The Daily Agenda: Could we get actually get a budget?

We're not optimistic yet ... Republicans try to play nice with each other ... But Twitter gets in the way.

Depending on who you believe, a bipartisan budget deal is “very close” and could come “hopefully, in the next few weeks.”

Gov. Katie Hobbs told reporters on her 100th day in office that a bipartisan plan was underway and negotiations were nearing an agreement. She said she made clear that the budget plan needed to be bipartisan and “tackle some of our toughest issues.”

“I don’t think anyone thought we would be at that place in the first 100 days, so I’m really encouraged by that,” Hobbs said. “It shows that when there’s a common goal, we can work together.”

House Speaker Ben Toma, the more moderate of the two Republican legislative leaders, told KTAR’s Mike Broomhead that a budget could be finished in a few weeks.

After the ouster of Liz Harris, Republicans no longer have a majority in the House. But that won’t affect budget negotiations much, if a bipartisan plan is in the works. Harris wouldn’t have been part of the high-level negotiations, and her vote wouldn’t have been necessary (or likely) for a bipartisan plan to move.

Toma said Harris’ vacancy won’t affect House business much because “there’s a bit of a lull as we’re trying to negotiate a budget.” 

Replacing Harris should happen relatively quickly. Legislative District 13 Republicans will nominate three choices to send to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, who will select a replacement. They usually do that fast, especially if we’re actively in session. 

Several familiar names are floating around for the open seat: Julie Willoughby, who narrowly lost to Harris in 2022; former Senate President Steve Yarbrough; Ron Hardin, who ran in last year’s primary for the seat.

“By the time that process finishes out, we should have another member and we should be able to be back on the floor in full numbers and be able to finish out this budget, hopefully, in the next few weeks,” Toma said.

The potential for a budget agreement, while still likely a ways off, is a far cry from a few months ago, when Hobbs unveiled her budget plan that Toma quickly called a “dead on arrival.” GOP lawmakers then responded by sending Hobbs a “skinny budget” that she swiftly vetoed. 

Now that the budget bluster of early 2023 is out of the way, lawmakers and the Governor’s Office seem to actually be talking and, hopefully, working on big issues like housing, water and education.

But any alliance among them is tenuous at best. While the last Democratic governor, Janet Napolitano, was able to work with Republicans, that came well before the rise of the far-right and MAGA movement. 

Rancorous partisanship is our norm now. Overcoming it to strike a bipartisan budget deal would need to break that cycle.

Good luck with that: Arizona Republican leaders and potential 2024 Senate candidates privately met in Scottsdale to talk about avoiding a bruising GOP primary next year, a year after 2022 saw several Republican-on-Republican battles, the Washington Post’s Liz Goodwin and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez report. New AZGOP Chair Jeff DeWit told the candidates of the need to get away from personal attacks, as state and national Republican leaders have spread a similar message in other key states. Kari Lake, who could run for the seat, wasn’t there, but Mark Lamb, Jim Lamon, Blake Masters and Karrin Taylor Robson were. 

“While nothing was formally agreed to in the meeting, candidates were told that national conservative groups would probably not invest in Arizona’s race if there was not a viable general election candidate,” the Post writes. 

Watch your mailboxes: Ballots go out this week to Tempe voters, who will decide the fate of the Arizona Coyotes arena plan and surrounding entertainment district. The $2.1 billion project has led to lawsuits among Tempe, Phoenix and the Coyotes, but ultimately voters will weigh three proposals in the May 16 election, 12News’ William Pitts reports. If the voters don’t approve the proposals, the plan could be derailed. 

More dominoes: Democratic Arizona Sen. Raquel Terán resigned from her seat in the Legislature as part of her run for U.S. House in Congressional District 3, the spot that U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego will vacate as he seeks a promotion to the U.S. Senate. Terán had already quit her role as Senate minority leader. This gives the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors another vacancy to fill soon. Her House counterparts, Cesar Aguilar and Flavio Bravo, both will go for the job, the Arizona Capitol Times’ Camryn Sanchez reports, as could Christian Solorio, who was appointed to the House last year but lost his seat in the primary election. 

There is power in a union: The teachers at BASIS Tucson North became the first charter school in Arizona to unionize, after they overwhelmingly voted to create the Arizona Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff and affiliate with the American Federation of Teachers, the Tucson Sentinel’s Paul Ingram reports. Teachers said they were motivated by the need to better retain staff, which requires more money for hiring and retention. BASIS officials said they are ready to negotiate with teachers “in good faith” after the successful vote. 

Better tell the Corp Comm: One of the units at Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station outside Phoenix went offline on April 8, which Arizona Public Service reported to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Power Engineering reports. The utility company told federal regulators it was still investigating what happened. 

Bill bonanza: There’s a lot of them!

• Republicans are pushing a bill that would allow students at small private schools to play sports at public schools, a new front in the school choice movement. 

• Republican Sen. Steve Kaiser’s bill to remove employees of the Arizona League of Cities and Towns from state retirement plans isn’t about the League’s opposition to his housing bills, he swears. 

• Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed some more bills last week, including a ranked-choice voting ban.

• A bill to ban photo radar and red-light cameras could pass this year, Paradise Valley be damned.

• After a victims’ advocate criticized Hobbs for vetoing a bill about sex offender registration, she says she was uninvited from a victims’ rights event.

• The Arizona Schools for the Deaf and Blind should be able to stay open for the next four years after a bill to extend the school finally got unstuck from the legislative morass.

Might as well arm the students: The Colorado River Union High School District in Bullhead City is considering a policy to arm employees and volunteers on campus, despite pushback from teachers and employees who fear it’s a bad idea and want a registry of who is authorized to carry in case police show up to an active shooter and need to know “which teachers not to shoot,” Fred Mayson reports for the Mohave Valley Daily News. Arizona law allows schools to develop policies to let anyone carry weapons on campus with “specific authorization from the school administrator.”

More school board drama: The drama in the Liberty Elementary School District continues, as some teachers in the district want answers from the board over whether the newly conservative board intends to switch schools to a “classic education model," the Republic’s Madeleine Parrish reports. Further south, supporters and opponents of trans youth showed up at a Catalina Foothills School District board meeting after one of the school’s principals sent out a list of students’ names and pronouns to staff and noted which kids didn’t want their parents to know the information, Arizona Public Media’s Paola Rodriguez reports. 

“We flipped the board this last election and we just got the Superintendant to resign,” Liberty board member Bryan Parks wrote to Erik Twist, misspelling superintendent. “We are looking for a more conservative Superintendant that has experience and will support the classic/traditional education model."

Critical race theorist: Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne is still complaining about schools teaching about “diversity” and “equity,” writing in the Republic that it amounts to critical race theory by another name. He says schools should be able to teach about the history of racism, but acknowledging that history has led to unequal “privilege” and access to resources is promoting racism.

Can’t be defamation if it’s true: The Arizona Supreme Court overturned a lower court decision and shot down a $120 million defamation lawsuit that failed fringe GOP candidate Daniel McCarthy filed against conservative radio host James T. Harris after he called McCarthy a “crazy” and “unhinged” “asshat” who hangs out with “thugs” and other “shady” people, Jim Small reports in the Arizona Mirror.

Should probably figure this out: No one knows how many communities or people in Arizona rely on hauled water, a largely unregulated practice that’s drawn more attention after the Rio Verde Foothills debacle, the Republic’s Sasha Hupka reports. Wildcat subdivisions like Rio Verde often rely on hauling water in and don’t have access to city or private water supplies to their homes, which means an untold number of Arizonans are particularly vulnerable to losing water access as resources get pinched. 

She seems nice: One of Colorado City polygamist leader Samuel Bateman’s 20 wives was charged by the feds for sending threatening emails to Arizona Department of Child Safety workers to try to get her kids back from foster care, the Associated Press’ Jacques Billeaud reports. Josephine Barlow Bistline allegedly told a case worker that the case worker would go to prison, “where she would live on a ventilator and people would have to help her breathe and clean up after her.”