PHOENIX — A measure proposing major reforms to the Empowerment Scholarship Account program will no longer go to voters after missing the mark on signatures, according to a ruling from the Arizona Supreme Court.
In their Tuesday ruling, the justices stopped short of issuing a final signature count. What they did to is set out the correct formula to calculate the final number and sent it back to the trial judge who will decide if at least 255,949 of the signatures are valid.
But attorneys on both sides of the fight over Proposition 212 agreed in a filing Monday that under the state high court’s preferred formula, the measure missed the minimum requirement by around 12,000 signatures. And the end result leaves voters without a chance to weigh in on whether to enact further guardrails on enrollment, spending, academics, safety and security in the more than $1 billion program.
