Key Points:
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Hobbs won’t talk about budget yet
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Governor wants Prop. 123 extension settled
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Lawmakers remain on mid-session break
Republicans at the Legislature have addressed most of the bills they wanted to take on this session, but budget discussions are stalled until lawmakers find agreement on a Proposition 123 ballot referral.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, told the Arizona Capitol Times that House and Senate Republicans have reached a budget agreement, but haven’t discussed the budget with Gov. Katie Hobbs or her staff yet.
“She has been refusing to meet with us since the beginning of the session and said she will not meet until Prop. 123 is passed, which is unprecedented,” Kavanagh said.
With most of the legislative business finished for the session, Republican leaders in both chambers took a mid-session break amid discussions on the education funding ballot referral.
House members are scheduled to return to the floor on May 20, and the senate will gavel back on May 28, leaving lawmakers slightly more than a month to get a budget to Hobbs before the end of the fiscal year on June 30.
After both chambers went on their break on May 7, Hobbs’ spokesman Christian Slater called on legislative Republicans to publicly present their budget.
“It’s shameful that Republican lawmakers are going on vacation instead of taking action to fund public education and passing a bipartisan, balanced budget. Everyday Arizonans don’t get to give themselves two weeks off from their job. Their inaction is a dereliction of their duty to serve the public and an affront to the students, parents and teachers across Arizona who want stability and certainty,” Slater said in a statement. “Republicans must show Arizonans their budget plan rather than skip work for a mid-session vacation.”
Kavanagh said he’s “flabbergasted” with how Hobbs has approached the budget this year and said the only reason the chambers have gone on break is because the bills are mostly finished, but the Governor’s Office “doesn’t want to talk.”
“If you’re going to do political spin, at least make it believable and credible,” Kavanagh said.
Chuck Coughlin, a political consultant and the CEO of HighGround Consulting, said he believes the lack of communication on the budget reflects the state of partisanship between Republicans and Democrats on a national level.
“There’s a lot of blame to go around on both sides on an equation like that,” Coughlin said. “That’s disappointing because everyone is elected to represent the people of Arizona and that requires talking and getting along.”
Despite the lack of movement, both Coughlin and Kavanagh said they weren’t worried about the budget being settled before the end of the fiscal year.
“We could knock the budget out in a few days,” Kavanagh said.
Mid-session breaks at the Legislature have become a common occurrence in recent years.
Last year, both chambers operated with a schedule that had House and Senate members adjourning once a week in April and May before getting the budget passed on June 15. In 2023, lawmakers took several breaks before adjourning sine die on July 31, although Hobbs signed that year’s budget in May.
The Legislature has historically used a much more public process to create the budget. That process involved the legislative budget staff proposing a plan shortly after the executive proposal in January. Past sessions also held regular appropriations subcommittee hearings related to state agencies and the budget.
“That doesn’t happen anymore,” Coughlin said.” They get into these very small rooms with leadership and a few other people and they take it back to their caucus and try to muscle it through. That’s just not a healthy way to do business … the whole process has been broken for some time and I’m sure the governor is frustrated about that.”
Slater accused Republicans of “hiding” their budget and holding education funding “hostage” with Prop. 123.
“They need to come clean and show Arizonans their secret budget, and work on a bipartisan Prop. 123 ballot referral to fund public education,” Slater wrote in a text to the Arizona Capitol Times on May 13.
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