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Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Arizona House GOP passes budget alone as Democrats boycott vote
Photo via Facebook Republicans in Arizona's House of Representatives passed their package of state budget bills the same way they were created: alone. The majority party, which holds 33 of the chamber's 60 seats, approved each of the 15 pieces of legislation that make up their budget proposal by a vote of 31-0 Friday night, long after all Democratic lawmakers had headed home after a day of waiting around for Republicans to bring the bills to the floor for debate. Creation of the state's annual budget is usually a collaborative effort among the Republican majorities that control the House and Senate and Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat. But this year, House Republicans created their own state budget plan, divorced from ongoing budget negotiations between Hobbs and Senate Republicans. Legislative Democrats panned House Republicans' budget tactics as a 'farce' and Hobbs described the plan as 'dead-on-arrival' because of inadequate funding for K-12 schools, millions in cuts to Medicaid and a failure to fund her childcare affordability initiative. Hobbs and Senate Republicans plan to introduce their own budget Monday following weeks of negotiations. House GOP leaders had been involved in those negotiations, but walked away several weeks ago. House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Livingston, along with Rep. Matt Gress, a former budget director for Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, were the chief architects of their chamber's budget proposal. Gress, a Phoenix Republican, responded Friday to criticisms of the way the budgeting process unfolded. 'This was a key procedural step that we had to take, it really was,' Gress said. 'We've had to do it in order to get the language that House members wanted to present to the Senate as they take up their legislation next week.' Gress said that he'd seen the Senate's plan, and even though he and Livingston didn't work with Senate leaders or Hobbs, he described the two plans as 'eerily similar.' 'We all ended up focusing in on the things that matter, for the most part,' Gress said, admitting that the House's plan was more conservative than the Senate's. The House's $17.3 billion plan includes a 5% pay raise for Department of Public safety and correctional officers and $94 million to fund infrastructure and road improvements, including I-10 and Highway 347. It also includes a 2.5% tuition reduction followed by a three-year freeze for Arizonans who attend the state's public institutions, and it continues to fund the Division of Developmental Disabilities and its Parents as Paid Caregivers Program that was at the center of a bitter fight for funding earlier this year. The House budget plan was just introduced publicly in the late afternoon of June 11, and GOP lawmakers worked long hours on Friday to negotiate amendments to get all Republicans on board since there was no chance of getting any votes from Democrats. One significant amendment to House Bill 2947 approved Friday evening would give more control to country recorders when it comes to funding and oversight of elections. Some of the changes are clearly aimed at tipping the scale in an ongoing feud between the Republican-controlled Maricopa Board of Supervisors and Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap. Heap, a former state representative and member of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, has been battling the board over election administration duties basically since he took office in January. Election duties in Maricopa are split between the board and recorder. This week, Heap sued the board of supervisors claiming they 'engaged in an unlawful attempt to seize near-total control over the administration of elections,' Votebeat reported. Through his lawsuit, Heap seeks to control the information technology staff that manages the Maricopa County voter registration system. In a statement, Supervisor Kate Brophy McGee called the lawsuit absurd, describing it as an 'example of the Recorder's irresponsible and juvenile ready-fire-aim approach to governance.' The House Republican budget would distribute $4 million in funds directly to the Maricopa County Recorder's Office, instead of the board, and would prohibit the board from having any say in how the funds are spent. It would require the recorder to use some of those funds to hire information technology staff and for the recorder to control all IT equipment used in his duties. Rep. Alex Kolodin, a Scottsdale Republican and Freedom Caucus member, praised the election oversight measures in the House budget, saying it was important to the caucus that those be included. Kolodin, who is an attorney, was sanctioned by the State Bar of Arizona and placed on probation in 2023 for his role in lawsuits challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election, including the infamous 'kraken' lawsuit that made implausible and evidence-free claims of massive election fraud. While Gress focused on the similarities between the Senate budget plan and the one in the House, Kolodin's outlook was more cynical. 'This budget process has obviously been very fractious, between the House that is pushing for a Republican budget that befits the Republican majority the people of Arizona elected, and some of our colleagues in the (executive) tower, and across the courtyard (in the Senate) that may be having different ideas.' But Kolodin said he was pleased to see that everyone involved, including Hobbs, were on the same page about putting $1 million toward legal funding for the state's upcoming fight for its share of Colorado River water. Not all Republicans were totally pleased with the outcome, with Rep. Justin Olson, of Mesa, saying he was only on board with the level of spending in the budget because he'd been promised that a separate bill would be introduced next week to cut spending by more than $100 million. Rep. Teresa Martinez, of Casa Grande, said she voted for the budget bill reluctantly, 'with caution and regret,' as she's worried some of the provisions will hurt rural hospitals. But as House Republicans celebrated the passage of their proposal, and criticized Democratic lawmakers for their absence from the chamber Friday night, Gress said he was hopeful that the Senate, House and Hobbs could come to a budget agreement next week. He urged Senate Republicans to work off of the House's proposal next week, instead of the one they have negotiated with the governor. 'I think that, ultimately, the minds melded across the capitol to produce almost a virtually identical budget,' he said, claiming that 85% of the House's proposal would end up in the final product. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
House Republicans draft competing budget as Senate nears deal with Hobbs
Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy | Arizona Mirror Arizona lawmakers are at odds again, but this time it's the Republicans in the House of Representatives and Senate who can't agree on how to forge the state budget. Creating the state budget — deciding how much to allocate to departments, projects and initiatives or whether to fund them at all — is the most important job that legislators do each year, and the only thing they are constitutionally required to complete. Before the group of bills that will become the state budget becomes law, it must be approved by a majority in both the Arizona Senate and House — which are both controlled by Republicans — and garner a signature from Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. In recent history, budget negotiations in Arizona have occurred behind closed doors among the governor and legislative leaders in the House and Senate. But this year is different, with Hobbs and Republican leaders in the Senate nearing a deal after weeks of negotiations. GOP leaders in the House, who haven't been involved in those talks, have responded by drafting their own budget, which was introduced late Wednesday afternoon. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX 'This is a sound, disciplined budget that delivers safe communities, strong families, and a government that lives within its means,' House Speaker Steve Montenegro said in a Wednesday evening statement. 'We're raising pay for our state law enforcement officers, reducing tuition at public universities, fully funding school choice, fixing critical infrastructure and roads, and protecting taxpayers. Our budget reins in government and puts it back to work for the people it serves.' But the spending package, which is chock-full of proposals that are unlikely to pass muster with Hobbs, will never become law. Instead, it is better viewed as a way for House Republicans to lay down a marker in order to force Hobbs and the Senate to move closer to the House's proposal. Republican political consultant Barrett Marson said House GOP leaders are hoping to demonstrate that the chamber can pass a spending plan in order to get leverage in the negotiations. 'Sometimes there's just gotta be movement to unstick a sticky situation,' he said. 'The House has an equal voice. And unlike previous years when one or both chambers had a go-it-alone ethos, the House isn't looking to be draconian or anything. They want something more responsible.' Marson said a major point of contention between the House and Senate is what to do with the budget surplus. While the Senate and Hobbs have settled on copying the novel process from 2023, in which each lawmaker was given a pot of money from the surplus that was used to fund whatever initiatives they wanted, the House wants to negotiate all of those details and not surrender control of that money to individual legislators. During a House Rules Committee meeting earlier Wednesday afternoon, House Minority Leader Oscar De Los Santos, of Laveen, said he was disappointed in the way the budgeting process was happening this year. 'We should not be moving forward with a House Republican-only budget that is destined to fail,' he said. 'This will not get signed by the governor. I don't even think it's going to pass out of the Senate.' De Los Santos even questioned whether the proposal would get enough votes to pass through the House, where Republicans hold 33 of the chamber's 60 seats. 'What we do know is that this is not a negotiated, bipartisan deal in good faith,' he said. 'House Democrats are at the table negotiating in a bipartisan way with the executive, with our (Senate) counterparts across the courtyard. That is the way to get things done in shared government.' But Republican Rep. Neal Carter, of San Tan Valley, replied that the work of governing should be done transparently, instead of in private — and that it should allow for input from the public. 'As a Republican, I stand for full transparency and not for back-room deals or negotiated budgets with parties that are somehow outside of this public process,' Carter said. The House Republican budget, introduced by House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Livingston, proposes significant changes in how federal money allocated to the state, but not restricted to specific uses, is controlled. The billions in unrestricted federal funds, currently controlled by the governor, would shift to legislative control and could only be spent on essential government services. The House GOP's budget proposal would also place new restrictions and monitoring requirements on entitlement programs, like the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System — the state's Medicaid program — and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly called food stamps. Both programs would be monitored on at least a quarterly basis for participants who don't qualify, to be kicked off. And any participants who win $3,000 or more through gambling or playing the state lottery and don't report those winnings would become ineligible. It would also give the Arizona Department of Economic Security the authority to screen recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families for illegal drug use and would ban anyone who tests positive for drugs not prescribed to them from the cash assistance program for a year. House Republicans also intend to increase the percentage of money spent in K-12 classrooms, as opposed to on administration; to decrease tuition for students attending the state's three public universities; and to ban those universities from using public or private money to give scholarships to students without legal immigration status. Hobbs introduced her budget proposal, which includes a much different list of priorities, back in January. Shortly after that, Livingston and Rep. Matt Gress, R-Phoenix, panned her proposal for leaving out projected cost increases for programs like AHCCCS. Hobbs spokesman Christian Slater told the Arizona Mirror on Wednesday that Livingston and Gress were to blame for the House's lack of collaboration on the budget. 'This is DDD all over again,' Slater said via email, referring to a fight earlier this year over funding for the Department of Developmental Disabilities. 'It's another circus led by the Speaker, David Livingston, and Matt Gress where they have refused to participate with any caucuses, including their Republican counterparts in the Senate, in a meaningful manner and are once again just trying to score some political points even though they know their plan is going absolutely nowhere.' Livingston and Gress, a former budget director for Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, were both key players in the fight over an extra $122 million in emergency funding for DDD that put vital services for the developmentally disabled in jeopardy. 'Rather than being productive, the House Republican leadership continues to show they are in over their head and unserious about governing,' Slater said. The House Appropriations Committee is set to discuss the proposal Thursday morning. The Senate Republicans have not introduced their budget proposal. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
