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PHOENIX — House Speaker Jim Weiers can't legally use leftover cash in his chamber's bank account to fund a voucher program for some special-needs students specifically excluded from the new state budget, Attorney General Terry Goddard said Wednesday.

Goddard said the fact that Weiers has accumulated more than $9 million in unspent surpluses does not give him the ability to unilaterally finance programs and services that have nothing to do with the Arizona House of Representatives.

The attorney general said that if Weiers wants to divert those extra funds to voucher programs, he needs to get permission of the entire Legislature and the governor.

Even if Weiers could get funding restored, the help for affected parents and students might be only temporary. The state Court of Appeals has ruled it is unconstitutional to use any public funds to pay for tuition to private and parochial schools. But the Supreme Court has said the state can continue funding while it considers the legality of the program, assuming the funds become available.

Weiers said he was disappointed, and not for himself.

"You've left hundreds of children out there in a point of desperation and hundreds of families that are looking at 'what can we do?' " he said. Weiers said the students being helped either were former foster children "who have been bounced from place to place" or students with developmental disabilities that are "not their fault either."

"So they're being punished again," he said.

Goddard said his informal legal opinion is not personal.

"I feel terrible on the result we had to reach," Goddard said. "But I don't see any legal way that we could have allowed the speaker to circumvent the constitutional appropriation process. He doesn't have that authority."

First approved in 2006, one program provided $2.5 million in state tax vouchers for tuition and fees to the parents of former foster children who have been adopted. It also set aside an identical amount for similar programs for disabled youths.

No funds were included in the budget for the new year that began July 1, a budget negotiated between Gov. Janet Napolitano and Senate President Tim Bee.

Napolitano, who had agreed to the two programs in 2006, said cutting them now was justified.

"We were making lots of cuts in the budget," trying to make up a $2 billion deficit, she said.

She also said the new programs were "undersubscribed," with fewer students qualifying for the vouchers than expected.

Weiers then sought to use the more than $9 million he had in accumulated surpluses from money appropriated to the House for its operations during the last eight years. In an effort to make it legal, he crafted it as an "interagency-services agreement," with the House contracting with the state Department of Education to provide vouchers.

But Goddard said the money Weiers was attempting to use was provided to run the House. And because the House has no authority to run a voucher program itself, Goddard said Weiers had no authority to contract with, and pay for, someone else to do it.

Goddard pointed out that his office has been defending the legality of the two programs in court. His attorneys have argued that the vouchers don't violate the constitutional ban on aid to private and parochial schools because the funds benefit the students receiving the services.