Crisis averted?

Lawmakers finally do their jobs … Just in time for bad budget news … And a Whole Lot of People for a Different Grijalva.

Nearly four months after learning that Arizona’s Division of Developmental Disabilities was running out of funding, Arizona lawmakers finally crafted a plan to keep helping parents of kids with disabilities, averting what everyone agreed would be a disaster just days ahead of the deadline.

It’s still not officially a done deal, but the plan that the Arizona House of Representatives approved last night after a marathon workday has bipartisan support and buy-in from the governor.

Assuming the state Senate approves the same bill tomorrow, disabled Arizonans and their caretakers can finally breathe a sigh of relief.

So how did a program that allows parents to get paid for taking over the care of their kids with severe developmental disabilities turn out to be the most contentious issue of the session so far?

Lawmakers knew in January that the Parents as Paid Caregivers program needed $122 million by the end of this month to keep paying families.

Republicans presented a plan to cut families’ reimbursable hours in half¹ – a nonstarter for Democrats and Gov. Katie Hobbs. That stalemate lasted for months, as the two sides racked up political points by blaming each other.

Then last week, Hobbs issued a warning: She would veto any bill that touched her desk until Republicans passed a better plan to fund the caregivers program.

It looks like the threat worked.

Last night, the politicians finally compromised.

Basically, Republicans agreed to fund the program without pulling the money from sources like the Housing Trust Fund, which Hobbs wanted to protect. They also agreed to cap the number of hours caregivers could work at 40, rather than the 20 hours Republicans had proposed.

Democrats acquiesced to demands from Republicans that the program include more legislative oversight and guardrails, including limiting when and for what caregivers can be reimbursed for, and giving lawmakers some ability to veto requests that the federal government expand eligibility.

The House voted 48-11 to fund the program by pulling money from the Prescription Drug Rebate Fund, which the state’s Medicaid agency collects through rebates from drug manufacturers and interest on late payments for those rebates.

That’s a huge relief to Democratic Rep. Nancy Gutierrez, who has been at the forefront of pushing for a poison-pill-free extension of the caregiver program. Her last few weeks have been spent corresponding with families who use the program and getting intimately familiar with the consequences of them no longer having access to it.

She cried on her drive home from the Capitol Wednesday night.

“This is why I came to the Legislature,” Gutierrez told us. “It feels good to get a win, and I'm sure (Republicans) got a win, too, but we made sure that (parents are) not going to have to come and beg us next year, do this foolishness again.”

But yesterday morning, it wasn’t clear that the day would end in happy tears.

Lawmakers started the day ready to ram through a Republican-backed version of the bill that would have funded the program by pulling money from the Housing Trust Fund that provides housing services and the Arizona Competes Fund, which the Arizona Commerce Authority uses to attract businesses to the state.

In the Senate, that’s exactly what they did.

Then the governor took to Twitter to make her thoughts clear.

“Republican lawmakers insist on making our housing crisis worse. Their bill will strip money from down payment assistance and interest rate buy down programs, and jeopardize affordable housing construction projects that are already underway,” Hobbs posted online.

But that didn’t deter Republican Rep. Matt Gress, who engaged in a 20-minute back-and-forth with fellow fiscal hawk Livingston to explain his new proposal before lawmakers voted on it. Democrats called a “filibuster” to prevent Democratic commentary, but the Republican duo’s analysis didn’t seem to sway votes: The amendment failed with only 20 Republican votes in favor.

So the House took a four-hour recess to come up with a new plan.

Gutierrez said Democrats met with the governor’s team to talk about next steps. But Gutierrez said her conversations with Rep. Julie Willoughby – who previously offered a bipartisan amendment to fund the program that Republican Rep. David Livingson shut down – were the main means of deliberations that led both parties to compromise.

The version House lawmakers ultimately passed does have some guardrails, just not the ones Gress originally requested. He previously put a provision in the bill that would require the state’s Medicaid agency to get legislative approval to extend the program through a convoluted process that would give a GOP-controlled Legislature the ability to unilaterally shut down Parents as Paid Cargivers, and a lot of other Medicaid-funded programs.

Those provisions are gone, though the bill still lets lawmakers shut down any AHCCCS program or change that would expand eligibility, add new benefits or significantly increase the size or cost of a program.

Other wins for Republicans include provisions instructing the Auditor General to do a deep dive into the program’s finances and implementing some other program limits, like barring parents from billing for time their kids are in institutional settings and restricting reimbursements for providing care between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

“We should not pit compassion against accountability,” Gress said.

The Senate still has to accept the much-debated version that House Republicans and Democrats came up with last night. And Hobbs has to sign it.

But House members are already patting themselves on the back for a job (finally) well done.

“This has not been easy, but we will help save lives. There will be disabled families that will be able to continue the (caregiver) program...” Livingston said. “One of my hopes is that the tough lessons we've learned going through this bill we can directly apply next week and start working on the budget.”

Predicting new predictions: Legislative budget analysts now predict Arizona’s revenue will grow a lot less than they originally thought. They now estimate a $277 million increase next year, or less than half of the $612 million they originally estimated, per Capitol Media Services’ Bob Christie. That means Arizona’s surplus won’t be as big as expected, and Republicans and Gov. Katie Hobbs will have a lot less room to negotiate a budget. For more nerding out on state budget uncertainty, check out Mark Brodie’s interview on KJZZ’s “The Show” with Pluribus News’ Sophie Quinton.

“We’re seeing a lot of change happening at the federal level, and state budget writers are just really — they’re trying to watch a bunch of different things to try to get a better sense of what that means for their budgets,” Quinton explained.

Might we suggest bamboo fibers?: Mohave County wants to use ballots with watermarks or “special fibers” in 2026 so election officials can ensure they’re real (even though there’s never been an actual case of mass fake ballots), Votebeat’s Jen Fifield reports. It’s part of a scheme that Republican Sen. Mark Finchem has been pushing for years — but at least the county is contracting with a company that doesn’t have ties to the election-denying senator. Meanwhile, a Republican plan to get rid of “voting centers” and go back to neighborhood voting locations would cost counties about $53 million in the first year, per the Arizona Mirror’s Caitlin Sievers. Republican lawmakers are trying to bypass the governor and ask voters in 2026 to approve their plan instead.

It gets weirder: After Arizona Public Media’s Danyelle Khmara broke the news that ICE had wrongly detained a U.S. citizen for 10 days, the feds posted an affidavit that Jose Hermosillo had signed saying he was in the U.S. illegally. But his family tells Khmara that he has a learning disability and can’t read, so he didn’t actually know what he was signing.

“He doesn't know how to read. He doesn't really understand. He says yes to everything. So, he could, he could have done it without knowing what it was,” his girlfriend told Khmara.

Education pays: The Superintendent of the West Valley’s Tolleson Union High School District, Jeremy Calles, earns nearly $500,000 per year, including his potential bonus pay and stipends, State 48 News reports. That’s by far the highest base pay and highest performance bonus pay of the superintendents in the dozen large districts the news organization reviewed. Calles also recently won a $450,000 settlement from the district over his allegations that Democratic state lawmaker (and former Tolleson school board member) Elda Luna-Nájera sexually harassed him.

You could get almost 5,000 annual subscriptions to the Arizona Agenda for the price of one superintendent.
But good news: You really only need one subscription!

Protecting the big guy: Lawmakers struck a deal to protect utilities from liability if their equipment sparks a wildfire, but with less protection than originally floated, per Capitol Media Services’ Bob Christie. The bipartisan measure no longer provides the kind of blanket protection that utilities originally wanted, but it still gives them a lot of legal cover as long as they draft plans for how to mitigate wildfires. Insurance companies, trial lawyers, utilities and the governor are all happy with the amended plan, Christie writes.

You’re unfired: A federal judge said the Trump administration's dismantling of Voice America probably broke a lot of federal rules, and he ordered VOA to set up shop again and bring its employees back, the Republic’s Ronald J. Hansen reports. Trump originally picked Kari Lake to head the government-funded media agency, then placed around 1,000 of its employees on indefinite leave. Lake adopted the federal downsizing narrative despite originally saying she’d “accomplish great things” there.

“It is hard to fathom a more straightforward display of arbitrary and capricious actions than the Defendants’ actions here,” U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth wrote in his opinion.

Yeah, science: A pretty big dust devil near Casa Grande graced the digital pages of the Washington Post alongside a pretty detailed explanation of dust devils and how they form. Meanwhile, the Phoenix New Times’ Benjamin Leatherman points you to the smiley face in the sky as the crescent moon, Venus and Saturn align. And Prescott native Colter Richardson is doing some pretty cool astronomy research in a very cool suit, per the Daily Courier’s Abigail Celaya. Also, check out this neat map in the Washington Post showing how many trees your city has.

Everybody in the water world is talking about the high-stakes negotiations over the Colorado River right now.

Over at the Water Agenda, we’re taking a deep dive into a big part of the oncoming flood of news about the river: the Hoover Dam.

Come for the news, stay for the absurd number of puns in tomorrow’s edition!

Also, don’t forget to check out today’s A.I. Agenda to learn how to cheat your way into the jobs of the future – or catch the unqualified fraud applicants, depending on your needs.

And ICYMI: This week’s edition of the Education Agenda was all about the big DEI policy deadline Arizona schools face, plus the bevy of new state laws they’ll be dealing with this year.

From beyond the grave, former U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva just gave his daughter Adelita Grijalva a political parting gift — his prized fundraising email list, per Semafor.

Ok, we may need to unpack that a little.

You see, politicians build up email lists that they use to seek donations. You’ve undoubtedly seen the emails.

Raul had a pretty massive list. And now his daughter is using it to run for his old seat.

But those digital Rolodexes have real value. So taking Raul’s list is a tangible benefit to Adelita’s campaign that must be reported as an “in-kind” contribution (meaning not a cash donation, but free services).

Technically, Raul’s campaign PAC still exists and can make donations, even if the congressman passed away. But it still makes for weird optics.

The younger Grijalva says she’ll report the in-kind contribution in her Q2 campaign finance report.

But because of the timing of the special election, voters will have their ballots for a few weeks before the candidates are required to file their next campaign finance reports.

1. CORRECTION: An earlier version of today’s email said the GOP proposal would have cut the rates in half. Technically, it would have cut the hours in half — the hourly rate would stay the same.