The Daily Agenda: Confirm or deny?
The Daily Agenda: Confirm or deny?
We hope she has lot of backups ... We hope he finds some answers ... And it used to run wild in the desert near Yuma.
Well before the Arizona Senate’s GOP leaders started talking about problems with Gov. Katie Hobbs’ agency picks getting confirmed, we predicted there would be … problems with the agency picks getting confirmed. You heard it here first!
Now, the Senate has created a new five-member Committee on Director Nominations, tasked with “gathering information and evaluating qualifications” on each executive nominee, then “recommending a course of action” to the full Senate. The full Senate, by law, will still need to vote on the appointment.
Previously — and you’d be forgiven for not knowing this, considering how low-profile the confirmation process has been the past decade or so — agency nominees would appear for a hearing before the committee that made the most sense for their given role.
The hearings in those committees were typically perfunctory. We went back and watched a March 2015 hearing of Senate Health and Human Services, where the committee talked to the nominees for the Departments of Economic Security and Child Safety. The committee (which included then-Sen. Hobbs) asked basic questions, but easily approved both nominees.
Creating a specific nominations committee isn’t a huge deal in itself, though it hasn’t happened during previous divided governments. But there are several ways it could alter and diminish the confirmation process.
To start, the chair is Sen. Jake Hoffman, the leader of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, a group seen as too “populist” by Republican U.S. Rep. David Schweikert, who recently left the Congressional version of the caucus because it kept getting confused for the new state version.
Selecting Hoffman as chair sets a particularly hostile tone for the confirmation process. In a press release announcing the new committee, Hoffman derided Hobbs for an “apparent refusal to follow the law” in not sending nominees ASAP, saying it “demonstrates her willingness to play political games with the lives and safety of Arizona citizens.”
The other four members — Sens. Sine Kerr, T.J. Shope, Christine Marsh and Eva Burch — will become major targets for lobbying interests on the wide range of gubernatorial appointments, and Shope, in particular, will have a lot of leverage as the likely swing vote. Nominees often meet in advance with members of the committee they were set to appear before. With just one committee to vet these nominees, the demands on the five members’ time from the nominees and various interest groups and lobbyists will be huge.
That leads us to potentially the biggest hurdle: While Republican senators have called out Hobbs for not sending her nominees to them “promptly,” stacking one committee with all of the nominations could lead to a much slower confirmation process.
The confirmation process is one way legislative Republicans can directly mess with Hobbs’ agenda for the state. They need her signature to pass a budget or any of the bills they want, but she needs them to approve her agency directors, who will carry out all the administrative work of government.
Senate Republicans will almost certainly vote down one or more of Hobbs’ picks, possibly just to show that they can.
Questions denied: New AZGOP chair Jeff DeWit sat in Brahm Resnik’s hot seat on Sunday Square Off, but wouldn’t directly answer questions about key questions, like whether he’s going to drop the party’s ongoing lawsuit attempting to ban early voting, the method by which 80% of voters cast their ballots. He also wouldn’t answer whether the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump or whether the 2022 election was stolen from Kari Lake.
“The question is, is your party based in any kind of objective reality?” a frustrated Resnik asked.
Blame California: California water representatives contemplated what it would be like if major cities that rely on the Colorado River, like Phoenix and Las Vegas, were cut off entirely from that water supply, CNN’s Ella Nilsen reports. Separately, as negotiations continue among Western states over needed cuts to usage, a proposal from California “puts by far the largest potential burden on Arizona,” the Arizona Daily Star’s Tony Davis reports.
What a boondoggle: While Gov. Doug Ducey’s costly shipping container border wall is basically gone now, wildlife conservation groups say the project negatively affected the land, and therefore the ecosystems that rely on it to survive, KJZZ’s Alisa Reznick reports. Lawsuits over the makeshift wall seek information on how the state will remediate the damage caused by the containers.
What a boondoggle, part 2: Of nearly $2 million raised for Gov. Katie Hobbs’ inaugural events, at least $270,000 doesn’t have information about who donated it, the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger reports. A list of donors put out by Hobbs’ campaign in mid-January didn’t include 70 businesses that were listed as sponsors of the events. It’s still not clear how Hobbs will use the remaining money, but there’s a lot of it, more than $1 million.
"I'll just say this, there's money leftover," Hobbs told the Republic. "Nicole (DeMont, Hobbs’ campaign manager) and I have not had a conversation about what is happening with that. And would I have say in that? Of course, but I don't know the answer at this point."
Hmmmm: Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes brought his campaign consultant, Matt Grodsky, onto his staff at the SOS, but instead of hiring Grodsky outright, Fontes took the unusual step of giving Grodsky and his firm an “exclusive 47-month contract” to handle communications and other work for the office part-time, Fourth Estate 48’s Dillon Rosenblatt reports. The contract totals more than $400,000.
More politicians: As the Phoenix City Council starts to redraw its council districts, it could consider adding more members to the eight-person council, KJZZ’s Christina Estes reports. Similarly sized cities have much larger councils, but Phoenix’s council members represent about 200,000 city dwellers each.
Public Records In Name Only: The Arizona Capitol Times submitted records requests for lawmakers’ emails from the past 90 days just after lawmakers made a new rule that allows them to delete their emails after that time period, but the wide-ranging request was rejected because it would create an “unreasonable administrative burden,” the paper reports.
Housing dystopia: In January 2023, Maricopa County saw its highest number of evictions since September 2008, during the housing market crash. A vacant lot near 35th Avenue and Indian School Road has become a homeless encampment. The New York Times documents efforts to count people living on the streets in four communities across the country, including Phoenix. Urban campers setting up camp on state land within city limits in Cochise County are running into problems despite having permits. And housing advocacy groups want Phoenix to put in place a similar ordinance to Tucson’s ordinance that bans landlords from discriminating against renters using programs like Section 8. But at least someone is building a Mario Kart-inspired apartment building on Roosevelt Row.
Score one for the little guy: The unconstitutional sign ban in downtown Phoenix spurred by the upcoming Super Bowl is, in fact, unconstitutional. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Bradley Astrowsky ruled that letting the Super Bowl accept or reject signs infringed on free speech, and that Phoenix City Council’s attempt to amend the rule wasn’t good enough, Cronkite News’ Alexis Waiss reports. The city also must act quickly on any sign applications submitted by the business owner who brought the lawsuit.
We don’t know them: Faculty at Arizona State University’s honors college created a petition to “disassociate” the college from an event hosted by one of the college’s centers because the event features speakers like Dennis Prager, Charlie Kirk and Robert Kiyosaki, the State Press’ Phineas Hogan reports. So far, 37 out of 47 honors faculty members signed on to the petition.
We’re still doing this?: GOP gubernatorial also-ran Kari Lake met with National Republican Senatorial Committee officials as she considers whether to run for U.S. Senate in 2024, Politico reports. But her continued fixation on trying to prove she didn’t lose the governor’s race poses problems for Arizona Republicans, who should be focusing instead on how to win big races next time, the Washington Post’s Henry Olsen writes in a column. Still, a too-large swath of Arizona Republicans continue to embrace election denialism, which affects the AZGOP’s ability to actually win, David Siders writes in Politico Magazine.
How much does it pay?: Ducey’s new job isn’t as a U.S. senator or head of a major business group. He’ll instead be a fellow at American University’s Sine Institute of Policy and Politics, the former governor announced on Twitter.
Big role for the new guy: Freshman U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani will deliver the Spanish-language response from the GOP to President Joe Biden’s State of the State on Tuesday.
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