The Daily Agenda: The veto queen comes for tamales

Hobbs messed with the wrong food group … David Stevens does it all ... And guess who believes the lie.

Don’t come for the tamales. 

By vetoing a bipartisan push to legalize foods made in people’s homes, like tamales or frosted cookies, Gov. Katie Hobbs inspired an unlikely bipartisan coalition that could lead to a rare veto override. 

House Bill 2509, sponsored by Republican Rep. Travis Grantham, would have expanded the list of foods that could legally be sold by small cooks and bakers to those that require temperature control. Already, cottage foods that don’t require refrigeration, like breads and certain cookies, are legal in Arizona.

The bill saw strong support in the House, where 45 lawmakers voted in favor of it, and in the Senate, where it snagged 26 votes. That’s about as bipartisan as it gets these days, aside from the perfunctory bills that get unanimous approval. The Arizona Department of Health Services opposed the bill, though, as did the Arizona Restaurant Association. 

But in her veto letter, Hobbs said the bill would “significantly increase the risk of food-borne illness” because it didn’t include ways to oversee and inspect these home chefs. 

There’s one problem with that justification: These kinds of foods are already being sold, regularly, throughout Arizona. We’ve all eaten a tamal or a burrito sold on the street or by a friend’s mom. They’re delicious. It’s hard to believe that legalizing a practice that’s already common would make a significant dent in food-borne illness. 

Republicans of course balked at the veto, as they have at the other 60+ vetoed Hobbs has hit them with. In this case, they pointed to the bipartisan consensus on the bill, wondering if this kind of bill can’t get Hobbs’ signature, then what could?

And some of Hobbs’ Democratic colleagues joined the chorus against the veto. Moderate Dem Rep. Alma Hernandez said she was “VERY disappointed” in the veto because these food sales can help people make a living but often come with fear of being fined or shut down. 

“When my father was injured and could not work, my mother made cakes from home to ensure we could put gas and food on our table,” Hernandez wrote on Twitter. “This does nothing in the name of ‘health & safety.’ It goes against my community.”

Tamale makers appeared on the local evening news. Republicans latched on to Hernandez’s discontent. Senate President Warren Petersen declared HB2509 “looks like a good bill to put back up for a veto override.” House Speaker Ben Toma is “certainly considering the option” of pushing for a veto override, too, House GOP spokesman Andrew Wilder told us.

To override a veto, lawmakers in both chambers need a two-thirds majority to vote in favor of the bill. It’s rare, but it has happened (most recently in 1981, when lawmakers overrode Gov. Bruce Babbitt’s veto of their redistricting map, per longtime Capitol scribe Howard Fischer). And in this case, since the bill received much more than two-thirds support initially, it could actually work — if Democrats don’t change their minds to keep the governor happy.

The whole episode is already a blow to the Hobbs administration on a policy that wasn’t on any lawmaker’s list of top priorities. A veto override would make it worse.

But if there’s one issue that brings together a ragtag bipartisan crew, it’s tamales. 

Make him sheriff next: Cochise County Recorder David Stevens can also serve as the county’s interim elections director, a superior court judge ruled, beating back a challenge from Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, who argued that supervisors could not hand over the duties to another elected official, the Herald-Review’s Shar Porier reports. But the supervisors announced that they were planning to hire a new elections director soon anyway. 

Not so great: Gov. Katie Hobbs isn’t very popular compared to her peers, showing up near the bottom of Morning Consult’s first quarterly poll of all 50 states’ governors. Her numbers are about the same as in the OH Predictive Insights poll we wrote about last month, but in the broader context of her peers, they don’t look so good. She’s still more popular than not — 47% of respondents said they approved of her job performance, while just 36% said they didn’t — but she was one of only five governors with an approval rating below 50%. Still, she’s more popular than U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who has a net approval rating of -2%, per Morning Consult. On the bright side for Sinema, Republicans and independents like her a little more now that she’s no longer a Democrat. 

Vote no: Tucson City Council Member Steve Kozachik wrote an opinion for the Daily Star urging city voters to reject the Tucson Electric Power-backed Prop 412 on a May special election ballot, a 25-year agreement between it and the city that would include a new fee to bury power lines and support the city’s climate action plan. But Kozachik argues that TEP should be paying some of that cost out of its profits rather than passing it all on to customers, and the city can “do better.” 

Vote no no and no: Three progressive state senators representing Tempe are urging voters to reject Props 301, 302 and 303, which would establish an entertainment district to support a new arena for the Arizona Coyotes. In an opinion piece in the Republic, Sens. Mitzi Epstein, Juan Mendez and Eva Burch argued that the city has real problems and “a tax dollar-subsidized sports arena and embattled luxury housing aren’t among residents’ priorities, and they’re not an appropriate use of our limited resources.” 

On motels and mortgage discrimination: A Fountain Hills-based mortgage company agreed to a settlement brokered by the Attorney General’s Office of Civil Rights to pay $5,000 to a pair of LGBTQ customers for discrimination. The settlement also requires the company to add new training requirements, KTAR reports. And in Flagstaff, a Motel 6 is about to be turned into transitional housing thanks to about $9 million in funding from the federal American Recovery Plan Act. It will contain 103 rooms and a host of social services on-site, the Republic’s Juliette Rihl reports. 

No rush: The Maricopa County Board of supervisors will meet Monday with their lawyer to discuss the nominees to fill Liz Harris’ seat in the state House and Raquel Terán’s seat in the Senate, but they’re taking their time with the appointments, KTAR’s Kevin Stone reports. Supervisors are going to do background checks and interviews and likely make their final picks the following week. 

Preparing Plan B: As lawmakers dawdle on referring a critical Maricopa County transportation tax to the ballot and threaten that if they do, it won’t include money for the light rail, cities are looking for their own solutions, Axios Phoenix’s Jeremy Duda reports. That could include gathering signatures for an initiative or doing a bunch of concurrent city elections to build a patchwork system. But Duda notes that neither option is perfect: An initiative would go to voters statewide, while a patchwork approach would be, well, patchwork. 

A few more days: Mifepristone will remain available nationwide for at least two more days after the U.S. Supreme Court extended its administrative stay on a district court ruling restricting access to the abortion drug as it considers dueling rulings from different federal district court judges. Meanwhile, several of Arizona’s Democratic members of Congress and both of its senators signed on to an amicus brief urging the court to reject the lower court ruling restricting access to the drug, KJZZ’s Alisa Reznick reports. 

Cuff first, ask questions later: When Phoenix Police responded to a call from a Chase bank employee complaining that a Black journalist for the Wall Street Journal was asking people questions on a sidewalk outside the bank in January, saying he “doesn’t look like a reporter,” five cops showed up and had him in handcuffs within a minute and a half, the Republic’s Daniel Gonzalez writes. Four months later, police still haven’t completed the internal investigation into the matter, and questions remain whether they would have arrested a white reporter. 

Can’t accuse them of defunding the police: The contract that the City of Phoenix negotiated with its police union in secret would give cops raises for the second year in a row, the Phoenix New Times’ Katya Schewnk reports. While the contract doesn’t include any major policy changes, it would provide a 2% raise to police base salaries as well as a bonus equal to 5% of their pay and extra pay for nights and on-call shifts.  

Progressive congressman, moderate Senate candidate: In a piece about the progressive-moderate battle for the Democratic Party, the New York Times declares that U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego is “in some ways … a bona fide progressive.” But he told the paper he rejects those kinds of “D.C. labels.” 

Today in schools: Enrollment in Scottsdale Unified School District is expected to continue dropping, despite growth in the area, the Scottsdale Progress’ Tom Scanlon, reports, because the new people moving in are old and don’t have school-age kids. Meanwhile, Peter Aleshire notes in the Payson Roundup that the money being spent on school vouchers and tax credits could have provided about a $125 per-pupil boost to local schools instead. And the Dysart Unified School District just got its third superintendent in two years, the Republic’s Yana Kunichoff reports. 

A bill that would require the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System to cover cochlear implants for people on the state’s Medicaid program for people age 21 and older needs a full House vote.

Senate Bill 1017, sponsored by Republican Sen. T.J. Shope, expands coverage for those over age 21 to the hearing devices. Those under 21 already get covered if they need cochlear implants. 

Coverage for adults used to exist, but was sliced during the Great Recession, Shope told Cronkite News’ Maria Staubs. He said the cost for the implant (usually tens of thousands of dollars, depending on insurance) deters people from getting it without coverage, which can affect their employment prospects. 

SB1017 passed the Senate 23-6 and got initial approval from the House Health and Human Services Committee late last month.