The Daily Agenda: DIY budgeting works

It's better than BRB-stuffing ... More moms should be politicians ... And Stephen Richer is a good parent.

Gov. Katie Hobbs signed the nearly $18 billion budget package that she had ironed out with legislative Republicans and dragged Democrats into supporting, marking one of the fastest, most bipartisan budgets in recent memory.¹

Budgeting in recent years has become infinitely more complicated after the Arizona Supreme Court declared that the way lawmakers used to do it was unconstitutional. For decades, lawmakers had increasingly stuffed non-budgetary bills into budget reconciliation bills, or BRBs, to gin up support from lawmakers who didn’t like the numbers in the budget but wanted their pet policies to make it through the legislative process. 

After what we dubbed the “Battle of the BRBs,” many around the Capitol wondered how lawmakers could gain consensus without the kind of horse trading that BRB-stuffing allowed. 

When a Democrat won the Governor’s Office and legislative Democrats failed to take control of either chamber of the Legislature, the conventional wisdom at the Capitol was that the governor would be fighting with Republican lawmakers until June 30 to craft a budget. 

But this year’s bipartisan and relatively speedy budget was made possible by a novel new process that we’re calling “DIY Budgeting.”

Instead of stuffing the budget with non-budget priorities to garner support, legislative leaders allocated a chunk of money for any lawmaker who would vote for the final deal to spend as they see fit. It worked. And despite our hand-wringing about whether it would turn into a pork-packed free-for-all budget that shortchanges Arizona’s biggest needs, this year’s budget isn’t much porkier than usual. 

Lawmakers acted — and we can’t believe we’re saying this — pretty responsibly. 

Sure, there’s money for the Prescott Rodeo grounds, magic mushroom research, and the House, Senate and Governor’s Office, but that kind of earmarked pork spending always happens. Lawmakers also pooled their resources on big investments, like widening Interstate 10, investing in housing solutions and boosting school spending. 

Hobbs and Democrats, of course, didn’t get everything they wanted. The Republic found that Hobbs got all or part of what she sought on 50 of her 90 goals, and while it’s still not totally clear which group of politicians got the best deal, both sides are declaring victory. 

Lawmakers still have a handful of important issues before they wrap up for the year, but let’s hope they end it soon and on a high note. 

Moms make good politicians: Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego almost didn’t run for mayor in 2018 because she was pregnant and recently divorced from U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, and she worried that people’s perceptions of motherhood would hamper her campaign, she told the Republic’s Taylor Seely in a Mother’s Day profile. The majority of the Phoenix City Council members are mothers, Seely writes. 

Of course she did: Yavapai County Judge Cele Hancock, who was arrested for extreme DUI last month, made sure the arresting officer knew she was a judge, and she has a lot of complaints from people who have been in her courtroom for telling defendants things like, “You just crawl into the gutter with all the tweakers and junkies who sell their food stamps and diapers because that is the level you’ve reached,” AZFamily reports. 

“Do you know I’m a judge here?” Hancock told the arresting officer. “I don’t want to use that. I don’t want to use that. I really don’t.”

One successful recall in history: A Tucson activist is launching a volunteer-powered recall attempt against Republican Sen. Justine Wadsack, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer reports. The longshot campaign, which Wadsack says she’s “not concerned to the slightest” about, needs nearly 31,000 valid signatures from registered voters within the district by Sept. 5 to force a recall. 

What drought?: Water levels at Roosevelt Lake hit their highest levels on record, and officials started draining about 650 million gallons to lower the levels and test the Roosevelt Dam, Peter Aleshire reports for the Payson Roundup.  

Almost fixed: Lawmakers still haven’t agreed on any of the proposed solutions to the lack of water in the Rio Verde Foothills area, but Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin’s House Bill 2561, an emergency measure that would direct Scottsdale to enter an intergovernmental agreement with another entity to haul water to Rio Verde residents, is the closest to becoming law, the Capitol Times’ Jakob Thorington writes. It still needs a final vote in the Senate before going to the Governor’s Office. Meanwhile, Nicholas Kristof opines in the New York Times that if we just charged a normal market rate on the 3.2 gallons of water it takes to grow one almond in California’s many almond groves, it would go a long way to solving the kinds of water crisises that are happening in places like Rio Verde Foothills. 

All quiet on the southern front: The end of Title 42 hasn’t meant much to Nogales yet, as activity at the border there appeared relatively normal, according to the Nogales International’s Angela Gervasi and Jonathan Clark. It was equally quiet in Yuma over the weekend, KYMA reports. 

“Thursday’s line for appointments appeared to have nothing to do with a ‘surge,’ though coils of concertina wire nearby served as a reminder that U.S. Customs and Border Protection was prepped for potential issues,” the Nogales International writes. 

But they’re terrified back east: Now that immigration is top of the national agenda again, it’s good for Donald Trump and his nascent second campaign for a second term, the New York Times reports. Meanwhile, U.S. House Republicans are seizing the moment by passing a tough-on-immigration package, though it’s doomed in the Democrat-controlled Senate, the Times reports. U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is excited to have a bill heading to the Senate that she can amend into a broader, more comprehensive bill, she told the Times.

Do it again: Since the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors appointed Flavio Bravo to the Senate seat formerly held by Raquel Terán in West Phoenix’s Legislative District 26, they now have to fill Bravo’s seat in the House. District precinct committeemen whittled the list of seven candidates to three nominees: former appointed Rep. Christian Solorio, who lost in the 2022 primary, LD26 treasurer Veronica Monge, and Quant’a Crews, who was on the shortlist to replace Terán, Thorington reports. The board will make the final selection. 

Dose Shope first: Arizona is going to fund magic mushroom research with $5 million from the new state budget that Gov. Katie Hobbs signed over the weekend. It’s not the $30 million that psychedelic researcher Dr. Sue Sisley wanted, but it will still put Arizona at the “forefront of psilocybin research,” Republican Sen. T.J. Shope, one of the co-sponsors of the legislation, told the Arizona Mirror’s Caitlin Sievers. 

Subscribe today or we’ll have to get side jobs as magic mushroom researchers.

Nationalism is everywhere: There’s a new border wall going up… in the Dominican Republic, where people hope that a fence splitting the island will keep poverty-stricken Haitians from entering the Dominican side of the island they share. The fence is still under construction, and is planned to cover about 100 of the 240 miles of border the two countries share, Cronkite News’ Roxanne De La Rosa reports. 

Ugliest bird ever: A highly contagious bird flu is killing condors in northern Arizona, along with bees, and it could start killing Arizona’s bald eagles, Aleshire reports for the Payson Roundup. Researchers are working on a vaccine, and the virus has already killed hundreds of bald eagles nationwide. 

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer loves his children: a bunch of adopted animals at Prescott’s Heritage Park Zoological Sanctuary.

1. Not including the 2020 session, in which lawmakers packed it up in March to avoid the spreading COVID-19 pandemic. And while last year’s budget was bipartisan, it took up until the end of June to get it to Gov. Doug Ducey’s desk.