Porking it out
Gift Clause? Never heard of her … Don't tow me, bro … And Him? A cheater? Naaah.
Coming up with Arizona’s budget every year is a multi-billion-dollar game of give and take.
And in an era of divided government, it’s heavy on the give.
In 2023, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ first year in office, Republican senators got up to $30 million each to spend on their specific pet projects in return for their support on the budget, while Democrats generally pooled their money together.
A lot of that spending was cut last year to make up for the deficit that slush-fund budgeting created. But even as lawmakers had to cut more than $1 billion in spending last year, they passed an amendment with millions for individual lawmaker priorities.
The Legislature returned to that “DIY budgeting” plan this year, but it didn’t work out as well as the past two years.
House Republicans opposed Republican Sen. John Kavanagh’s plan to split a $270 million budget surplus three ways among the House, Senate and Hobbs. Instead, they went on their own budgeting journey and nearly shut down the state government.
In the end, Republicans went back to what they know: When in doubt, pork it out.
Kavanagh, the main guy behind the budget that passed this year, said senators got about $80 million, and representatives got about $90 million. But that money was only for Republican lawmakers who voted to pass the budget, so it came out to about $5 million per member. Democratic lawmakers’ budget asks were lumped in with the governor’s.
Here are some of the things the lawmakers who got the money spent it on.
The rodeo returns
Prescott-area Republican Reps. Selina Bliss and Quang Nguyen gave their constituents an end-of-session recap in the brand-new $630,000 House recording studio, where they outlined what they got in this year’s budget.
We have to sift through a lot of budget documents and figures to connect the dots on which projects lawmakers used their budget bribes for, so it makes our jobs a lot easier when politicians make these “look what we did for you” posts.
Two budgets ago, lawmakers gave $15 million to the company running the Prescott rodeo grounds. Two residents sued to stop the funding, and a judge agreed it violated the Arizona Constitution’s Gift Clause that prohibits giving public money to private causes.
Lawmakers got around that ruling by giving the city of Prescott $15.3 million for the rodeo grounds this year.
“We put in the language to tighten up everything,” Nguyen said in the recap video. “We're happy, and it was really unnecessary to hold the money up for two years.”
Nguyen also touted $450,000 for a surveillance system for the Prescott Valley Police Department. And Bliss got $1 million for a public safety building in southwestern Yavapai County.
Flying cars
Republican Sen. David Farnsworth’s latest project is putting Arizona at the front lines of flying car infrastructure.
He loves referencing the flying car from “The Jetsons” and wonders why the fictional cartoon family hasn’t yet prophesied them into existence.
Farnsworth’s legislation to license flying cars failed last year, but he got $2 million in this year’s budget to start researching their use in Arizona.
Republican Sen. Frank Carroll got a bill passed that requires the Arizona Department of Transportation to create a statewide infrastructure plan for flying cars, like figuring out how to make “charging stations” and “public vertiports” where they can take off and land. Farnsworth said he already talked to Mesa’s mayor about putting vertiports on the city’s parking structures.
But all that studying isn’t worth much without some money behind it. Farnsworth’s $2 million budget earmark would allow the state to actually buy flying cars and vertiports if a legislative panel approves the spending.
And no, flying cars aren't an actual thing that people own … yet. Some companies say they have working prototypes.
Dark Sky Center
Kavanagh put part of his allowance toward Fountain Hills’ International Dark Sky Discovery Center, which is set to open this fall. But although the $28 million observatory and science center is run by a nonprofit group, it hasn’t been hit with the same “Gift Clause” legal claims as the Prescott Rodeo.
In 2018, Fountain Hills was designated as one of 17 “dark sky cities” in the world because of the lack of artificial light polluting the view of the night sky.
The center has received a lot of public money before this year’s $3.3 million budget allocation — it got $10 million in 2023, which the center credited Kavanagh with delivering. While the Dark Sky Center wasn’t sued for using public dollars, the Prescott Rodeo litigants filed documents in their 2023 case that show the state treasurer’s office committing $10 million to the center before following the standard legal process of requesting proposals from everyone who could have qualified.
The center got $2.5 million in the state budget in 2021, and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors put in $100,000 last year.
A history of Flakes
Republican Rep. Walt Blackman is hitting the constituent services hard through his livestreamed shows (sick intro included).
He gave viewers a rundown of the LD7-specific funding in the state’s massive spending plan in the June 30 edition of “The Walt Blackman Show.” The district spans Coconino, Navajo, Gila and Pinal counties, so there was a lot of money to report.
By voting for the budget, Blackman secured projects like $1.5 million for a child development center in Taylor and $200,000 for a robotics program in Apache Junction.
But Blackman’s seatmate, Freedom Caucus member Rep. David Marshall, forfeited his part of the pet-project funding for his district’s projects when he voted against the budget. Blackman told us he also wanted to fund a road project in Show Low, but the district lost funding for it because of Marshall’s vote.
The most pet-projecty of Blackman’s projects, however, is $350,000 to renovate the Flake Historical House in Snowflake’s historic district. Snowflake was named after Mormon missionaries, and James Madison Flake’s 1895 home needs a new foundation1.
Bonus round
There are a lot of random spending measures baked into the budget that reek of pork, and they’re pretty specific to individual legislative districts.
Some honorable pet project mentions include:
$850,000 for Yuma County to dispose of tires.
$500,000 for Mohave County to buy a mobile launch ramp at Lake Mead.
$100,000 for an indoor shooting range for Paradise Valley Police.
$50,000 for signs warning people not to illegally dump their trash in Pinal County.
Mommmm!: Although demonstrators were careful not to impede traffic while protesting outside U.S. Rep. Abe Hamadeh’s office in Surprise, somebody kept calling the cops on them, the Phoenix New Times’ Morgan Fischer reports. In all, police were called at least seven times, and one protester even had their car towed, at the request of Hamadeh’s staff.
The nanny state at work: While responding to a records request, Arizona Treasurer Kimberly Yee’s office revealed that school voucher funds are being used to pay minors to tutor and babysit, 12News’ Joe Dana reports. The information came to light after Yee’s office said they couldn’t release some records because that would reveal personal information about those minors.
Snapping back: Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes joined yet another lawsuit against the Trump administration, KTAR’s Jeff Vinton reports. This time, Mayes is going after a federal request for states to share personal information of people who use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. If states don’t share that information, then the federal government will cut off funding, Mayes says. The lawsuit filed by 21 states claims the new rules for SNAP recipients are actually an attempt by the Trump administration to gather information on immigrants, the New York Times reports.
Rural dollars incoming: For the first time in a decade, the Greater Arizona Development Authority is funding rural infrastructure projects, KTAR’s Kylie Werner reports. Gov. Katie Hobbs reactivated the authority last year, and the recent round of funding will send $1.4 million to the Town of Superior, a water district in Apache County, and the City of Winslow. From 1997 to 2014, the authority funded $574 million worth of projects.
That’s pretty much the opposite of what happened to Arizona’s news industry from 1997 to 2014.
Local media mergers incoming: The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Federal Communications Commission rules that prohibit TV conglomerates from owning more than one of the “top four” stations in a given market. The Arizona Media Association’s Chris Kline told KJZZ’s Jill Ryan it’s actually good news, since more mergers could result in “stronger more sustainable newsrooms with fewer cutbacks over time.”
“We may have more duopolies like what you see from Channel 3 and Channel 5, where those two newsrooms work collaboratively together. And we could see that same thing happening with Fox, or 12, or 15, and obviously down in Tucson or Yuma," Kline said.
We love a good Madness: Axios Phoenix is running a March Madness-style bracket to determine who is the most influential person in Arizona history. Reporter Jeremy Duda is a history nerd who writes that he’s “been wanting to do this for a decade.” We’re voting for Linda Ronstadt, but something tells us John McCain will take the prize.
Donald Trump, president and noted golf enthusiast, is in Scotland for a private visit, but his time on the greens made headlines for allegedly cheating during a golf game… again?
Over the years, Trump has been accused of taking some creative liberties, shall we say, during his golf games. The president’s game even inspired a book titled “Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump.”
Trump’s cheating got us at the Agenda reminiscing about other famous political cheats — think the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, Arizona’s fake electors, or — for you Tucsonans — when a staffer for former Pima County Supervisor Ally Miller used a pseudonym to masquerade as a reporter and gather intel and attack her enemies.
With so many good moments, we want to know what cheating and scandals are still on your mind.
Drop us a line about the best Arizona political cheaters we forgot to mention.
The more obscure and outrageous, the better.
Yes, former U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake is part of that lineage, as is former House Speaker Jake Flake.
The Craig Harris Arizona Agenda quote by Nichole Ludden and Hank Stephenson was not completely in the screenshot. Here it is:
"About a dozen reporters keep an eye on all the chaos. Another dozen
or so pop in regularly for Capitol stories that touch on their beats.Z
A decade ago it was twice as many reporters. Two decades ago, it
was double that. In those 20 years, the number of lawmakers has
remained the same. The state budget has roughly tripled."
Darrow 'Duke' Tully once was a major player in the state as Arizona's leading newspaper publisher. Tully had boasted, 'I tell Arizona what to think.'
Tully's “legend” came apart in December 1985, courtesy of Maricopa County Attorney Tom Collins. Miffed at news stories and editorials about him in the Republic and the Gazette, Collins exposed fabrications in Tully’s CV.
Collins looked into the military background Tully often boasted about. He found there wasn't one -- Tully had NOT been a lieutenant colonel, and had NOT been shot down during the Korean War, and had NOT flown more than 100 missions in Vietnam. The medals Tully would wear at ceremonial functions had never been awarded. Tully also had said he was a football player at Purdue. He was not.
Tully quickly followed up Collins' exposé/news conference by resigning, apologizing and retreating to the privacy of his Phoenix home. It was a major embarrassment for the Republic and Gazette.