House Speaker Steve Montenegro said lawmakers and staff spent “hundreds of hours” crafting the Republican budget plan before sending it to Gov. Katie Hobbs on Tuesday.
It only took Hobbs a few hours to veto it.
Republicans knew Hobbs would reject their budget — she had already bashed the plan in a press release and an op-ed. They passed it anyway, then voted to leave town until June.
While those “hundreds of hours” may not have produced a budget Hobbs would sign, they did produce something politically useful: a record of Republican spending priorities and a governor to blame for rejecting them.
“This body has been about action. (Hobbs) has been about missing in action,” Montenegro said Tuesday. “So we will continue to wait for her when she’s ready.”
Hobbs walked away from budget negotiations six weeks ago and said talks won’t resume until Republicans release their own budget plan.
Republicans accused her of throwing a “tantrum,” but still seized the opportunity to make their own budget. It was built around sweeping tax cuts and social-service reductions, written in the same language Hobbs had already vetoed in standalone bills this year.
That’s largely how the legislative majority has handled having a Democrat in the executive tower: Send Hobbs bills she won’t sign, then use the vetoes to denounce her.
But unlike the many ideological bills that have died on Hobbs’ desk, the budget (or, at least, a budget) has to become law to keep the state government open.
“Let’s get back to the negotiating table and get serious about delivering for Arizonans,” Hobbs wrote in her veto letter of the GOP budget. “I am ready when you are.”
If it seems maddening that your elected officials are communicating through speeches, press releases and veto letters instead of simply sitting down together, that’s because it is.
It’s also familiar.
And last year, when Montenegro took control of the House, the performative budget standoff didn’t work out well for him.
Montenegro led Republicans in passing two budget plans without negotiating with Hobbs, then blasted the governor for her predictable vetoes.
Senate Republicans chose a different route by negotiating with the governor, the thing you have to do when the governor’s signature is required.
After weeks of holding a line that he drew himself, Montenegro put the Hobbs-Senate budget up for a vote.
As the process played out last June, Senate President Warren Petersen took heat from a few Republicans for negotiating with Hobbs, and he responded with a sharp defense from the Senate floor:
“It doesn’t take competence or courage to pass a budget that only has Rs on it, because that is how you live and achieve and score short-term political points. And with the help of shock jocks and troll farms, you can fool some of the people some of the time…” Petersen said. “A few of the inexperienced legislators have been hoodwinked by charlatans. But it has been mind-boggling for me to witness experienced legislators allow the emperor to wear no clothes.”
This year, the emperor is at least wearing socks.
Unlike the first budget House Republicans passed last year, the one passed last week wasn’t entirely a stunt: Hobbs had demanded Republicans produce a budget plan before negotiations continued.
The budget bills dropped on Monday last week. The Governor’s Office says she invited House and Senate leaders back to the table last Friday, but Republican leaders declined to meet until Hobbs formally acted on the budget they sent her, according to her spokesman, Christian Slater.
Now that Republicans got their response, a swift veto, lawmakers and the governor appear ready to negotiate a budget that can actually become law.
They have until June 30 to avoid a shutdown. And early voting for the primary elections starts June 24.
The path to a deal is even narrower than it was last year, when budget negotiators secured some Republicans’ budget votes by handing out extra funding for district-specific pet projects.
That tool isn’t available this time, amid underperforming state finances and federal changes forcing states to bear more costs with less tax money.
Plus, Republicans are hell-bent on making sure the budget includes full adoption of President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, which are projected to cost Arizona $1.2 billion over the next three fiscal years.
Many taxpayers have already filed forms assuming Arizona will conform to the federal tax code; any last-minute change Hobbs signs into law could force some to file amended returns.
Republicans have seized on that uncertainty to argue Hobbs is standing in the way of tax relief, and Montenegro made that case from the House floor as lawmakers voted on the GOP budget.
“This is the third time we’re going to send this governor tax relief for families. She’s vetoed it twice already,” he said.
His indictment of Hobbs carries a less convenient point: Republicans have made a habit of sending Hobbs measures they know she won’t sign.
Bigg ambitions: Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs could hang onto his congressional seat for the rest of his life, he told the Republic’s “the Gaggle” podcast, but Arizona is at a political “tipping point” that inspired him to try to unseat Gov. Katie Hobbs this year. To make the state more affordable, Biggs called for further lowering state income taxes, rolling back water-related building moratoriums and selling more state trust land. And while more than 65 people have reached out to be his lieutenant governor, Biggs said he’s still weighing his options.
Get the man a map: During a panel at the 2026 Border Security Expo in Phoenix, ICE Director Todd Lyons said the Trump administration is deporting people to countries he “didn’t even know existed,” the Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy reports. Meanwhile, “border czar” Tom Homan said ICE agents aren’t arresting people at churches and hospitals, even though they definitely are, then previewed future deportation efforts as: “You ain’t seen shit yet.”
Rooks removed: The Peoria Unified School District board removed Heather Rooks as president after she spoke out against the district’s handling of reports that its teachers had inappropriate sexual relationships with a student, the Republic’s Erick Trevino reports. Other board members said Rooks undermined the board by speaking to the media.
No need to hide your weed: The guy behind a proposed ballot initiative to make recreational marijuana illegal again says he’s dropping the effort, at least for this year, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer reports. Sean Noble feared marijuana would be widely abused by children after it was legalized in 2020, but he says those fears may have been unfounded. Plus, he says the political winds are blowing in the opposite direction, most notably the Trump administration’s decision to classify marijuana as a less harmful drug.
Why not pull a few bucks from your weed budget and use it to support local, independent journalism?
Carpenter-powered AI: The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors signed off on a permit for a data center near Luke Air Force Base, despite opposition from some neighborhood groups. The data center is expected to bring in $210 million in property taxes over the next decade, 12News’ Brahm Resnik reports. While residents of towns across Arizona and the rest of the country have pushed back on the wave of new data centers, the tech companies behind those data centers now have a new ally: building trades unions, per the Associated Press.
“When people say, you know, ‘data centers are the root of all evil,’ we’re just saying, ‘look, they do create a hell of a lot of construction jobs, which we live and work in your communities,’” said Rob Bair, president of the Pennsylvania Building and Construction Trades Council.
The GOP primary race in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District is now a battle among a “no show,” a “carpetbagger” and, worst of all, a “Democrat.”
Or maybe it’s two “Democrats”?
It’s hard to keep up with all the mud-slinging that erupted after Tuesday’s primary debate on Arizona PBS.
Former state Rep. Joseph Chaplik bailed on the debate at the last minute, which prompted one of his opponents, former NFL kicker Jay Feely, to label him “No Show Joe.”
Chaplik said he didn’t have time for a debate with a “leftist moderator and a tiny, left-wing audience,” even though he previously agreed to show up.
The third GOP candidate, businessman John Trobough, called Feely a “carpetbagger” for initially running in CD5 and then switching to CD1.
Feely then went on Twitter and said Chaplik “acted like a Democrat and dodged the people of AZ.”
Chaplik fired back that Feely “spent the evening acting like the Democrat he is.”
So, yeah. Things are going pretty smoothly in CD1.