The Daily Agenda: The wheels are coming off

They should have ended on a high note … All roads lead to Arizona ... And why didn't anyone tell them they'd have to vote on a budget?

The hard-brokered deal on housing fell apart. Negotiations on an extension of Prop 400 broke down, and the bill Republicans are pushing is dead on arrival to the Governor’s Office. Even a pair of tax cuts failed. 

The Legislature’s long-awaited return yesterday was eventful — but mostly for what lawmakers failed to do. 

The state House shot down 40% of the bills it considered yesterday, not counting all the bills on the calendar that were pulled at the last minute. The mood in the state Senate, meanwhile, was sour, as Senate President Warren Petersen took back his previous kind assessment of the governor’s negotiation skills. 

After more than a year of tense negotiations on ambitious housing augmentation plans, Republican Sen. Steve Kaiser and the Arizona League of Cities and Towns announced they had reached an agreement on a watered-down compromise package last week. But that fell through. 

Kaiser said yesterday he didn’t have enough votes to pass the senate bills, and a House bill attempting to solve the Housing shortage that didn’t have the League’s backing failed in the Senate with little support. 

But lawmakers did approve a bill requiring cities to break up homeless encampments or else provide toilets, showers and 24/7 security. So if you can’t afford rent, you’ll still have a toilet.

Meanwhile, Republicans are pushing ahead with their own plans for a Prop 400 extension — plans that Gov. Katie Hobbs is sure to veto. 

Hobbs had acquiesced to a plan to ask Maricopa County voters to approve an extension of the sales tax for transportation with some tweaks to the formula to kill off light rail expansion funding. Republican lawmakers now want two separate questions: one for extending the tax and another solely about funding the light rail. But as Capitol scribe Howie Fischer notes, it’s not even clear if Republican leaders have enough votes to pass their own plan. They delayed a vote yesterday and plan to bring the proposal back today. 

However, Republicans had no trouble lining up support to send voters another pair of questions: HRC2033 would ask voters to ban open primaries and/or ranked-choice voting, while SCR1015 would ask voters to require any new voter-proposed laws to receive signatures from all 30 legislative districts to qualify for the ballot. 

But even bills to cut taxes and unemployment benefits couldn’t gain enough traction in the legislative epilogue session. Republicans shot down legislation to reduce the number of weeks that people can receive unemployment benefits, to hand out automatic tax cuts if the Arizona budget has a structural surplus, and to exempt new businesses from fees and taxes.

Lawmakers could have ended on a high note after this year’s historic bipartisan budget. They should take yesterday’s proceedings as a sign that it’s time to wrap it up. 

There’s always an Arizona angle: The Department of Justice prosecutor taking on Donald Trump cut his teeth prosecuting former Arizona Congressman Rick Renzi on racketeering and extortion charges, among other things, Ronald Hansen reports in the Republic. Jack Smith put Renzi away for nearly two years, though Renzi later received a pardon (at Paul Gosar’s request) during Trump’s final days in office.

“I was involved in a brutal fight. I broke my hand,” Renzi told Hansen. “I had my ups and downs, like anything else. Prison is a brutal, brutal place. I was fortunate that the staff there was very professional.”

There’s always an Arizona angle part 2: Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer and Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan are both on the witness list for Trump attorney and January 6 strategist John Eastman’s trial next month to keep his law license in California, Politico reports. Richer is a witness for the state Bar. Logan is a witness for Eastman’s team. 

Is this the culture war?: Members of the Scottsdale Unified School District Governing Board are in an uproar over an app the district has used for a decade for K-2 students, Tom Scanlon writes for the Scottsdale Progress. Board member Amy Carney complained that the social studies component teaches kids about being a good citizen through “activism in protests, striking picketing, boycotts and petitions” and that the app promoted “Pride Month” as a holiday.

Your government at work: Those sky-high gas prices we paid all spring possibly could have been avoided if lawmakers and the governor had taken heed of oil industry warnings, the Republic’s Ryan Randazzo reports. Oil interests asked Gov. Katie Hobbs to seek a federal waiver to EPA standards so they could sell a different blend of fuel here for a short time, but the Hobbs administration didn’t think the EPA would sign off so it didn’t ask. Lawmakers tried several years ago to change the fuel requirements, but that bill died and was never taken up again, Randazzo notes. 

It costs us like one annual subscriber to fill our car with gas now, FWIW.

Seemed like an odd fit anyway: Hobbs withdrew her nomination of Martin Quezada, a lawyer and former lawmaker, to lead the Registrar of Contractors, which licenses and investigates contractors, the Washington Post’s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez reports. His chances weren’t looking great anyway after Republicans on the committee tasked with vetting nominees rejected him as a progressive “extremist.”

Don’t give him a badge: Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced nine felony charges against a former candidate for constable in Cochise County for allegedly falsifying signatures so he could get on the ballot. Brent Kusama, a Democrat, “voluntarily withdrew” from the 2022 primary race after an opponent challenged his signatures. 

Maybe don’t trust this guy, either: The former executive secretary of the Arizona chapter of Future Farmers of America was indicted in Maricopa County Superior Court on charges that he siphoned more than $1 million from the organization’s funds into a secret bank account, Kevin Reagan reports for 12News. The Arizona chapter operates within the Arizona Department of Education.

Good water news: Streams are flowing nicely in Tucson, Tony Davis reports for the Daily Star. Typically they’re at their driest this time of year, and monitors say they’ve never seen some creeks run for 100 continuous days, as they are now. But the monsoon season likely won’t start for a while, Henry Brean reports for the Star. 

We got worms: An Arizona worm farm is trying to turn food waste into soil, Kylie Werner reports for Cronkite News. 

Three members of the Gilbert Council almost didn’t approve the city’s $2 billion budget — not because they didn’t like what was in it; they just didn’t understand it. 

They took office in January, but they never took the time to learn what was in the budget, ask questions or meet with the city’s finance director, Cecilia Chan reports for the Gilbert Sun News. 

You really have to read the story because the quotes are just fantastic. But here’s a quick sample of our favorites.

Councilwoman Bobbi Buchli wasn’t sure five months of on-the-job training as a city council member was enough to prepare her to understand the budget:

“I’ve struggled with this because this is a $2-billion budget,” she said. “I’ve been a council member for about five months now.”

Councilman Chuck Bongiovanni wasn’t even sure if he had seen the budget because he gets so much paperwork at this new job:

“I don’t even think I received the full budget. I mean. I’m sure it’s a couple thousand pages but our meetings (agendas) are a couple of thousand pages and we get those every two weeks,” he said.

And Mayor Bridget Peterson was none too pleased:

“At the study session I asked over and over again if anyone had any questions. I asked at the preliminary meeting are there any other topics, any other questions. I asked over and over again because I was surprised that people didn’t have questions,” Peterson said.