Todd Sanders:
Well welcome back to the podcast. We are really thrilled today to have Jaime Molara, who is a partner at Molara Alvarez. At least that's his day job. For many years, he was also on our board of directors, our executive committee. He was chair of public affairs, which is a whole different story. And is now also the chair of our steering committee for Elevate Ed. Hi man. Welcome. Thank you for being here.
Jaime Molara:
Todd, thank you for having me.
Todd Sanders:
Well, what I'd like to do is obviously we can all get online and see your illustrious bio, but tell us a little bit about yourself and then also perhaps something about you that we wouldn't necessarily know.
Jaime Molara:
So as a lot of people know, I'm a native Arizonan. I was born in the cultural hub of the universe, which is Nogales, Arizona.
Todd Sanders:
That's correct, well known.
Jaime Molara:
Everybody knows that. Everybody thinks it's Paris or London, Rome. No, no, no. It's Nogales. So I was born and raised there. Then I came to the Harvard of the West, Arizona State University.
Todd Sanders:
You sure that's not NAU?
Jaime Molara:
I think so. That's more of a Cambridge type. And I've been in Arizona all my life, save for a couple of years. I worked in DC. But I've been in and around state politics, worked for Governors Symington and Hull. Had the privilege of being state school superintendent for a while. And then started my firm. This year has been 20 years Molea Alvarez has been around.
Todd Sanders:
And done so much work in the public space. And obviously you run a business, but so much of that work has been pro bono and it's made a big difference.
Jaime Molara:
Well, and you asked me about something that nobody knows about me. So the one thing I did, for a number of years I was on the board and helped found a girl's dance studio.
Todd Sanders:
Really?
Jaime Molara:
Of all the things that I've done.
Todd Sanders:
I did not know that.
Jaime Molara:
During the Great Recession, my daughter's dance studio went the way of a lot of businesses, poor folks couldn't sustain it. So me and five other dads got together. We said, "Let's create a business because we're all businessmen." And we ended up creating Phoenix Dance Cooperative, which is still one of the largest dance studios in the valley.
Todd Sanders:
Hey, I love that. Excellent. See that, always something we don't know. Although I do also know that you have the dubious distinction of having one of the worst records for a football team that you coached alongside with our former senator.
Jaime Molara:
Yeah, Jeff Flake. We were so bad that they wanted to build us a publicly-financed stadium.
Todd Sanders:
What happened there? Why were you so bad? Was it his fault?
Jaime Molara:
Yeah, it was mainly Jeff. He ran the defense and they scored 70 points on us. I was a great offensive coordinator. I think we scored like 60 points, but when they scored 70 points, yeah, we were ...
Todd Sanders:
You couldn't catch up to the deficit.
Jaime Molara:
Couldn't catch up.
Todd Sanders:
Well, obviously your win-loss record at the capitol is impeccable.
Jaime Molara:
Oh, thank you.
Todd Sanders:
And certainly the work that you've done in education, and as I mentioned, you spent many years with us as our chair of public affairs helping us navigate. But really, I think one of your big expertise areas is education. Talk to us a little bit about the role, the superintendent's role and what you learned.
Jaime Molara:
Well, I found out very fast, Arizona State School Superintendent, there's not a lot of power there. I mean, it's more of a bully pulpit and being able to convince legislators, being able to convince really, well whoever the governor was, to try and, you know, "Here are the areas that we think we need to be focused on."
Because it really is more of a management. You're managing the state agency, all the federal dollars that come through the department, and it's overseeing all the regulation of the finances and working with the state board.
Todd Sanders:
So you're not necessarily managing the, you're not in the day-to-day.
Jaime Molara:
Well, not so much, but it depends on what kind of school superintendent you want to be. I was very much involved in the policy formation. I think I worked, of course, I was lucky enough to have Jane Hull and she trusted me. So she gave me a lot of free rein in coming up with what I thought we should be doing around education policy. At the time, it was looking at state standards, looking at accountability, looking at how much bang for the buck were we getting out of all of the dollars that were funding education. I was big on early childhood reading programs.
So it depends. Some superintendents have been more of a manager and just managing the day-to-day operations. I had a gentleman by the name of Chuck Essex, if you recall Chuck.
Todd Sanders:
Of course.
Jaime Molara:
He was my deputy. So I trusted Chuck with running because he was a wealth of information on school finance and K-12 policy. So it let me be more on the political, policy, politics side.
Todd Sanders:
So the conventional wisdom, if you don't know, the capital is that Arizona tends to, well, they say we are last in education in the country. Maybe can you give us some context around that and maybe talk to us about what that number really means?
Jaime Molara:
So I do think Arizona is behind in a lot of ways. And it's interesting because I think because now we have charter schools, it's a more of ability to see how much money we really have. Because with charter schools, a lot of them have had a hard time expanding. And the reason is because the bottom line is so low, it's hard to make new schools work and be able to franchise good models.
You've seen a few do that, like BASIS for instance. They've done a tremendous job of expanding their great hearts, expanding their footprints. But it hasn't been easy and a lot of reason is that the number's somewhat low. So I think we do have to look at that.
But I also believe, Todd, that there is still a lot of expenditure that goes on to things that, in my opinion, aren't really part of the core academic areas. That's why I'm very proud of the work that we're doing with Elevate Ed AZ because we're really looking at how do you make education relevant to kids? And that's one of the things I think we need to do a better job of. We meaning Arizona policymakers, but also the Arizona business community because we're seeing a dearth of people that can come into the workforce and ready to go.
And as you know, that's one of the big issues that we've been dealing with is that while we've been successful in getting companies to come to Arizona and grow their footprint in Arizona, because I think we have really strong tax policies, I think we have a really strong economy, but the workforce or the lack thereof is starting to catch up and that's something we need to focus on.
Todd Sanders:
Absolutely. And one of the numbers that you always hear is we're less in funding. Maybe for the folks who aren't at the capitol all the time. Talk to us a little bit about funding and K-12 funding as it relates to the total budget.
Jaime Molara:
So that's where it's a little bit of a misnomer because if you are in a [inaudible 00:07:05] school district, Arizona has a very complex a way we fund our schools. But basically you have two models. Under the traditional school district model, it's usually about a 50/50 split, you have local property taxes and then there's a formula and then whatever those local property taxes can't generate the state backfills and it meets that number that the state sets.
Now you have some school districts with a lot of property wealth and people with a means that they can pass bonds and overrides so they can augment that budget, which is, I want to say right now it's close to about 8,500 bucks a kid on average.
Todd Sanders:
So every school gets that?
Jaime Molara:
Right, that's the average. Now there's a lot of formulas attached to it, special education formulas and all kinds of different weights, but let's call that around 8,000, 8,500. A lot of school districts can augment that, Todd, with bonds and overrides, I mean considerably, to the tune, maybe 3, 4, 5 in some cases, 6, 7,000 bucks more a kid. So there's a lot of wealth in the system.
Charter schools don't have access to any local property tax. 100% of their funding comes from the state.
Todd Sanders:
That baseline fund that you talked about?
Jaime Molara:
Correct. But charter schools have been very adept, a lot of them, on local fundraising working with their parents, akin to a lot of private schools do. So they augment. But a lot of it depends on honestly, the means of the family. And so that's where I still think we have a disparity in Arizona between areas that have access to wealth and areas that don't have access to wealth. And I just feel that that's something that we need to look at as we're looking at overarching school finance policy.
Todd Sanders:
And for those who aren't familiar with the budget, when we think about the areas where we spend money, so obviously social services, transportation, education, where does education fall in terms of the level of spending?
Jaime Molara:
It's about half of it.
Todd Sanders:
Half of the total budget.
Jaime Molara:
Half of the total budget. I mean, education dominates the state budget because you have voter protections in Arizona. So one of the voter protections we passed back in 2000 was Prop 301, which not only added a .6 cent sales tax that augments the school finances, but it also put in place that the state had to, in every budget cycle, now increase the budget based on inflation, which Arizona never had before.
Todd Sanders:
It was just a set number.
Jaime Molara:
It was a set number. The legislature and the governor would always battle about whether or not to provide inflation. Well, that was cured back then. So while we're low, and I think compared to other states, we still have been fairly competitive, or we've stayed close to other states because now we have that inflation factor built into the budget.
Todd Sanders:
And the number that sort of is bandied about the legislatures is that we're a billion short. Given that that is our biggest line item, that's a pretty significant task.
Jaime Molara:
It is. But again, Todd, I would argue that when we say a billion short, we're not a billion short in certain schools or certain school districts.
Todd Sanders:
Which is an important distinction.
Jaime Molara:
I think it is. I think it's a very important distinction. And I think it's one that we just don't have a big enough conversation about also.
One of the other things that I was fortunate enough to work on was a policy change that we did in the late nineties called Students First where it created capital standards so that at least you had standards that said students need to have certain types of facilities that were not so disparate. You'd have some unbelievable facilities where they'd have dome stadiums and they'd have just state-of-the-art-
Todd Sanders:
Like Nogales.
Jaime Molara:
Exactly. And then you had certain areas of the state that just didn't have access to capital wealth. So that was somewhat equalized.
Todd Sanders:
So if the political will's there is a good model that we can look at that can help us navigate some of that, the imbalances.
So you mentioned charters. And around the capitol, the words school choice really are, they're a big area of focus. Talk to us a little bit about why Arizona's unique in school choice. And I believe we were sort of a leader in this nationally.
Jaime Molara:
Oh, we were and are. I think we have different forms of school choice in Arizona now. The biggest is the ESAs, the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts that allow for parents, even if their children are in existing private schools or if they're homeschooled, they can now apply to get a scholarship from the state that's equivalent to that $8,000 or 8,500 I-
Todd Sanders:
That baseline number.
Jaime Molara:
Right. So they'll get a certain amount. A lot of the traditional public school advocates say this is taking money away from the system. I think that in a lot of ways it really is following the child's, the money follows the child, which that's been a big concept in Arizona and I tend to agree with that.
Now I think there's a happy medium. I think there's ways you can really enhance school choice, but at the same time, I think you can look at making sure it's not abused and making sure that it's not going into things that really is not part of the education of a student.
But having an opportunity for parents to find educational environments that meet their children's needs, I think is a very powerful concept. And it's a very powerful way to make sure students are on a good path to educational success.
Todd Sanders:
And what about the argument that that's great except for what that's doing is really you're destroying, or not destroying, but it is hampering your local schools from being able to serve all comers?
Jaime Molara:
Well, but that's happened already because Arizona, for the last 30 years we have open enrollment in Arizona. So you have a lot of students, where my daughter went to school in the Kyrene School District in the Ahwatukee area, they serve a lot of kids from South Phoenix. They serve a lot of kids from Maricopa that get bused in to go to that school district.
Todd Sanders:
So the choice already existed.
Jaime Molara:
So there's been a lot of choice, again, for people that have the means to utilize that choice. I think what charter schools have done, I think what ESAs have done and other types of school choice, is allowing folks that may not necessarily have the means to have an opportunity to go into educational settings again, that might be a better fit for them.
Todd Sanders:
And you mentioned the ESAs. That's been a big topic of discussion recently [inaudible 00:14:16] the capitol, given the price tag that seems to be growing. Is it sustainable?
Jaime Molara:
Well, we're going to find out. I think there needs to be a hard and honest look by the legislature, and even by the conservatives that will fight to the death for school choice and ESAs. But Todd, they also have to look at if there's a need for any kind of a revenue source for this to continue.
Because if you believe that and you believe that's a good policy, but at the same time, Arizona also has other significant needs. And I don't think, you were there during the Great Recession where I think a lot of the fat was not just cut, it was eviscerated. And we never really came back from that.
I mean, I don't think you saw the growth in government and certainly during the Ducey Administration, you never saw that level of of increasing government spending or government programs. As a matter of fact, they put a moratorium on any kind of government growth.
So I think we're okay, but we do have transportation needs. We have infrastructure needs. Water is going to become a bigger and bigger issue. Access growth is also, the state's Medicaid system, which is the second-biggest pot behind K-12. So you've seen a big growth there. So there's a lot of things that we have to deal with.
But again, if we believe that that's a good policy, and I believe budget setting is all about policy choices, then you have to determine how you're going to continue that level of funding for that school choice.
Todd Sanders:
And it's impossible to look at what you've just said or hear what you just said and not remember how divided we are in terms of society, in terms of some of these really big questions that are out there and how continually divided Arizona and the rest of the country is.
Jaime Molara:
Right, and it's unfortunate. I mean, this year we were working on I think a fairly, what I thought was an easy, popular program, dual enrollment that would give, in this proposal and we were able to get it passed with the help of Governor Hobbes, but also with Republican Senator Steve Kaiser. I thought it was going to be an easy push getting free and reduced lunch kids access to dual enrollment where they can earn college credits in high school essentially.
And again, because those students don't have the means, a lot of them weren't taking those kinds of classes. And so that opened a door. Well, we got fought, and I don't want to mention names, but the Arizona Education Association.
Todd Sanders:
Not to mention any names.
Jaime Molara:
They fought us.
Todd Sanders:
It was odd.
Jaime Molara:
It was more than odd. It was bizarre. I think it came down to more turf issues. That's what I think it was. They were upset that they weren't a part of the design and implementation of this. And they started attacking us because they said it was providing incentives for teachers. Well, of course it did. But if the teachers are doing extra work, I think we should give them a little extra pay.
Todd Sanders:
A hundred percent. To teach dual enrollment, you have to be certified.
Jaime Molara:
Correct. And you have to earn that certification by going back to school. So there's a lot of steps and a lot of costs teachers have to do. But I think there should be some kind of reward for helping to do that. And at the end of the day, Todd, you have all of these families now with access that can start out either a college path or even a career path. Because we allowed it for core academic areas or for credits that could be earned in pursuit of a certificate for work or licensure. So I think that's pretty powerful.
Todd Sanders:
Yeah. I'm so proud of it and I want to come back to that.
But let me circle back to the bigger question of education. I think 20 years ago, the business community was silently supportive of education issues and yeah, sure, that's nice. But now, in many ways, in big parts of the business community, they're front and center. Why?
Jaime Molara:
Well, I think there's been a frustration by and large from business leaders by the lack of, the non attention. I feel that they feel that K-12, our community college system and our universities have not kept up the way we should. And again, it goes back to Arizona's competitiveness in being able to stay up with our workforce needs.
We are a growth state. We're going to be a growth state for many, many years. But the one Achilles heel that I see, and I've talked to counterparts of yours across the state and organizations that I work with and for, that's a growing problem. The lack of investment is a part of it. And now there's other factors as well. But that certainly has to be addressed. And I think business groups, and I know the Greater Phoenix Chamber for years has been a strong advocate of education funding as well as accountability for that funding.
Todd Sanders:
And you mentioned accountability, and that certainly seems to be a sore point down at the capitol. I think business leaders, just by our very nature, we're sort of a metric driven group of people that look at, we have goals and objectives, and then we aim for them and then we measure success. Why has that been such a challenge on the education front?
Jaime Molara:
Well, I think in a lot of ways, a lot of the traditional education organizations like the AEA, they think accountability is more of a gotcha. That you have policymakers that are being driven by these business groups, that they want to show how bad the K-12 system is. And I always said, I just don't buy that.
Now, maybe there's a few legislators that would want to see that happen. But I think by and large business leaders, and I know when I was involved in state policy, I likened it to if I had a disease, and I had cancer, I'd want my doctor to diagnose me, my doctor to say, "Here's the issue, here's how we're going to treat it, and here's how we're going to get you back to health." Well, I think the same thing can be said about schools. There's some schools that are sick. There's some schools that unfortunately have bad curriculums and not very good teachers.
Well, it's not so much to attack them or attack the schools or attack the teachers, but how do you get them better? If one of the problems is kids in high school can't do high levels of math, whether it's algebra or geometry. And nowadays, that's almost a basic skill that our kids need to have in order to be successful. Well, maybe if we look back in the middle schools and they're not able to manipulate fractions, add, divide, subtract fractions, which is a big part of algebra, if they can't do that, then that's a pretty good predictor.
So if a kid can't read in their early formative years, well guess what? They're going to be failures up until they're probably going to drop out a little after middle school because they've been a failure for seven, eight years. And they're like, "Well, why continue to be a failure when I can go into something else?"
But it's being able to diagnose the problem and then be able to deal with it. That's where we need to get over ourselves and say, "Look, this is not about attacking kids. This is about figuring out what it is we need to do. Also figuring out the resources that are needed and the expertise that's needed in order to make it happen."
Todd Sanders:
And I think to your point, the business community has to play a role in terms of supporting the system. If there are needs, then it's our job to step up and try and solve those problems, sort of like we did with dual enrollment.
Obviously another challenge has been the shortage of teachers. Is that because of pay? Is that because of working conditions? Are people not in the industry? All three?
Jaime Molara:
Yeah, I think it's all of the above. I think pay is a big part of it, no doubt. But I also think there's a frustration with teachers and a lot of teachers I know that are just frustrated with the system. And they're frustrated with the bureaucracy. And they're frustrated with the lack of attention on core academic focus because there's a focus on all these things that schools are being mandated or being pressured to deal with that has nothing to do with educational achievement. And so I think a lot of folks get frustrated.
You see not as much of this problem, and it's still there, but it's not as at the level it is with school districts, in my opinion, with charter schools. Because charter schools do have more flexibility. They don't have as much overhead. So you see more of the salaries being paid to the teachers.
And the other thing that charter schools have which traditional public schools don't, because usually it's the unions that negotiate, there's a collective bargaining agreement. If I'm a top tier math teacher or top tier science teacher, there's a very high likelihood I'm getting paid the same as a top tier physical education teacher. Now, I'm not saying that that's bad. But in the business world that I work in now, and we're all a part of, sometimes if there's people with high level skill sets, whether it's IT, whether it's accounting-
Todd Sanders:
Where there's demand.
Jaime Molara:
Where there's a demand and there's a need, you have to pay them higher. But we just don't see that we want to have this everybody's paid the same mentality. And I don't think that works anymore in all levels of government.
Todd Sanders:
And certainly with people coming out of college with debt and trying to figure out how that's going to work, they're going to need to be paid in order to satisfy those debts and to live.
So I mentioned that once we retired your jersey from the public affairs chair, which is certainly probably one of the toughest jobs we can give anybody, a volunteer, we immediately asked you to chair the steering committee for Elevate Ed. Talk a little bit about Elevate Ed and why you decided to do it.
Jaime Molara:
Well, it was those pictures you had on me for one.
Todd Sanders:
Well we don't talk about that.
Jaime Molara:
I'm kidding, by the way. Well, it was exactly what we're talking about. I liked the fact that the Phoenix Chamber has always, and under your leadership you've always been, and I was always proud to be on the board, where we put our money, where our mouth is, so to speak.
Where the issue of workforce is becoming more problematic. The issue of making sure that we are at the tip of the spear rather than just followers on what happened in education policy was important. And so the Phoenix Chamber jumped in and created Elevate Ed, which was how can you get industries to start giving their expertise to high schools and also our higher education system, but primarily the high schools that we work with, and say, "You know what? I know that CTEs and career path training is very important. But we'd have all kinds of cosmetology schools within our CTE programs, or culinary institutes, but the number of jobs and the pay for those jobs, it was just a mess."
Todd Sanders:
It was stunning to see the data, absolutely.
Jaime Molara:
And so what we did was look, and we started working with high schools and say, "Look, if you're going to provide, invest in these types of career pathways, let's look at areas that Arizona is growing in. Our healthcare field is in desperate need of higher level skilled workers. Our manufacturing base is growing considerably. Our clean energy sector is growing by leaps and bounds, our bioscience industries."
Todd Sanders:
Advanced manufacturing.
Jaime Molara:
Advanced manufacturing has been tremendous growth. But we just didn't have that pipeline that could service that over time. Now we've developed, I think, a great model that we used to show the legislature. We worked with two of the biggest school districts in Arizona, Mesa Public Schools and Phoenix Union. And I think that was done consciously because we wanted to demonstrate how it can get done in these big school systems.
So the news has been phenomenal. The results have been phenomenal. In the two years since we have engaged with those school districts and provided the expertise and the additional technical assistance and all the things that support offering these types of programs, you saw 40% growth in the dual enrollment levels for those school districts.
But what's even more phenomenal is that you had 97% of those students that were taking dual enrollment classes getting a C or better. Now, what that's telling me is that they're taking classes that interest them. And they're on a pathway that they find more appealing to them. Because one of the problems has been is a lot of times we force students down a path that they have zero interest in.
Todd Sanders:
One size fits all approach.
Jaime Molara:
Exactly. And I think what this has done is allowed them to say, "Well, here's a career path or an educational pathway that I want to pursue and I find appealing." And if you can give them an opportunity to obtain college credits and knock out a semester, maybe an entire year before they even have to go into higher education, I mean that's pretty significant for a family of limited means trying to figure out how to pay for it. Or if a student doesn't want to take all that student debt.
So I think this is a very powerful way of not only getting them on an educational and career pathway that is meaningful to them, but it also helps defray a lot of the costs that are keeping a lot of our students from going down that pathway in the first place.
Todd Sanders:
Well, I have to agree. And I think the other part under your leadership that was so important is getting a large group now of businesses that will take a chance on a high school kid, an internship. And these are significant businesses who at first told us no. And those kids having the opportunity to see what that's like.
Jaime Molara:
Well success begets success. And I think that as we've seen the growth of this happen, now organizations are contacting Jennifer Miller and you're head of this inside the chamber, to want to be a part of it because I think they're hearing the powerful stories. I got to tell you, when we had our recent celebration of the graduates and you had close 400 people that attended at the Phoenix Zoo, you had a big auditorium.
Todd Sanders:
We did.
Jaime Molara:
And I always loved doing that because the first year was a nice size, but it just seems like it's getting bigger and bigger. There's more and more attention being paid to it. And the excitement at all levels, not only the businesses that were there, but the teachers that were a part of it, the administrators, and of course the parents and the kids especially. It was a really powerful thing to see.
Todd Sanders:
I agree. And they have the businesses there. And for these kids to really see firsthand, to your point, what this is like? What's it like in this industry? I can now see myself, it's not just those kids, but it's me. And maybe that's in college as well. So I have to agree.
And I think what's interesting about this is it seems like that those pieces had been in place, and then for years at the state capitol, there had been sort of this idea that we have to solve this dual enrollment problem. We have to figure out how to get kids into dual enrollment. And it was always this complicated formula and everyone was paying for everyone else, and they didn't understand where the money was going.
And finally, we were with you, we were sitting in a room and you said, "What if we just figured out how to start paying for these kids at least six credit hours just across the board." And it was simple and it was almost too simple. But that led us to dual enrollment.
Jaime Molara:
Yes. And the other thing, Todd, is I've always been a big believer too, that you have to trust the leadership of the schools to do well. Now ultimately, if the school's a failure, like I talked about, and you have some sick schools that need a lot of attention, they won't qualify for this and they won't be able to have students enroll in that because they don't have, under the legislation we created, they won't be able to have the authority to do it.
But those are small numbers, fortunately. A vast majority of our school districts and charter schools will be able to take advantage of this. And I think they can figure it out. They know how to get it done. If we provide the assistance to get more of their teachers certified, give them what we've learned, putting them in touch with the local businesses in their areas that could also be partners, which has happened across the valley as we've done this Elevate Ed, then I think you can see that type of momentum continue.
Todd Sanders:
Well, and what I think is so important about this is you earlier talked about that not all school districts are equal. And there's obviously an ability to raise a lot of dollars in certain areas. This allows those kids in the unequal to come into the system and to start to be a player and to have the opportunity to gain six hours of college credit before they even leave high school. And equalize the system.
Jaime Molara:
That's right. And the other thing I want to say about this is that there's always been this mindset. I remember years ago I read a great book, it's called Rethinking America. It was a New York Times journalist, Hedrick Smith. And he talked about how in other countries, particularly in Europe, you did have career pathways. Now it was more of they tested into that early. So you had kids on a college path and kids on a career path, and it was called tracking. And that was never really liked in the United States.
But the problem was is that we had an informal type of tracking where we did have structures that said, "Okay, here are the college kids." A lot of us would say, those are my kids. And then others would say, "Oh, those kids can't be at this level, so at least maybe we can find them some kind of a career path."
But there was no structure to that. There was no guidance, there was no counseling, there was nothing for vast majority of our students on how can you make that happen. And that's been the biggest piece of what we're doing here. Because we're saying a kid that goes into the university system is not better than the kid that wants to go into a CTE manufacturing, advanced manufacturing. Because at the end of the day, the kid that goes through advanced manufacturing, that's the passion. That's something that they want to be involved with. They get it because they can see it, touch it, feel it.
And the thing that we're finding, Todd, and there's a lot of research that backs me up on this, and Helios Foundation has done a lot of great analysis. If they're able to get those college degrees or credits towards that certification or licensure, then there's a very high likelihood that those students will continue on that career path. So they'll continue to get their associate's, and then you get their bachelor's and then they get their master's. So it's a gateway to a really important educational lifetime experience.
Todd Sanders:
I have to agree.
Jaime Molara:
Because they're pursuing a path that they want to do. They're not floundering in a community college or university that a lot of kids do for a long time. And how many times do they change majors because they don't really know what they want to be yet.
Todd Sanders:
Build up a lot of debt, and then they give up because it's not the right path for them.
Jaime Molara:
Exactly.
Todd Sanders:
No, it's good. It's good to see all of that potential that was so untapped for so long. All of a sudden we're able to give those kids an opportunity to find out what that's all about. And whatever it is, they have a choice now and hopefully we can guide them with that.
We've talked obviously a lot about education, and I'd like to just quickly also pull back a little bit at the end of the legislative session now, or at least we think the end of the legislative session. What were some of the biggest issues and what are some of the challenges you see for next year?
Jaime Molara:
Well, I think that we need to do a better, forgive me for this pun, but more of a deeper dive into the water issues.
Todd Sanders:
That's close to a dad joke, but all right.
Jaime Molara:
But because it's true. I mean there's been a lot of stories that, especially from East Coast papers talking about how bad Arizona's water situation is. And as you know, as somebody that's trying to get businesses to grow and trying to attract businesses, that's a question that's being asked a lot.
But it really is not an accurate portrayal of where we are in our water situation. And now I do think we need to deal with it. I think we have a lot of high water crops in our state. I'm not sure that's smart. I mean 70% of our water, or over 70% goes to our agricultural. It's not the growth that's creating any water deficiencies. Really it's a lot of the kinds of agricultural policies that we're pursuing. And also the infrastructure that needs to be done better.
I think we've made a lot of strides, but I think we really have to look at this more carefully. We really have to bring folks together. One of the things that I've seen over the years is that the water interests have been dominated really by rural agricultural interests. But I think Arizona's business community needs to be more engaged and we need to look at better long-term solutions. And not just for the next two years, but really for the next two decades.
Todd Sanders:
Well, point well taken. And I think that part and also the narrative. It was interesting to see the New York Times headline, Arizona's Out of Water, but if you read the story near the bottom, they gave you the rest of the context. "Well actually they're just making sure they have a hundred-year water supply. And so there's a 4% shortfall over a hundred years."
And that narrative has to, we have to be out there talking about what the facts are. And as well as being involved in the policy, which is hard.
Jaime Molara:
That's right. And then one other issue that we dealt with this year, which I think was horrible policy as far as budget setting, is this year rather than look at major issues, usually when governors come in, they have every year a major issue that they want to tackle. Whether it's I-10 expansion, whether it's water issues like Governor Ducey did a few years back. Whether Janet Napolitano had the expansion of the Phoenix Medical School, which was a big need. This year they developed a budget process, which I'm sorry, but I thought was asinine, where they gave every member $20 million.
And so they have all of this pork going out essentially to say, "Okay, you can play with your 20 million and we're going to do all these other pieces here." And so Todd, you had a hodgepodge of all these little projects that unfortunately you're going to have a lot of roads to nowhere. You're going to have a lot of sidewalk construction in different places. I heard there's one, there's 500,000 to start a women's wrestling team at ASU. Now again, that might be worthwhile, but when you think about it collectively, it was budget setting piecemeal.
Todd Sanders:
Not necessarily strategic exercise
Jaime Molara:
And there's no focus. And I think that's a bad way of doing budgets. And I think because of the scarce resources that we have and that we like to be a conservative state and spending money on things that have a big bang for the buck, hopefully we don't continue that path. Because I certainly think if you do that enough times over the years, then I really think we're going to see a lot of major needs be ignored because we're going to be focused on all the legislators' pet projects as opposed to these big statewide things that need to get accomplished.
Todd Sanders:
It was definitely an unusual process. I don't think I've ever seen that in my time involving with state government.
Well, I want to thank you for spending so much time with us, and obviously when I say that, I mean years, but also today. But before we let you go, we're going to do a quick lightning round with you. First question, first job? And not necessarily professional job. First job?
Jaime Molara:
Five years old. I watered neighbor's lawns.
Todd Sanders:
Oh, excellent. And what'd you learn?
Jaime Molara:
I learned that it was okay to knock on doors and to sell myself. Say, "Hey, I can water your lawn." I remember it was a dollar for each lawn. Front yard a dollar. If I did just one side, I got a dollar. But if I did both, I got $2.
Todd Sanders:
So there you go. You did an important lesson. And would they recommend you today?
Jaime Molara:
Probably not. I think I used up a lot of water because I used hose back then.
Todd Sanders:
Speaking of water. Okay. And obviously you have an incredible job. Obviously you own the company with your partner, but dream job?
Jaime Molara:
I think President, CEO of the Greater Phoenix Chamber.
Todd Sanders:
Sadly that one's taken
Jaime Molara:
No dream job. I think I have it. I'm not being flippant. I really believe I'm very lucky. We work with some incredible people, folks that work with us. We're very blessed, a great business partner. But also the clients that we have and the array of issues that we deal with, there's always something different every day.
Todd Sanders:
I think, I was just thinking that about you. You're always working on something new. It's not like you're punching a widget every day.
Jaime Molara:
Right. So I'm very lucky.
Todd Sanders:
And then final question, your superhero alter ego, who would you be? What superhero would you be, Jaime?
Jaime Molara:
I think I'd be Jaime.
Todd Sanders:
Well, you unfortunately can't be Jaime.
Jaime Molara:
I would be the man of the people.
Todd Sanders:
Well, and for those of you who don't know, if you go to Twitter man o' people, well, I guess we have to leave it at that. I can't argue against that's You are man o' people.
Jaime Molara:
I don't know what you're talking about. I don't even want to be anybody else.
Todd Sanders:
That's it. I've got no words. Thank you, Jaime, for being here and really for your service to Arizona.
Jaime Molara:
Thank you, Todd. Appreciate it. Likewise.
Todd Sanders:
Thanks.