In divided government, one of the main tools Arizona’s budget negotiators have to strike a deal is allocating money to specific lawmakers’ projects in order to secure their votes.
For the most part, that wasn’t an option this year.
Arizona’s finances were too strained for the kind of slush-fund budgeting that they’ve used to generate bipartisan agreements since Democrat Katie Hobbs took over as governor. Plus, Republicans were hellbent on passing $1.4 billion in tax cuts, which ate into the money lawmakers could have otherwise used to sweeten deals.
But negotiators still found ways to tuck in specific wins, from smaller spending items to policy changes that cost the state little or nothing on paper.
The result is a budget — which Hobbs is set to sign after it sailed through the Senate and House in 23-5 and 49-9 votes — that still carries the fingerprints of specific lawmakers and interest groups, sometimes in the form of policy changes that didn’t make it through the regular legislative process.
Here are some of the items tucked inside the budget bills — though not all of them are poised to make it into the final budget that ultimately arrives at Hobbs’ desk.
The mysterious biometric school cameras
One of the budget’s more obvious pet projects got called out as such, then disappeared.
The original K-12 budget bill set aside $2 million for a school safety pilot program to install a “biometric identification system” that could alert schools when registered sex offenders or people with criminal backgrounds tried to enter.
But the catch was that the money had to go to a school district with between 80 and 85 schools.
There’s only one district that fits the bill: Mesa Public Schools, for which the bill was clearly written.
Lawmakers often write appropriations with highly specific qualifiers instead of outright naming the recipient to avoid violating the Arizona Constitution’s special legislation clause, which bars the state from giving exclusive privileges to a corporation, association or individual.
At Wednesday’s joint appropriations meeting, Mike Kurtenbach, the Department of Education’s school safety director, said the technology had “tremendous merit,” but opposed taking $2 million from broader school safety money to fund it.
And after Kurtenbach confirmed the language was written to solely benefit Mesa, Democratic Sen. Mitzi Epstein called it out.
“Okay, I think we call that pork, but thanks,” Epstein said.
It wasn’t just Democrats who were befuddled. GOP Rep. Matt Gress also said legislators would “get to the bottom” of why the provision was written so narrowly.
Apparently, they got to the bottom of it by amending it out of the budget.
Globe flooding relief
Last month, we told you about officials from Globe, Miami and Gila County pleading with state lawmakers for help recovering from September’s devastating floods.
FEMA denied the state’s request for emergency funding, so local officials took to the Capitol and asked for about $25 million to repair remaining damage and help the area prepare for more flooding this summer.
When Republicans passed their last veto-bait budget, Globe Mayor Al Gameros lobbied lawmakers for flood relief funding.
While they didn’t quite get the full $25 million, the budget bills provide $10 million in non-General Fund dollars for Gila County flood recovery.
The funding was a major priority for Globe-area Republican Rep. Walt Blackman, who pushed for the full $25 million through a standalone bill and in last month’s GOP-only budget. Both efforts stalled over concerns about pulling that much money from the state’s shrinking General Fund.
Blackman got a late assist from GOP Rep. Sylvia Allen, who was recently appointed to replace his former seatmate, David Marshall. In a late-May briefing to Gila County supervisors, lobbyists credited Allen with pushing for flood relief in the final budget, per the Globe Miami Times.
Alzheimer’s funding
The proposed budget also includes $700,000 in funding for Alzheimer’s programs, which was pushed for in large part by Republican Sen. T.J. Shope.
The funding is modeled off his bill SB1249 — which would have allocated $600,000 for the programs, and which passed the Senate before stalling out in the House. The provision is a continuation of funding the Legislature approved a few years ago for the Dementia Services Program, which is run out of the Department of Health Services.
The money goes to grant programs for training fire departments, health care workers and other groups on interacting with folks living with Alzheimer’s.
Lawyering up for water
It’s less of a pet project than the other items, but funding for water lawyers in the budget reveals that both Republican lawmakers and the governor are gearing up for a serious battle over interstate rights.
Arizona lawmakers threw another $6 million at the state’s Colorado River Litigation Fund, which officials could use for filing lawsuits if they’re not happy with water allocation decisions that come down the line.
The fund was initially created last year with a $3 million allocation to start. Back in February, the House unanimously approved an additional $1 million in litigation funding, but the bill stalled in the Senate.
“If the litigation gets intense, the $6 million won't be enough — so this is payment towards the possible lengthy legal fight,” Republican Sen. John Kavanagh told us. “It appears that the legal expenses are going to be stretched out over like six years, because rather than have a final determination now, every two years we're going to have more rulings that might require litigation. So, we figure we better stock up on cash.”
Maricopa County released surveillance videos and records from a human resources investigation into allegations that employees for Recorder Justin Heap removed voting equipment from the county’s tabulation center during the Tempe City Council elections in March.
Luckily, we already had a records request in for the files, so we received them alongside the other media outlets that thought to ask.
The request yielded four videos with about six minutes of surveillance footage and an accompanying HR report. In the videos, the Recorder’s Office’s Chief Information Officer Bryan Colby and a second blurred-out person appear to load a scanner onto a cart, roll it down a ramp on the side of the building and hoist it into the bed of a gray pickup truck.
Another clip shows Colby entering a locked cage and later emerging with a stack of papers, which the HR report says are provisional ballot affidavit envelopes.
HR determined that those in the caught-on-camera moments violated chain-of-custody rules for election-related materials.
The report cites additional surveillance footage that was not included in the released clips showing Colby and other Recorder’s Office employees taking the scanner into the Recorder’s Office building shortly after hauling it away from the county tabulation center.
HR recommended the Recorder’s Office investigate the incident and take appropriate action, “including a potential referral to law enforcement.”
The records include a detailed timeline of the day, along with emails and Teams messages showing the Recorder’s Office and Elections Department sparring over who owned the equipment. You can read the whole pile of records we received for yourself here:
This information was obtained through our new records request system. If you have any juicy drama or story tips, feel free to send them our way through this form.
We’ll request records for you and post findings in our newsletter. But if you want to do things without our involvement, check out our zine on how to properly request and follow up on obtaining records.
Upping the ante: A Utah senator is threatening to block Arizona from accessing $354 million in water conservation funds if the state sues over Colorado River water rights, Cronkite News’ Marcus Reichley reports. Republican U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, who chairs a key Senate committee, also was miffed that Lower Basin states took out newspaper ads criticizing the Upper Basin states, including Utah. Meanwhile, the Scottsdale City Council defunded the city’s water recycling program this week after the local MAGA crowd made it sound like the city’s toilet-to-tap program would lead to poopy water coming out of the kitchen faucet, the New Times’ Morgan Fisher reports. Critics of the decision pointed out the city depends on the Colorado River for 70% of its water supply and the future of the river is anything but certain.
A political black hole: Congressional candidate and former Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb’s sexting scandal is sucking in anyone within its gravitational pull. Right now, Pinal County Attorney Brad Miller is chastising former County Attorney Kent Volkmer for not fully investigating misconduct allegations against Lamb in 2020, as well as an allegation Lamb made against a woman he said was harassing him with revenge porn, the Republic’s Robert Anglen and Laura Gersony report. Lamb told Volkmer the person in a salacious photo wasn’t him, so Volkmer dropped the matter. At the same time, Miller is trying to ward off allegations of workplace harassment and that he spread rumors about Lamb being a “swinger.”
Tricky, tricky: As Mohave County supervisors try to eliminate what they see as sexually explicit books — many of which have LGBTQ themes — from local libraries, they’re using a little-known rule to sidestep normal procedures for “weeding” books, Joseph Darius Jaafari reports for LOOKOUT. Instead of evaluating complaints from the public about certain books, county officials are rejecting donations they don’t like, even if the books were already accepted and cataloged.
Pushing pause: A federal judge granted an emergency temporary restraining order against the City of Phoenix’s new ordinance that limits giving food to unsheltered people in the city’s parks, per the New Times’ Clarissa Sosin. Judge Krissa M. Lanham says the ordinance likely violates the First Amendment rights of the Orthodox Christian ministry St. Herman’s Table, whose members see feeding unsheltered people as a form of evangelizing and almsgiving. The order expires June 24. In another prong of the city’s crackdown, police are using a “honeypot” technique to ensnare unsheltered people, Sosin reports. Cops leave the gates open after hours at University Park, essentially signaling to unsheltered people that they can sleep there. Then police and park rangers close every gate but one and issue trespassing citations to the people caught in the park.
We run the “reverse honeypot” here at the Agenda. All our gates are open all the time. We just cross our fingers that readers see the value of our reporting and throw a few bucks our way.
Weird things are afoot at Peoria USD: The former interim superintendent at Peoria Unified School District says he was pressured into resigning, including sending a letter of resignation that he says was drafted by the law firm representing the district, Hannah Dreyfus reports for the Republic. Ryan LaDouceur says he was told to “step down quietly” or “there would be an issue” as the district deals with a criminal investigation of two teachers at Centennial High School who allegedly had separate sexual relationships with the same student. District officials say LaDouceur asked for sample language to write a resignation letter and the district’s attorney sent him some text, which he edited and submitted, per ABC15’s Elenee Dao. Meanwhile, the student who allegedly had the relationships with the two teachers is threatening to sue the district for $20 million.
In a brief moment of levity during Wednesday’s three-hour Joint Appropriations Committee meeting, something rare happened.
Republican Rep. Matt Gress admitted that he messed up.
That’s saying a lot. This is the same guy who we uncovered in April is both a lawmaker and a lobbyist, and stood shamelessly by his overlapping legislative agenda in Arizona and advocacy work in other states.
After Gress motioned to give all budget bills a mass “do pass recommendation,” lawmakers on the committee voted in favor. A few seconds later, Gress meekly piped up.
“Mr. Chairman,” Gress said to Republican Rep. David Livingston, “I made the wrong motion.”
“Oh you did? Shame on you,” Livingston responded as groans and mumbles spread through the room.
“Deal’s off,” someone shouted.
The motion should have been a roll call vote, Gress noted.
“I’m a little embarrassed. I rarely make mistakes,” Gress claimed to a roar of laughter from the packed hearing room.
That laughter reflects what’s well-known around the Capitol: the swing-district Republican's self-assurance is pretty legendary.
Tonight, we’re hosting a debate in conjunction with the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission for Gress’ 4th Legislative District, but Gress apparently isn’t planning to attend.
Well, you can’t make a mistake if you don’t show up.