Latest news with #SteveMontenegro
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
When will Arizona voters get wise to Arizona's sorry excuse for a Legislature?
The Arizona Senate reportedly returns to the state Capitol this week after a chock-full month of doing, well nothing much, actually. This, following four arduous months of doing … well… I say senators "reportedly' are returning on May 28 because the Arizona House returned on May 20 after a two-week break wherein House Speaker Steve Montenegro promptly announced another two-week recess. It seems budget negotiations – those conversations that take place among a select few with absolutely no public input – aren't going so well. Heaven forbid our leaders get themselves to the Capitol and hear from the public before deciding how to spend our money. Or address a few of the bigger issues plaguing our state. Like a shortage of houses that people can actually afford. Or our crying need to protect what water we have and to find new sources of the stuff. Or the fact that $300 million in dedicated education funding will disappear on June 30, as Proposition 123 expires. For several years, our leaders have kicked that particular can down the road and now we've reached the end of it. Lawmakers will either have to find the $300 million in lost Prop. 123 funding elsewhere (as they have pledged to do) or stiff the schools. Republicans want to tie an extension of Prop. 123 to school vouchers. Basically, they want to hold Arizona's public schools hostage unless voters agree next year to protect Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, declaring that parents have a constitutional right to public money to pay their kids' private school tuition tab. Still, it's not like legislators haven't done anything in the first 134 days of what is supposed to be a 100-day session. They did pass a bill mandating that high school students be taught about the Gulf of America — a bill that Gov. Katie Hobbs promptly vetoed. And they established a Turquoise Alert system for missing Indigenous people, a bill that Hobbs signed. But they, with Hobbs' help, also trampled the constitutional rights of Scottsdale voters so that Axon, which makes Tasers, can build the state's largest apartment complex, voiding a successful campaign to put the issue to a public vote. And they spent a fair amount of time scheming to cut care for the state's most seriously disabled children, though in the end they didn't have the votes to discontinue to the Parents as Paid Caregivers program. Opinion: It took a seventh-grader to break Arizona's fight over disabled funding Fortunately, the Legislature still has a month to consider the affairs of state. Like the growing number of working Arizona parents who can't afford decent daycare and are on the Department of Economic Security's waitlist to get a childcare subsidy. The Legislature will either help those 4,500 children as part of their secret budget negotiations or tell their parents to suck I'm thinking the latter is likely. You know who will have no trouble getting help? Ken Kendrick, the bazillionaire owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks and one of the state's biggest contributors to Republican politicians. Look for our leaders to pony up a massive subsidy to fix up Chase Field. The only real question is whether they will use only tax money generated by the team or reach more deeply into our I know. It is our sacred obligation to provide the team with $500 million — possibly double that once interest is factored in — to renovate the publicly owned ballpark built for a team that now worth $1.6 billion, according to Forbes. One that Kendrick, bought for $238 million in 2004. Opinion: Deal to keep the Arizona Diamondbacks is a beanball aimed at taxpayers We either pay up or lose the team and the Valley will become a sports wasteland and little children will suffer because they want to be taken out the ballgame, but alas, there won't be one. Yeah, don't lay awake tonight worrying about the baseball team. Our leaders have their priorities, after all, and I'm confident that before June is out, they'll come up with a way to help the D-backs. The kids, not so much. Reach Roberts at Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at @LaurieRobertsaz, on Threads at @LaurieRobertsaz and on BlueSky at @ Subscribe to today. This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: AZ Senate returns. Will housing, school issues be fixed? | Opinion
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Hobbs, GOP leaders trade accusations over DCS funding shortfall for group homes
House Speaker Steve Montenegro, R-Goodyear, announces his plan to form an ad hoc committee on Executive Budget Mismanagement, while flanked by other House Republicans during a March 17, 2025 press conference at the Capitol in Phoenix. Photo by Caitlin Sievers | Arizona Mirror In another battle over funding for critical services, legislative Republicans have accused Arizona's Democratic governor of 'financial malfeasance.' In response, Gov. Katie Hobbs alleged that GOP leaders lied to reporters about a standard budgeting transfer to take attention away from their plans to cut services to people with disabilities. During a press conference on Monday, Steve Montenegro, the speaker of the state House of Representatives, told reporters that the Department of Child Safety would go bankrupt next month without a bailout. He blamed Hobbs for the funding shortfall. Montenegro said that the legislature would force Hobbs to cover the shortfall with funds from her own budget and announced the creation of a special Committee on Executive Budget Mismanagement to investigate what Republicans claimed was her mismanagement of funds for DCS and the Division of Developmental Disabilities, which is also on the verge of running out of money. 'This financial mismanagement threatens the most vulnerable children in our state, and House Republicans will not let this stand,' Montenegro, a Republican from Goodyear, said. 'Once again, we are here being told that we have to clean up Governor Hobbs' mess.' But in response, Christian Slater, a spokesman for Hobbs, accused House Republicans of mischaracterizing a routine request to shift funds within DCS to divert attention from their own plan to cut funding for DDD. He said that Republicans were lying about DCS running out of money next week. 'Instead of preening for the press for political gain, legislative Republicans should stop lying to their constituents, fund services for Arizonans with autism, Down syndrome and cerebral palsy and own up to the pain they want to cause the people of Arizona by presenting their budget proposal,' Slater said in an emailed statement. 'Anything short of that is cowardly and a complete and total dereliction of duty.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX The trading of public accusations stemmed from a request from DCS to transfer $6.5 million from surplus funds for kinship care and foster home placement to pay for a shortfall in the budget for congregate care, the formal name for group homes for foster children. Without that funding, DCS claims that it wouldn't have the funds to pay those group homes and the children staying in them would be kicked out, possibly having to bunk in the DCS office, causing additional trauma and disruption to their lives. The $6.5 million would cover the state's payments to residential care facilities that house children who are in DCS custody but haven't been placed in a foster home or with a family member through April 24, according to the letter from DCS to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee. Slater pointed out that DCS had made similar transfer requests each year dating back to 2016, in several cases more millions of dollars, and Republicans had never called a press conference about it until Monday. 'Who waits until 19 days before bankruptcy to tell anybody about it?' Montenegro asked during the press conference. In an emailed statement to the Arizona Mirror, Cynthia Weiss, a spokesperson for DCS, refuted Montenegro's claim that DCS and Hobbs waited until the last minute to inform legislative leaders that congregate care funding was running out. Weiss told the Mirror that the department has projected an upcoming shortfall in the congregate care budget in its monthly report to legislative leaders and JLBC since August 2024. The fiscal year began in July 2024. Weiss characterized appropriation transfers between line items in the DCS budget as 'common and necessary.' But House Republicans tied the budget shortfall in the congregate care budget to increased payments to congregate care provider Sunshine Residential Homes, and its owners, who have made more than $400,000 in political contributions to Hobbs and the Arizona Democratic Party since 2022, according to The Arizona Republic. Sunshine Residential and Hobbs are at the center of investigations by Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes and Republican Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell for accusations of a 'pay-to-play' scheme. Weiss said that increased congregate care payments stemmed from a re-solicitation of the congregate care contract in 2024, which was past its five-year term and was overdue to be rebid. This is the second publicly fought budgeting battle between the Hobbs administration and legislative Republicans in the past couple of months. In February, Hobbs requested an additional $122 million for services provided through the Division of Developmental Disabilities, which is expected to run out of money in May. The state's fiscal year ends June 30. Legislative Republicans and Hobbs have blamed one another for the funding lapse, caused in part by increased spending in the Parents as Paid Caregiver Program. The Republicans who control the legislature had denied increased funding for the program in this year's budget, and accused Hobbs of going forward with spending on it anyway. If the legislature doesn't approve additional funding by the end of April, DDD won't be able to pay its providers and tens of thousands of Arizonans with disabilities will lose access to vital medical services, help with daily living and physical and occupational therapies. Advocates, people with disabilities and their families came together last month to put pressure on the state government to fund DDD, and in response a group of Republican senators last week promised to ensure that DDD services continue. But beyond their expectation that the Hobbs administration and the Department of Economic Security, of which the DDD is a part, be held accountable for the situation and help to create a funding solution, the senators didn't explain how they would make that happen. Rep. David Livingston, the Peoria Republican who is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said in January that the Parents as Paid Caregivers program would have to face cuts — possibly upwards of 50% — to balance next year's budget. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
