Arizona won’t stop using COVID money for anti-mask grants

By BOB CHRISTIE
Associated Press

PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey is defying a demand that he stop using federal coronavirus relief money to fund an education grant program that can only go to schools without mask mandates. He is also continuing to give private school vouchers to parents upset their children’s schools require masks or exposure quarantines. Ducey’s staff sent a letter to the U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday that ignored the department’s demand that he stop using the money. Instead, Ducey aide Jason Mistlebauer said the cash was appropriately being used to help students who were harmed by school mask mandates. The Treasury Department last month told Ducey the programs were “not a permissible use” of the federal funding.