This year, Maricopa County voters approved every bond and override proposed by the county’s school districts. As a result, hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes will be used to pay for various projects, from new buildings or buses, in the case of the bonds, to increased teacher salaries and textbooks, in the case of overrides. Putting the funding on the ballot lets communities decide whether to exceed the state’s funding.

When the new funds go toward large capital projects, districts have to decide who will do the work of designing, then building – or refurbishing – school facilities.

State procurement laws dictate how school districts choose the companies that will do that work, and are designed to ensure government contracts are awarded based on an honest evaluation of the applicants, not cronyism.

But a closer inspection of which companies end up securing the contracts reveals a small group of builders dominate the K-12 design and construction sector, and get the bulk of their work in Arizona from school districts.

The same companies that end up with an oversized portion of K-12 work also largely finance the campaigns aimed at persuading the public to approve the proposals – often donating identical amounts to the same committees on the same dates.

In contrast, Arizona’s public universities, community colleges and municipalities see significantly greater diversity among vendors for similar design and construction projects.

Unlike candidate campaigns, where corporations cannot make direct contributions and individuals can only contribute up to certain limits – an attempt to prevent undue influence over elected officials – campaigns for bonds and overrides can accept contributions in any amount and from corporations.

The financial support vendors provide the campaigns goes beyond what’s publicly disclosed in campaign finance reports. A “dark money” group named Arizona Coalition for Education Excellence was established specifically to hide additional financial support from schools’ vendors.

The same companies’ executives also often sit on the boards of school district foundations, and the companies routinely sponsor the foundations and their activities.

Some architects and contractors said they’ve been told by district employees the procurement process has been co-opted, and that the appearance of competition is a facade.

Officials from the state’s School Facilities Board, which administers a comparatively small fund that pays for targeted school facilities, said they’ve heard rumors the district procurement process had become “an old boys club.” New laws requiring additional oversight for procurement practices may be necessary, SFB officials said, and the agency has already considered sponsoring legislation to that effect.

AZCIR and KJZZ interviewed dozens of sources and scrutinized hundreds of campaign finance reports, business filings, non-profit disclosures and public procurement records to bring these relationships into focus. Together, the pieces reveal a symbiotic network that connects the financial interests of vendors with the needs of schools. Sources representing the builders who benefit from the system all said their motivation is to help children succeed, and school officials said the state’s procurement guidelines keep the process fair.

But critics said the realities of Arizona’s education funding needs, coupled with rules allowing unlimited corporate financing of ballot measures and loose oversight of procurement, leads to too-cozy relationships between builders and the school districts they seek contracts from. They questioned whether competition is diminished given these conditions, and whether the large-dollar school projects benefit a small group of builders more than Arizona’s students or taxpayers.

One district’s recent struggles related to a construction project highlight similar issues. In the Scottsdale Unified School District, the rollout of plans for a $229 million overhaul to its schools has led to the district hiring outside attorneys to look into whether procurement practices were properly followed, and the Arizona Attorney General’s office opened an investigation into the possibility of both civil and criminal violations there.