
Hogan fixates now on the standards that will be written into the law to dictate what constitutes an acceptable school facility. The first House version had no such standards, and when Hogan squawked, he was invited to write them in, and he drafted text that mirrored the language of the Supreme Court ruling. The actual standards remain to be written.
But the Senate was not so kind to Hogan or to schoolchildren, and the governor allowed the senators to write in provisions that would allow rich school districts to opt out of state funding.
Hogan holds fast. If the rich school districts are allowed to opt out, he argues, then there still will be a two-tiered system. The worth of the plan will be in the standards set for school facilities--how many labs, music rooms, computers, gymnasiums they must have. But if the rich, influential districts can opt out and still afford all those necessities and a few luxuries to boot, there might not be pressure on the legislators to set high standards for the "welfare" districts.
"What they're saying now is, 'Yeah, it's a crappy system, but it's good enough for poor kids,'" Hogan says. "It's just as offensive as it can get. If kids aren't treated equally, we're never going to make progress."
Spitzer objects.
"He's communicated that argument to me," Spitzer says. "It's a political argument more than a legal argument. He says he'll go to court and have this thrown out, and I don't see that happening. I don't think he'll be successful in court arguing that the opt-out is unconstitutional."
Hogan says he will absolutely be back in court.
Win or lose, as Bruce Meyerson, his distant predecessor at the center, says, "This school-finance case: If he did nothing else in his life, that is a profoundly important case in the history of Arizona."
Contact Michael Kiefer at his online address: mkiefer@newtimes.com
