Despite Arizona facing a surge in crime and a lack of affordable housing in recent years, Gov. Katie Hobbs has, for the third year in a row, produced a budget focused on attacking the ability of families to access school choice.

Her recently released budget plan seeks to tear down Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program (ESA), the most successful school choice program in the country, even as it fails to account for more than $800 million in statutorily required spending on the state’s Medicaid program.

This is fiscal mismanagement at its worst.

Indeed, while her office was botching its basic budgeting responsibilities, the governor decided to recycle the same failed policy platform as the past two years — waging war on families rather than solving the state’s most pressing issues. 

Her campaign against ESAs, which now serve more than 80,000 Arizona children across the economic spectrum, is absurd.

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

She even decried in her recent State of the State address that parents getting to choose the best possible education for their children is tantamount to “scamming........

© Arizona Republic