Arizona State Treasurer Kimberly Yee speaking with attendees at the 2024 Legislative Forecast Luncheon hosted by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry at Chase Field in Phoenix, Arizona.
The Buzz for April 18, 2025
Kimberly Yee has less than two years left in her second term as Arizona Treasurer. Her time in the office has seen notable growth in Arizona's economy, a restructuring of state income taxes, and new duties assigned to her office. The Buzz spoke with her on a variety of topics:
Helping local governments invest:
"I manage $64.7 billion in the cash flow that comes in and out of this office. Those dollars go to our state agencies, to our school districts, to our local municipalities all across the state. We manage the investments of our local governments. It's an optional program called the Local Government Investment pool, and on day one of my administration, I thought, well, simple math tells you that if you grow the local government investment pool, there is a greater amount of funds available for those local municipalities on the returns. So I went across the entire state of Arizona, all 15 beautiful counties, to really increase our participation so that pool would grow with our local governments. And we have seen enormous growth. We've had about a 143% increase in the local government investment pool, so the value of that pool is now just under $8 billion."
The Permanent Land Endowment Trust Fund and Education Funding:
Numerous lawmakers from across the political spectrum have proposed raising the amount that the state draws from the fund to help increase education funding. Yee has spoken out against it.
"the conversation is always about the long term fund and making sure you don't break into the corpus or the principle of the fund. Why? Because this fund is here forever more. It's in perpetuity, and so you don't want to have to rate it to pay for today's bills. That's not the intent of this fund. My recommendation is between 4-to-4.5% of distribution. Why? Because that is the industry norm, and an endowment similar to our state's land endowment. Currently it's at 6.9%. That's where the controversy came 10 years ago, and today it remains. Because that is high for a market that we're in currently, there's market volatility, there's great uncertainty in what will happen in the near future. And so we don't want to break into the principle of this fund. And so my responsibility as the Treasurer is to really give the legislature and the governor and the people of Arizona what does that number look like in a responsible way."
Investing the state's money during financially precarious times.
"We are certainly in a market that is uncertain, and we shouldn't be surprised at that. And so our office maintains safety before liquidity, before yield in every investment. That is our philosophy. So we are prepared for any day. In fact, we do a stress test regularly to allow us to put into scenarios where our money would be at any given point of time, so we will know what our liquidity is and what our needs would be to the point of XYZ, whatever month that takes us to. And at this point in time, we are just fine for over two years if we were to be in a real crisis."
Her future after completing her final term as treasurer
Yee announced a run for governor in 2022, but she eventually rescinded her plan to go seek a second term as treasurer.
"I come from a family of small business owners. My grandparents had a little grocery store in South Phoenix back in the 1930s and it stayed successfully on that little corner for 63 years. And it really is about that customer that we had for who came in and out of those doors. They were like family. Same thing in public service. You serve the people, and you want them to, you know, understand that you are doing this for the people, and you earn their vote along the way. And so in the time that I've served in the legislature and now as state treasurer, it really has been meaningful to me to see that we have really improved the lives of so many with really good policies. And so I want to continue that work in some way."
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