The Daily Agenda: A bipartisan budget or no budget at all
You're telling me that guy is a liar? ... It's Election Day somewhere ... And we were calling out Wendy before it was cool.
Lawmakers have exactly six weeks left to pass a budget or shut down the state government.1
Budget leaders in the House and Senate have come to something resembling an agreement on a rough budget package, which is good news for those of us who want a functioning government (and a vacation). It’s a $15 billion plan to spend big on water, border security and debt repayment.
But the Governor’s Office hasn’t signed off on the legislative proposal yet, as Gov. Doug Ducey continues to hold out for his legacy wishlist, including a massive infusion of money for water and a new state agency to rule it.
And, even worse, legislative leaders haven’t sold their proposed agreement to individual Republican lawmakers yet. That’s going to be the hard part, as the divided GOP caucuses in the two chambers have distinct qualms with the budget proposals floated so far.
In the House, the “no caucus” of fiscal hawks for whom even a “skinny budget” proposal wasn’t skinny enough present the biggest hurdle.
That problem was exacerbated yesterday when “no caucus” leader and banned-from-Twitter troll farmer Rep. Jake Hoffman stormed out the building alongside Republican Rep. Jacqueline Parker, skipping a bunch of votes on election-integrity legislation and bizarrely blaming House Speaker Rusty Bowers for the whole thing.
Hoffman took to the radio yesterday to rant about how mean old Bowers sent “armed DPS officers” looking for him when he skipped work. Except Bowers says that’s “a lie.”
“I have no idea why Rusty Bowers decided to play games like he did with an issue as critical to the future of not only our state but our country as election integrity,” Hoffman said. “The bottom line is Rusty Bowers and Ben Toma knew that they were missing Republican votes yesterday yet they decided to put up election integrity bills anyway so that they would fail.”
The speaker’s office explained that he sent House security to search the building for the lawmakers playing hooky and discussed deploying the one Department of Public Safety officer at their disposal to find them and compel them to vote, per House rules, but ultimately decided against it. Both Hoffman and Parker were registered as present when the floor session started, the House confirmed. They only skipped out when voting started.
Republican Rep. Regina Cobb, head of the House Appropriations Committee, also told us Hoffman’s radio outburst was a complete fabrication, saying his fit stemmed from the fact that an election bill from Republican Sen. Paul Boyer was going up for a vote while the Senate hasn’t voted on some of Hoffman’s bills. The division he’s sowing is going to make it harder for her to craft a Republican budget, she said.
“I mean, the whole reason those three bills have to be reconsidered is because they checked in and then left. Oh, I’m just fuming,” she said after we pointed her to the interview. “I can’t believe what a liar he was. What a liar!”
In the Senate, the budgetary blockage is Boyer, who is pushing for a bipartisan proposal to backfill roughly $1 billion that Proposition 208 would have brought in for public education had the Arizona Supreme Court not invalidated it.
But out of all this chaos comes a rare opportunity. While a handful of Republicans seem dead-set on killing any budget that includes new spending (amid a $5 billion surplus), Democrats ostensibly might support a budget including Boyer’s education funding plan, depending on the details.
Amid this logjam, it’s looking more and more like the only path forward is also the most shocking possible scenario: After decades of GOP-only budgets, Republican leaders at the Capitol may have no choice but to pass a bipartisan budget. Or no budget at all.
No crystal ball here: Tuesday was Election Day in several states and a few Arizona cities. We’ll leave the national takeaways about what the primary wins say for Trumpism and election denialism and electability to the national pundits, though we’ll say that trying to gather trends and make predictions about what this might mean for Arizona is premature and muddled. Locally, voters in Tucson resoundingly approved an extension to a half-cent sales tax for transportation, the Arizona Daily Star’s Nicole Ludden reports. Douglas has a host of propositions on the ballot; you can find results here.
Yes, that Trent Franks: GOP gubernatorial candidate Matt Salmon announced he received the endorsement of former U.S. Rep. Trent Franks. Of course, there are probably worse endorsements.
Shopping around: After the Arizona Supreme Court declined to hear the Arizona Republican Party’s lawsuit that seeks an end to mail-in voting by claiming it’s unconstitutional and has been from the start, the AZGOP is now taking the lawsuit to the Superior Court in Mohave County, where AZGOP chair Kelli Ward is from.
Speaking of shopping around — you really should spend $80 on a one-year subscription to the Arizona Agenda. It’s the best deal on the internet. Click now!
Go to IV school: Medical staff struggled to insert an IV during Clarence Dixon’s execution last week, but that wasn’t unusual for an Arizona execution — and that’s a problem, the attorneys for the next man scheduled to be executed here say. The Republic’s Jimmy Jenkins details how the IV process went for Dixon and what it could mean for Frank Atwood’s case, as Atwood is set to be executed on June 8.
Doesn’t matter much anymore: The Pima County Board of Supervisors voted to step back its employee COVID-19 vaccination policy starting this fall after Gov. Doug Ducey signed a new law that prohibits subdivisions of the state from requiring vaccines, the Green Valley News’ Mary Glen Hatcher reports. Still, regardless of the policy getting scaled back, the vast majority of county employees got the vaccine, while about 50 lost their jobs for not getting it and nearly 300 pay a health insurance surcharge for not getting it.
“Still better” than a Democrat: When the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger gave him the opportunity, Ducey again refused to forcefully condemn Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers over the latest conspiracies and hate to spew from her thumbs. And while lawmakers might not understand what “fed boy summer” means, Rogers’ followers on Gab certainly get the message, the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MadDonald-Evoy notes.
Classroom tales: A Casa Grande teacher alleges administrators are requiring teachers in the district to give passing grades to students who otherwise would not have passed classes so that they can graduate, ABC15 reports. And in the Scottsdale Unified School District, one teacher might be in trouble for discussing gender identity with students while another is being investigated for teaching the Bible in class, the Scottsdale Progress reports. In the gender identity case, GOP legislative candidate Jan Dubauskas complained about a teacher who is nonbinary, which came up with young students who asked how to address the teacher.
Sharing this because we didn’t know: You can text 911 in an emergency instead of call, which improves accessibility for people with disabilities, though first responders say making a phone call is still preferred if you can.
Early is on time, on time is late: Three visitors grabbing a bite to eat in Naco, Sonora, got stuck in Mexico after the port of entry closed 10 minutes earlier than its 10 p.m. closing time, though they found a ride from a stranger in Mexico to another port of entry and made it back home to Arizona, the Herald/Review’s Lyda Longa reports.
COVID-19, the remix: The virus is on the rise yet again in Arizona, with cases going up for several weeks in a row now, KJZZ’s Katherine Davis-Young reports. The rest of the U.S. is seeing rises, too, and experts recommend wearing masks in public again to prevent spread.
New law alert: You can graduate from medical school and practice in Arizona before completing a residency under a state law granting special permits for these cases, but this new law is not often used in the state despite the shortage of doctors, the Republic’s Christina van Wassbergen reports.
Can’t be worse than the last guy: Former state lawmaker Carl Seel stepped down from his post as Moon Valley Constable in north Phoenix, and his post needs filling. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors wants Republicans in the Moon Valley precinct to apply by June 6. Seel, an early adopter of the birther conspiracy, previously ran into trouble as a constable because he didn’t deliver orders of protection, as required by his job.
Arizona lawmakers are working on a plan to eliminate court-mandated fees on children convicted of crimes and their parents.
A strike-everything amendment to House Bill 2746 would remove the requirement that the parent of a juvenile reimburse the costs of a court-appointed attorney and prohibit the court from ordering a parent or guardian to pay the cost of any counseling, treatment or education program ordered for a diversion program, among other fees.
The striker comes from Republican Rep. Walt Blackman, who argued in an op-ed for the Arizona Capitol Times that some children have turned down help from public defenders because the fees could strain their families’ finances.
“A system that is supposed to guide and support kids out of trouble is instead making families go broke and setting kids up for failure later in life,” he wrote.
The amendment, which would cost the state about $2.5 million, passed the Senate Appropriations Committee and could be folded into the budget.
It’s two-laugh Thursday!
First, Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake posted another video of her doing an interview, this time with the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger, in an attempt to try to dunk on reporters and claim they’re working for … wait for it … the cartels!
Barchenger does her job well again by keeping cool and pressing for answers. We don’t get who this tactic is for — do average voters know the names of or care much about individual reporters? We’d guess they care far more about what a candidate plans to do in office than a professional-quality video of a newspaper interview.
Second, frequently reprimanded Arizona Sen. Wendy Rogers blocked her seatmate, Rep. Walt Blackman, on Twitter, seemingly after Blackman spoke out against Rogers’ latest embarrassment.
But, Rogers noted in a message she screenshotted and posted, she might’ve blocked him long ago.
The only recent example of lawmakers not passing a budget in time came in 2009, when lawmakers failed to pass a budget by midnight on June 30, the end of the fiscal year, and simply stopped the clocks to pretend that time was no longer passing. Luckily, they came to an agreement in the early morning hours of July 1, and the government ultimately did not shut down.
"investigated for teaching the Bible in class"
There are standards for teaching the Bible. Standards approved by the State Board of Education.