Sun City resident: Fix oversight before adding new debt
Posted
Independent Newsmedia
By Stephen Malkowski | Sun City
Maricopa County voters are being asked to approve nearly $900 million in new bonds for Valleywise Health, the county’s public hospital system. Supporters say the funds will expand behavioral-health capacity and replace aging facilities. The goal is worthy — the timing isn’t.
Arizona is still reeling from a $2.5 billion Medicaid fraud scandal, one of the largest in the nation. ProPublica (July 2024) reports that only about 5% of those taxpayer dollars have been recovered. The fraud was carried out by private behavioral-health providers, but it thrived because of weak state oversight at the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System — AHCCCS — the agency that runs Medicaid.
That failure occurred at the state level — but the fallout lands on the county. When hundreds of fraudulent providers were shut down, thousands of displaced patients turned to Valleywise, Maricopa County’s safety-net hospital. Now county taxpayers are being asked to borrow almost a billion dollars to absorb that load.
Before those oversight failures are corrected, voters are being asked to assume 30 years of new debt totaling roughly $1.4 billion once interest is included — about $220 a year for a typical homeowner, every year for three decades.
Valleywise itself was not involved in the fraud. But until Arizona proves it can safeguard the dollars it already has, issuing nearly a billion in new bonds is premature. Proposition 409 expands infrastructure without fixing accountability.
Voting no doesn’t oppose mental-health care, it demands responsible funding first: independent audits, transparent spending and proven AHCCCS reforms before taxpayers are locked into decades of higher property taxes.
Let’s rebuild trust before buildings. Vote no on Prop 409 — until the system earns back our confidence.
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