AZ Fallout From Use of Student Fees To Promote Failed Sales-Tax Measure

The Board of Regents is suspending the collection of fees for the Arizona Students Association

Any decent political drama needs a few unexpected twists and turns and takes forever to come to an end, and the saga of the failed Prop 204 campaign to permanently raise the state's sales tax is no different.

As reported by the Goldwater Institute in September, major support for the initiative came from the Arizona Students Association, which contributed $120,000 to the campaign and used an army of student interns to collect upwards of 20,000 signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot.

The contributions were not harmless, as the ASA is funded through a mandatory $2 per semester fee attached to the tuition bills of Arizona's 130,000 public university students. Simply put, the First Amendment provides that people cannot be forced to pay for politics they don't subscribe to.