Pima County leaders are trying to pull a fast one: they’re urging voters to approve Proposition 425, which would increase the county’s spending cap by $610 million—a whopping 75% increase over the current limit—but they’re passing this outrageous spending spree off as nothing more than a minor “adjustment.”
And as you might expect, Pima leaders are doing everything they can to obscure the true impact of their new reach into your pocketbook.
In 1980, Arizona voters put a brake on local government spending by adding a constitutional limit on how much counties may spend from local revenues each year. The cap starts with what a county spent in fiscal year 1979-80—about $94 million in Pima County’s case—and then grows automatically with population and inflation. Voters wanted to ensure that local officials would live within a predictable budget, prioritize vital services, and return any surplus tax collections to the people who paid them.
That system is still working. Since 1980, automatic adjustments have increased Pima County’s spending cap to roughly $817 million for the coming fiscal year. But Pima leaders want the shackles removed, which is why they’re pushing voters to approve Prop 425.
Prop 425 would add $70 million to the old 1979-80 base budget. By nearly doubling it, the county’s spending cap for the 2027-28 fiscal year would jump from $817 million to more than $1.43 billion—a roughly $610 million increase. The higher ceiling would keep growing every year. That’s a 75% increase in one year, tossing aside any notion of future budgetary predictability and discipline.
Voters will not see the real math on the ballot though.
When voters imposed the spending caps in 1980, they allowed county voters to adjust those caps at the ballot box, but only if the impact the new spending cap is stated on the ballot. That fiscal-impact requirement is so important, voters wrote it directly into the Arizona Constitution. But in this case, the county’s ballot language only states that Prop 425 will adjust the 1979-80 base budget by $70 million. There is no mention of the $610 million first-year increase, the permanent compounding, or that the extra spending authority could immediately be used.
In other words, what looks like a $70 million spending bump is actually a $610 million increase. It’s as if the county wants to fool voters.
The county’s publicity materials and official FAQs do no better.
Throughout the materials, the county describes Prop 425 as merely a $70 million “adjustment.” That’s deceptive—it’s like describing the financial impact of a mortgage by the downpayment, not the money you’ll pay over the years. Although the materials mention the $610 million dollar increase, they are drafted to win sympathy for big government spending, not to explain the tradeoffs and the purpose behind the spending cap.
The county’s materials also claim that Prop 425 does not raise taxes and merely lets the county spend money it already collects. That too is misleading because no reasonable person would believe that the county will not use that new spending authority and raise taxes.
But that’s not all the higher cap will do. The purpose of the cap is to disincentivize unnecessary taxes. Yet the County’s own FAQs spin the fact that county revenues will soon outrun the current cap as a reason to raise the cap rather than cut taxes—the opposite of the constitution’s purpose. A spending limit that forces the government to address tax revenue it cannot spend is not a “glitch” that needs fixing—it’s the point. Nevertheless, the county uses its publicity materials to argue for big government.
County materials also underplay how the cap already expands. Population growth, inflation, annexations, carryforwards, debt service, many special grants, and other exclusions already give supervisors substantial room to increase spending to accommodate essential needs. Pima County has never asked voters to raise the base in 46 years precisely because the process has been working to account for population growth, inflation, and other factors. The question now is not whether the county can grow; it is whether voters should lock in a permanent 75% enlargement so that three supervisors can tap hundreds of millions more in future years without coming back to voters.
Spending caps on local governments are not an accounting nuisance. They are one of the few tools ordinary taxpayers have to make government live within its means. If revenues are running ahead of the limit, the constitutional response is fiscal discipline: cut the rate, retire debt, or spend only on what is essential. Prop 425 asks voters to treat surplus collections as proof that the leash should come off.
Pima County wants you to think that Prop 425 is merely a $70 million accounting tweak. Far from it. It’s a blank check for big government bureaucrats.
Scott Day Freeman is a Senior Attorney at the Goldwater Institute.
