
The budget meltdown
Before the breakthrough (we hope) … Don’t forget the loose ends! …. And pass the Bolles bill, Warren!
State senators returned to the Capitol yesterday for what they hoped would be a series of rapid-fire votes to pass a budget package and begin winding down the annual legislative session.
Instead, Senate President Warren Petersen told the room full of anxious lawmakers, reporters and lobbyists that the Senate budget vote would be delayed — he’s now hoping to pull the trigger at 9 a.m. today.
"We have amendments that have come and asks and requests from the House, from Democrats, from our members,” he said. “We want to make sure everybody has a chance to look at everything.”
Translation: The Senate doesn’t have the votes, and budget leaders need more time to buy support from lawmakers before it can pass its $17.6 billion spending package.
We laid out the massive spending plan and how it differs from the House’s rogue budget in Wednesday’s edition.
So what’s the holdup?
Republican Sen. John Kavanagh, the driving force behind the Senate’s budget, is still wrangling votes. He told us that the “holdouts are tentative” and the Senate is preparing amendments with “small member asks” to bring more people on board.
A handful of Republicans balked at the proposal yesterday. They want to add more than the $5 million “pet project slush fund” that each Republican senator was allowed to insert into this year’s budget.
“I just need to know by 9 PM tonight if you are on the budget with just your $5 million in original asks,” he texted a handful of holdouts on Tuesday night, per a copy of the text we procured through means we won’t be elaborating on. “We cannot accommodate the 200 million and the burbs that you spoke about to (Senate Chief of Staff) Josh Kredit. If we don’t hear from you by nine, we will have to take out the 5 million.”
We don’t know the specific spending tweaks and policy priorities this group of rogue Republicans wants in the budget, but we have a feeling they’re going to get it.
That’s because many Freedom Caucus Republicans probably won’t back any budget that Gov. Katie Hobbs is willing to sign, and Democrats have their own growing discontent about the contents of the budget.
Some Democratic lawmakers came out against the $24.7 million for the Department of Public Safety’s Gang & Immigration Intelligence team. Both the House and Senate budgets propose earmarking $12.9 million of that to fund 100 employees on the gang and immigration team to assist in “strictly enforcing all federal laws relating to illegal aliens,” and helping county sheriffs and attorneys investigate complaints of “employment” of undocumented people.
Those 100 Department of Public Safety officers would “strictly enforce Arizona’s SB1070,” the infamous 2010 immigration law that caused boycotts of Arizona and was mostly struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.1
“Shame on any DEM that is willing to vote for a sham budget that separates families and puts money to help those efforts,” Democratic Rep. Alma Hernandez
postedon Twitter.
Democratic Rep. Consuelo Hernandez, Alma’s sister, called it a “poison pill of a budget,” and Democratic Sen. Sally Ann Gonzales fired off a letter to her colleagues saying the gang and immigration unit “has a documented history of racial profiling, overreach, and community harm.”
“Our constituents sent us here to lead, not to capitulate to extremist priorities…” Gonzales said in a press release. “I urge every member of the Legislature to reject this budget and stand on the right side of history.”
It’s unclear if Republicans will cut that spending to get Democratic votes. In the past, they’ve secured those votes by funding pet projects for Democrats, rather than cutting Republican priorities.
But in a pinch, who knows?
As lawmakers labor to pass a budget and shut down the annual legislative session, they’re also giving one last push to some of the controversial, failed or forgotten bills that haven’t made it to the governor’s office this year.
Case in point: The Arizona Diamondbacks bill has returned.
The very rich team owners bypassed Phoenix and Maricopa County to ask the state Legislature to force through a deal that would allow the team to keep $500 million of sales taxes to subsidize stadium repairs at Chase Field.
The bill passed the House and started creeping through the Senate back in March. But the idea stalled out until key stakeholders met in closed-door meetings and came up with a new plan, which the Senate still has to pass. The House already passed the original bill, and has to pass the new version, too.
Hobbs has largely played Switzerland on the measure that local governments and several Democrats have opposed. But considering she entertained months of negotiations, we're guessing she’ll probably sign it into law.

Some of the sales taxes you pay for $30 helmet nachos would go back to Chase Field under the Diamondbacks bill.
Here are the details of the latest version:
The total amount of sales tax funneled toward the stadium is $500 million, but that’s adjusted annually for inflation. The sales taxes would be diverted until 2055.
Legislative economists estimated the previous bill version, which also took some income tax revenue, would reduce state General Fund dollars by $9.2 million a year, and the hit would be about $5.8 million annually for local governments. Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego previously warned the city’s losses would be a lot higher than that — around $6.4 million a year — based on actual tax collection data.
The bill requires the Diamondbacks to contribute $250 million of their own money.
The earlier the Diamondbacks leave, the more they’ll have to pay in penalties.
The bill is funded by diverting part of the taxes generated at Chase Field in the following ways:
It would divert all the state’s sales taxes to the team, not including the .6% that goes toward education.
It would also divert 2% of Phoenix’s sales tax.
And the Diamondbacks would also keep Maricopa County’s 0.5% transportation tax. (If that doesn’t make enough money, the county has to give more to match Phoenix’s share.)
Here’s a brief rundown of some of the bills that have suddenly sprung back to life in the waning days of the legislative session.
HCR2031: Lawmakers in the House are moving a Prop 123 renewal that would ask voters to renew the fund that gives $300 million a year to schools using state land trust money. Republicans only want to put the money toward teacher pay increases. Democrats want other school support staff to be eligible for the money, and they’re skeptical Republicans will try to sneak school vouchers into the measure.
SB1470: Republican Rep. Justin Olson is championing a measure to freeze all future state Medicaid enrollments under the Affordable Care Act, which totals an estimated $108 million in cuts. Olson calls it a way to get ahead of federal Medicaid cuts progressing in Congress.
SB1082: It looks like Republican Sen. Janae Shamp is taking Gov. Katie Hobbs up on her proposal for a tougher version of a bill banning China from owning land in Arizona. Shamp’s strike everything amendment bans any country that the U.S. Director of National Intelligence says poses a national security risk from buying land in Arizona. Hobbs vetoed version one of the bill, which only banned China.
SB1555: Yesterday, House lawmakers passed Republican Sen. T.J. Shope’s bill to legalize medical psilocybin use in Arizona if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves the psychedelic for medical use and the Drug Enforcement Administration reclassifies it. It awaits a final Senate vote.
SB1335: The highest priority bill of the year (for us, personally) is still awaiting one final vote in the Senate. SB1335 is the strike-everything version of the bill to allow a monument on the Capitol lawn honoring assassinated journalist Don Bolles. This is the third year that lawmakers have introduced the legislation (at our prodding), and each year, it has passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support. And each year, it has been killed by Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman, who refuses to put it up for a vote in his Senate Government Committee. The strike-everything amendment was a tactic Republicans instigated to get around his committee. Now, all it needs is for Senate President Warren Petersen to allow it to go up for a vote from the full Senate.
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Like we said, there’s one important bill that still hasn’t landed on the final legislative agendas yet: the Don Bolles monument bill.
We’re hoping you can help change that.
One of the many cool tools we’ve built lately is an advocacy email generator. Basically, we feed it a few talking points about a bill, and with a click of a button, you can generate a form email to send to your lawmakers to advocate for or against it.
So please take a minute to generate an email to Senate President Warren Petersen asking him to put SB1335, the Bolles monument bill, up for a vote in the Senate.
Feel free to rewrite whatever the AI spits out, or craft your own personalized email to Petersen. (WPetersen@azleg.gov)
But keep it polite and professional! Yelling at lawmakers doesn’t seem to help. (We’ve tried.)
Click the button to get started.
That provision has actually been standard in the budget for many years, but takes on new meaning as the Trump administration is rounding up undocumented immigrants on a massive scale.
Ken and Randi Kendrick are billionaires. $500m should not be hard for them to raise with their investment group over several years.The county owns the stadium and I must have missed the part the where the state fits in except that Randi Kendrick is a very big donor and mover and shaker in the Republican Party. The county should have been negotiating with the Kendrick’s way before the cooling system and roof started failing. Threatening to move the team every time the Kendrick’s don’t get their way makes me wish they’d sell to someone else. Lakers just sold for $10b. What’s this world coming to? Don’t get me started on sports gambling.
Great use of AI in helping readers emphasize the importance of the efforts to honor Don Bolles at the Capitol. Although I ultimately chose to write a more personalized letter, points made in the AI-generated example were on point and powerful. I hope readers will flood Sen. Petersen with requests to bring this to a vote.