The governor’s staff is warning lawmakers to strap in for a long budget fight.
After Gov. Katie Hobbs walked away from budget negotiations and said talks won’t resume until Republicans release their budget plan, her office told lawmakers not to expect a spending plan soon.
Lourdes Peña, Hobbs’ chief of staff for legislative affairs, emailed lawmakers on March 20:
“If you were planning any June destination weddings/vacations, you may need to reconsider your travel plans.”
Last year, Arizona’s budget fight came alarmingly close to shutting down the state government. House Republicans refused a deal cut by Hobbs and Senate Republicans, and the final rush was shaped in part by Republican Rep. Matt Gress needing to leave by late June for his wedding in Italy.
This time, Hobbs stopped budget talks after Republicans refused to budge on renewing Prop 123, a major school funding source that expired last year. Lawmakers covered that money in the regular budget instead of asking voters to renew it.
House Speaker Steve Montenegro and Senate President Warren Petersen’s live reactions to Gov. Katie Hobbs calling for a Prop 123 renewal at her State of the State address.
After the failed negotiations, the governor’s budget director, Ben Henderson, emailed legislative leadership with the new ultimatum. Peña sent that email to lawmakers, with her no-weddings warning, and we got hold of the email thread.
“Yesterday, you stated that renewing Prop 123 (originally championed by Republican Governor Doug Ducey) is off the table,” he wrote. “We believe that results in a budget that is either unbalanced and/or incredibly detrimental to communities across Arizona. With that in mind, we are pausing any further negotiations until you show your plan to the people of Arizona.”
In our own small act of public service, we asked Republicans for their budget plan, but were told it’s strictly under wraps.
And we asked House Speaker Steve Montenegro if Prop 123 is still off the table.
“Those conversations are happening, but I don’t have anything on the record for you,” he said.
Prop 123, the 2016 voter-approved measure that increased how much money Arizona could pull each year from the state land trust for education, previously brought schools roughly $300 million a year.
The funding expired last year, but Republicans pinned negotiations for a renewal on constitutional protections for school vouchers, a hard no for Democrats. Now the lost money is being replaced with the same shrinking pool of tax revenue that has to cover the rest of state government.
After Hobbs dropped a press release announcing the paused budget negotiations, Republicans dropped their own press release arguing that the governor’s Prop 123 plan would solve a short-term school funding problem by draining the state land trust at an unsustainable rate.
In the budget proposal that the Governor’s Office dropped in January, Hobbs proposes restoring the state land trust to the previous 6.9% draw, but also proposes using the trust to fund the State Land Department.
Republican Sen. John Kavanagh, the Senate’s budget point person who secured last year’s spending plan, said Republicans are now drafting a new budget by first vetting it with House and Senate appropriations committee members before rolling it out to the rest of the caucus.
Prop 123 is not included in the plan.
Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman revealed through some Twitter trolling that some Republicans had considered a Prop 123 renewal — an idea he blasted as “effectively underwriting Hobbs’ reelection campaign.”
The argument suggests that education funding has broad public support, despite Republicans refusing to handle it this year. And even for Republicans who do want to restore the $300 million annual funding source for schools, the fact that the governor would get credit is a sticking point.
But lawmakers have political incentives to want to wrap up a budget. Most of them are seeking reelection or angling for another office.
Primary Election ballots go out June 24, a week before the official last day to pass a state budget before the new fiscal year starts. Running the session up until the last minute, as lawmakers did last year, runs dangerously close to the stretch when legislative candidates would rather be reminding voters they exist.
But besides political optics, there are some other reasons Hobbs would want to send Prop 123 to voters this year.
Voters are already getting a ballot in November, so a Prop 123 renewal could go before them without requiring a standalone special election.
And Arizona could really use the extra tax revenue right now.
The state is in a financially shaky spot as it starts adjusting to H.R. 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which shifts a range of costs from the federal government onto states.
The law also rewrites big parts of the federal tax code, which most states use as a template for their own systems.
The tax code set off its own Hobbs-versus-Republicans fight earlier this year. By now, many taxpayers have filed forms that assume full adoption of President Donald Trump’s tax cuts; any last-minute change Hobbs signs into law could force some to file amended returns.
Assuming the tax changes proceed as expected, Arizona is projected to lose $1.2 billion over the next three fiscal years.
The estimated hit for this fiscal year, which ends on July 1, is $441 million. Kavanagh said lawmakers will do “fund sweeps” and rely on extra revenue to cover the immediate loss, but in future years, he acknowledged, “there will be some program cuts.”
“But they won’t be deep enough where they’ll have any really serious negative effects,” Kavanagh said.
Part of the reason Republicans won’t include Prop 123 in budget talks, he said, is that the measure only narrowly passed in 2016, so it would be irresponsible to build a budget around money voters have not actually approved yet.
In the meantime, the budget plan that keeps core state services like Medicaid, prisons and transportation hangs in the balance. And nobody appears to be in much of a rush. Kavanagh said he expects Republicans to release their budget plan in a few weeks.
It’s still early in the year to switch into full budgeting mode — at least by the timeline lawmakers actually follow, not by the state constitution’s nominal 100-day session, which usually ends in April.
Bad news: Arizona lawmakers have not wrapped up a session in April since 2015.
And worse news: With a Democratic governor and a Republican legislative majority still locked in the same political tug-of-war that has defined the past three years, there is little reason to think this year’s budget fight will be any smoother — or that there is yet a clear path to funding the government.
We asked Kavanagh whether he expects the session to stretch into June again.
“It depends on the governor,” he said.
Thank “Linda from Arizona”: The idea to send ICE agents to airports apparently came from an Arizonan who called in to a conservative talk show, the Washington Post reports. A caller identifying herself as “Linda from Arizona” made the suggestion on the “Clay and Buck” show. Later that day, one of the hosts, Clay Travis, repeated the idea on Fox News. The next morning, President Donald Trump posted on social media about deploying ICE agents. Travis credited “Linda” with putting “that idea into the intellectual world of Trump, and it found its way to him.” But, as he is prone to do, Trump says it was his idea and he’s as smart as the person who invented the paper clip.
No shortage of No Kings protesters: Thousands of Arizonans turned out Saturday for the fourth, and largest, “No Kings” nationwide protests against the Trump administration, per the Republic. Arizonans gathered at roughly 80 places across the state to call the president a “wannabe king” and denounce his “violent, authoritarian actions.”
Critics of President Donald Trump fanned out all over the country Saturday for the latest round of No Kings protests. That included a large crowd in Tempe, at a pedestrian bridge over U.S. 60.
— KJZZ Phoenix (@kjzz.org) 2026-03-29T00:05:16.813Z
Nonpartisan naming: Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed a bill on Friday that would have renamed a section of Loop 202 after slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the Arizona Mirror’s Caitlin Sievers. Hobbs called Kirk’s assassination a “tragic and horrifying act of violence,” but said naming government roadways should “remain nonpartisan.” Senate President Warren Petersen, the bill’s sponsor, said Hobbs “broke with a long-standing Arizona tradition of recognizing impact over politics,” and he pointed out one section of Loop 202 is already named after former Democratic Congressman Ed Pastor. Now we’re watching if she’ll also veto the bill creating monuments to Kirk and assassinated investigative journalist Don Bolles, which we expect to get a vote in the House this week.
Say it ain’t so: Jay Feely, a former Arizona Cardinals kicker who’s running in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District, loves Trump’s tariffs and often says he wants to boost domestic manufacturing. But that apparently doesn’t matter when it comes to campaign merch, per the New Times’ Morgan Fischer. His advertising materials are printed in Peru and his campaign T-shirts are made Honduras, Egypt and other countries. At least, that used to be the case. After Fischer contacted Feely’s campaign staffers, the web page to buy Feely’s campaign merch is no longer public.
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Taking aim at mail-in voting: As the race for Arizona secretary of state heats up, Gina Swoboda claims her rival for the GOP nomination, Rep. Alexander Kolodin, is trying to get rid of mail-in voting, David Iversen reports for KTAR. Last year, an attorney for Hobbs raised concerns that a provision in Kolodin’s elections bill “looks like a bullet in the head” of the early voting list used to automatically send out ballots to voters, Swoboda said on the Mike Broomhead Show. Kolodin “laughed in her face and said, ‘That’s because it is,’” Swoboda said. Kolodin didn’t deny the account. Instead, he responded by criticizing Democratic incumbent Adrian Fontes.
Arizona Traveling Museum is a mobile exhibition touring all 15 Arizona counties beginning February 14, 2026, in Prescott on Statehood Day.
Designed to make America’s 250th anniversary accessible to every Arizonan, the custom-built mobile museum brings history, storytelling, and civic reflection directly to cities, towns, and rural communities across the state.
The exhibit blends defining moments in American history with Arizona’s unique story through immersive panels, a short looping video experience, and interactive activations for all ages.
Visitors are invited to participate in the Dear America, Love Arizona postcard activity, sharing their reflections on our nation’s past and future.
A centerpiece of the traveling museum is a replica Liberty Bell from the Arizona State Capitol, offering a rare opportunity to experience this powerful symbol of freedom and civic responsibility up close.
Admission is free thanks to generous community support.
Newspapers are bleeding print subscribers, per the UK’s Press Gazette.
That includes the Republic, which lost 19% of its print subscribers last year alone.
As much as we hate Gannett, that is very depressing news. (Gannett owned three of the top 10 papers with the biggest print circulation drop, FWIW.)
On the bright side, The Onion is blooming after starting a dead-tree version last year.
Which is actually perfect for the absurdist, post-factual timeline we’re living in.
