Arizona House GOP passes budget alone as Democrats boycott vote

Republicans in Arizona’s House of Representatives passed their package of state budget bills the same way they were created: alone. 

The majority party, which holds 33 of the chamber’s 60 seats, approved each of the 15 pieces of legislation that make up their budget proposal by a vote of 31-0 Friday night, long after all Democratic lawmakers had headed home after a day of waiting around for Republicans to bring the bills to the floor for debate. 

Creation of the state’s annual budget is usually a collaborative effort among the Republican majorities that control the House and Senate and Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat. 

But this year, House Republicans created their own state budget plan, divorced from ongoing budget negotiations between Hobbs and Senate Republicans. 

Legislative Democrats panned House Republicans’ budget tactics as a “farce” and Hobbs described the plan as “dead-on-arrival” because of inadequate funding for K-12 schools, millions in cuts to Medicaid and a failure to fund her childcare affordability initiative. 

Hobbs and Senate Republicans plan to introduce their own budget Monday following weeks of negotiations. House GOP leaders had been involved in those negotiations, but walked away several weeks ago.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Livingston, along with Rep. Matt Gress, a former budget director for Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, were the chief architects of their chamber’s budget proposal. Gress, a Phoenix Republican, responded Friday to criticisms of the way the budgeting process unfolded. 

“This was a key procedural step that we had to take, it really was,” Gress said. “We’ve had to do it in order to get the language that House members wanted to present to the Senate as they take up their legislation next week.”

Gress said that he’d seen the Senate’s plan, and even though he and Livingston didn’t work with Senate leaders or Hobbs, he described the two plans as “eerily similar.” 

“We all ended up focusing in on the things that matter, for the most part,” Gress said, admitting that the House’s plan was more conservative than the Senate’s. 

The House’s $17.3 billion plan includes a 5% pay raise for Department of Public safety and correctional officers and $94 million to fund infrastructure and road improvements, including I-10 and Highway 347.

It also includes a 2.5% tuition reduction followed by a three-year freeze for Arizonans who attend the state’s public institutions, and it continues to fund the Division of Developmental Disabilities and its Parents as Paid Caregivers Program that was at the center of a bitter fight for funding earlier this year. 

The House budget plan was just introduced publicly in the late afternoon of June 11, and GOP lawmakers worked long hours on Friday to negotiate amendments to get all Republicans on board since there was no chance of getting any votes from Democrats. 

One significant amendment to House Bill 2947 approved Friday evening would give more control to country recorders when it comes to funding and oversight of elections. Some of the changes are clearly aimed at tipping the scale in an ongoing feud between the Republican-controlled Maricopa Board of Supervisors and Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap. 

Heap, a former state representative and member of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, has been battling the board over election administration duties basically since he took office in January. Election duties in Maricopa are split between the board and recorder. 

This week, Heap sued the board of supervisors claiming they “engaged in an unlawful attempt to seize near-total control over the administration of elections,” Votebeat reported. 

Through his lawsuit, Heap seeks to control the information technology staff that manages the Maricopa County voter registration system. 

In a statement, Supervisor Kate Brophy McGee called the lawsuit absurd, describing it as an “example of the Recorder’s irresponsible and juvenile ready-fire-aim approach to governance.”

The House Republican budget would distribute $4 million in funds directly to the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, instead of the board, and would prohibit the board from having any say in how the funds are spent. It would require the recorder to use some of those funds to hire information technology staff and for the recorder to control all IT equipment used in his duties. 

Rep. Alex Kolodin, a Scottsdale Republican and Freedom Caucus member, praised the election oversight measures in the House budget, saying it was important to the caucus that those be included. 

Kolodin, who is an attorney, was sanctioned by the State Bar of Arizona and placed on probation in 2023 for his role in lawsuits challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election, including the infamous “kraken” lawsuit that made implausible and evidence-free claims of massive election fraud.

While Gress focused on the similarities between the Senate budget plan and the one in the House, Kolodin’s outlook was more cynical. 

“This budget process has obviously been very fractious, between the House that is pushing for a Republican budget that befits the Republican majority the people of Arizona elected, and some of our colleagues in the (executive) tower, and across the courtyard (in the Senate) that may be having different ideas.” 

But Kolodin said he was pleased to see that everyone involved, including Hobbs, were on the same page about putting $1 million toward legal funding for the state’s upcoming fight for its share of Colorado River water. 

Not all Republicans were totally pleased with the outcome, with Rep. Justin Olson, of Mesa, saying he was only on board with the level of spending in the budget because he’d been promised that a separate bill would be introduced next week to cut spending by more than $100 million. Rep. Teresa Martinez, of Casa Grande, said she voted for the budget bill reluctantly, “with caution and regret,” as she’s worried some of the provisions will hurt rural hospitals. 

But as House Republicans celebrated the passage of their proposal, and criticized Democratic lawmakers for their absence from the chamber Friday night, Gress said he was hopeful that the Senate, House and Hobbs could come to a budget agreement next week. 

He urged Senate Republicans to work off of the House’s proposal next week, instead of the one they have negotiated with the governor. 

“I think that, ultimately, the minds melded across the capitol to produce almost a virtually identical budget,” he said, claiming that 85% of the House’s proposal would end up in the final product.