Arizona Lawmakers Split Over School Safety Fund After Auditor Report Finds Widespread Problems

Bipartisan Frustration Mounts Over $26 Million School Safety Investment

PHOENIX — Arizona lawmakers from both parties expressed frustration after an audit revealed serious problems with the state school safety interoperability fund, a program that has invested $26 million since 2019 into communication systems between schools and law enforcement.

The Joint Legislative Audit Committee met April 16 to examine the interoperable communication systems established between schools and law enforcement agencies in the state. Lawmakers in 2019 established the school safety interoperability fund, which has allocated $26 million to law enforcement agencies for improved communications systems between schools and law enforcement during emergency situations.

According to the Auditor General's Office, a December report found the state's funding of the communication systems has not gone in accordance with statute. Law enforcement agencies have used state funds to purchase systems from three vendors: Mutualink, Motorola Solutions and Navigate360. Mutualink had contracts with sheriff's offices from nine counties, according to the report.

"Our interoperability policies in place are not as strong as they should be," House Education Committee Chairman Matt Gress, R-Phoenix, said April 14. "There's a lot of confusion in that area."

The House on April 14 discussed Senate Bill 1315, a measure drafted to fix issues with the interoperability fund by following advice from the auditor general's report. The bill has not received a vote on the House floor yet, but would give the Arizona Department of Education statutory responsibility to create guidelines and best practices for the communication systems.

Democrats have opposed the measure and called it a vendor bill designed to hand out state-funded contracts to specific companies. Auditors also determined most law enforcement agencies did not follow procurement requirements when they acquired interoperable communication systems.

"This bill probably wants to do the right thing, but it falls very short," House Minority Assistant Leader Nancy Gutierrez, D-Tucson, said.

The sponsor of SB 1315, Sen. Kevin Payne, R-Peoria, said during Thursday's audit hearing that he believes state auditors were looking in the wrong direction.

"I think the auditor team is an outstanding team, but they were looking at it from a financial standpoint, not a standpoint of whether it worked or not," Payne said.

Payne helped start the interoperability program in 2019, and he invited his colleagues to see what Mutualink has done in Yavapai County.

"I want badly for this program to work and I love what I saw with the Mutualink system in Yavapai County," Payne said.

Gutierrez told the Arizona Capitol Times that the measure lacked both input from public schools on what kind of communication systems would be helpful for them and provisions that would require law enforcement agencies to look for other bids or alternative vendors when acquiring a communication system.

She also suggested establishing a study committee after session to further examine the interoperability fund or pursue House Bill 2142, a bill by Gress that would establish a school safety center within the education department that would act as a centralized location for schools to go to in an emergency situation.

HB2142 passed the Senate Education Committee in March, although Democrats have been attempting to workshop the bill throughout session over disagreements of how a council would be formed under the bill tasked with administering the program.

There was another appropriations bill earlier this session that proposed giving $3.2 million across nine counties that have contracted with Mutualink since 2019. Before it was struck, Senate Bill 1582 proposed distributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to nine sheriff's offices for their interoperability programs. Each county in the bill was one of the counties that auditors said contracted with Mutualink.

Gutierrez said even though the original SB1582 has been struck, it could be considered in budget negotiations.

"We will see that as a Republican ask and we will fight against having that in the budget," she said.

Gress on April 14 pushed back against vendor bill allegations for SB1315. He also said he's unhappy with the program's results from the auditor general's report and said in January that he wouldn't support a vendor bill.

"That could not be further from the truth," Gress said of the vendor bill allegations. "This bill says that ADE establishes the criteria for an interoperability system."

During a March 24 House Education Committee hearing on SB1315, ADE Director of School Safety Mike Kurtenbach supported the bill and said he wouldn't support a vendor bill either.

"There could be a dozen vendors that are available to do it right now and in the space I work in, I surmise that there are many others," Kurtenbach said.

Gutierrez also had other issues with the interoperability bill. She said she doesn't believe the language is tight enough to actually require schools to have a real interoperability plan and just settle on calling police with a cell phone and she said the bill allows law enforcement agencies to pick which schools they set up communications systems with if they don't have funds for every school in their service area.

But the bill does require a secure transmission from schools to law enforcement, which Gress said cannot be done from a cell phone, although he acknowledged that law enforcement would have to prioritize schools.

"There is a finite amount of resources," he said. "We want to get to every school, but you've got to start somewhere and these law enforcement agencies need to be engaged in that conversation. That's why I think this bill is a good start and we'll continue to have discussions about what additional policy changes we can make in the future."

Audit Reveals Widespread Problems with Interoperable Communication Systems

The audit looked at 14 different law enforcement agencies across Arizona, which include sheriff's offices as well as local police departments. The report found that the systems purchased by law enforcement agencies involved only about 20% of Arizona's public schools, which include traditional public districts and charter schools. The audit found that 4 of 14 law enforcement agencies that received the state funds also reported using the funds with private and/or tribal schools.

"Which was contrary to statute and may have improperly benefited these schools," the report read.

The audit says most law enforcement agencies also did not follow procurement requirements and their contracts with one of the three companies "lacked essential protections."

In trying to test out the systems, the audit said some of the systems didn't work properly for the auditors to test out their operations.

"There were certain issues or functional problems with the systems and we're not sure the state got the benefit that they intended to get from buying these systems," said Scott Swagerty, the director of the school audits division with the Auditor General's Office.

While some of the systems they tried to test didn't function properly, Swagerty said schools and law enforcement still had lines of communication.

"Schools still had ways to communicate with law enforcement during emergencies. We have concerns on whether the $26 million the state has invested in these systems was spent effectively," he said.

The Auditor General's Office put in several recommendations to both the legislature as well as law enforcement agencies using the money. One to the legislature included revising and clarifying the law on whether nonpublic schools can participate in the systems used and purchased by the funds.

Another key issue brought up in the report: law enforcement agencies didn't plan for ongoing costs and may not use the communication systems purchased with the funds if ongoing state funding is not available.

"We have recommendations that they should make plans for the ongoing operation costs, which is likely a multimillion-dollar annual funding commitment for the state," Swagerty said.

The audit also recommends that law enforcement agencies improve documentation on their purchases, make sure the systems are working efficiently and more. The Auditor General's Office says the recommendations made to the agencies were agreed upon and will be implemented by those agencies that received the money.

The full report can be found here.

This report was done at the request of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee back in 2023 and was the second in a series of audits looking into the state's school safety system. The first looked into schools' emergency operations plans and if they were up to minimum standards, which they found some did not.