Horne blasts Hobbs' veto of school pay transparency bill

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(The Center Square) - Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne expressed his displeasure with Gov. Katie Hobbs for vetoing a bill that would have provided more transparency into school superintendents’ earnings.

The Democratic governor vetoed House Bill 2075, which would have required Arizona school districts to publicly disclose contracts and compensation data for their superintendents and other top administrators. The bill also mandated that the state create a centralized, searchable and public database containing all this information.

Currently compensation packages for school superintendents "are only publicly available through a public records request," said Chris Thomas, director of legal strategy for education policy at the Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute. 

“They are not available online or in some other posting," Thomas told The Center Square.

In a letter explaining her veto, Hobbs said, "Arizona has a robust school choice environment that requires comparable information between options for parents and families to make meaningful choices. This bill fails to ensure that all options in the marketplace are held to the same level of transparency.”

The Center Square reached out to Hobbs and her office for additional explanation, but the staff declined to say anything beyond what was in Hobbs' brief veto letter.

Groups that opposed HB 2075 included AZ School Administrators, which represents superintendents and other school executives, and the Arizona School Board Association.

Republicans control majorities in both houses, but lack enough seats to override Hobbs' vetoes without Democrats' help. Only two Democrats in the Legislature - Reps. Lydia Hernandez of Glendale and Elda Luna-Nájera of Avondale - voted for HB 2075. That's not enough to help Republicans override a veto.

Horne told The Center Square this week the decision of Hobbs to veto HB 2075 was “irrational.”

“I don’t understand why anyone would veto a bill like that,” the superintendent of public instruction said, calling the veto a "bad public policy."

According to Horne, Arizona “has a lot of really good superintendents,” but it also has superintendents who are overpaid.

“Taxpayers have a right to know how their tax money is being used," the Republican official said. "It's outrageous for that to be kept a secret."

All school districts should disclose how much their superintendents earn in total compensation, Horne noted.

The Goldwater Institute is also disappointed that the bill was vetoed, Thomas told The Center Square.

He noted superintendents are public employees and their pay is a “matter of public record.”

“There shouldn’t be any hiding the ball here about what people make," Thomas said. "Superintendents have tough jobs to do; they deserve to be highly compensated. But they ought to be able to defend that."

He noted it was “very difficult to get these contracts and salary amounts" when the Goldwater Institute tried to do research on the school district superintendents' salaries.

Thomas said it was “eye-opening” to see how much school superintendents are compensated.

The Goldwater Institute’s report, “The Hidden Ways Arizona School Superintendents Are Paid,” showed that Jeremy Calles, superintendent of the Tolleson Union High School District in the Phoenix area, had a total compensation package of nearly $500,000.

The report examined 17 school districts and found that the average total compensation for these superintendents was almost $314,000.

"We found varying degrees of resistance in obtaining the contracts, and we quantified that resistance by the letter grades we gave each district for public transparency,” Thomas told The Center Square.

Arizona law does not prevent school districts from posting superintendent contracts online, Thomas said, but noted the Flagstaff Unified School District in Northern Arizona is the only district to do so.

The only public information about how much superintendents make is their base salary, not their total compensation, he said.

While superintendents have massive six-figure salaries, Arizona ranks 29th in the country in average teacher pay at $62,714, according to the National Education Association.

The Arizona auditor general said only 52% of state education spending goes to the classroom. Arizona spent $13.4 billion on education in fiscal year 2025.

Arizona is not maximizing its school funding “by putting the dollars where it could do the most good,” Thomas said.