GOP-led panel rejects Hobbs' nominee for Arizona housing director

PHOENIX — Saying she is guilty of “plagiarism,’’ Republicans on a Senate panel rejected the choice of Joan Serviss by Gov. Katie Hobbs to head the Arizona Department of Housing.

The 3-2 vote Thursday by the Committee on Director Nominations came after Serviss acknowledged that some letters of support for policy changes at the federal level she sent when she headed the Arizona Housing Coalition were lifted verbatim from what was written by others.

But she said that was common practice among advocacy groups. She also said these carbon copies amounted to no more than 5% of all the communications she sent out during her dozen years running the coalition.

Democratic Sen. Flavio Bravo said it isn’t like these were academic research papers where plagiarism is strictly forbidden.

But Sen. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, who heads the panel, said this is about far more than parroting language from other advocacy groups. He specifically cited what he said where whole paragraphs lifted, without attribution, from Bloomberg News.

He said that makes Serviss unfit to head a state agency with millions of dollars to administer, in part because he said it shows she lacks original thinking.

“I think that Katie Hobbs is looking for a ‘yes’ woman, someone who is just going to rubber stamp whatever Hobbs’ agenda is, and not push back,’’ he said in voting to reject her.

Water and housing issues

Hoffman said that is underlined by the fact that Serviss has not been included in discussions about restrictions on new housing developments in the fastest-growing parts of the Phoenix area because they lack an assured water supply.

Those restrictions, he said, eliminated 25% of the potential new housing stock, an issue directly related to the job of the Department of Housing to help ensure affordable housing.

That issue also was raised by Sen. Justine Wadsack, R-Tucson. Wadsack, a real estate agent, accused Hobbs of favoring multi-family homes and commercial development over single-family homes because none of those were affected by the decision of the Department of Water Resources not to issue permits for new subdivisions in some areas on the fringes of Phoenix.

Neither Hoffman nor Wadsack noted that this was not a decision by the governor, however.

A 1980 state law — approved by a Republican-controlled Legislature — spells out that new residential development can occur only in areas with an assured 100-year supply of water. The freeze on permits was announced by Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke after he said those areas lack that assurance.

But Hoffman insisted after the hearing that law does not mandate a halt to new housing permits. Anyway, he said, the “modeling’’ of water supply and demand that determines where development can occur “includes assumptions not required by statute.’’

Wadsack agreed, saying the 1980 law gives the governor the authority to “fix” the issue that has arisen in Queen Creek and Buckeye. Instead, she said, the move to restrict new housing permits resulted in unwanted national publicity about the state’s water supply drying up.

“We are having to fix the narrative now solely because she chose to fire, ready, aim on this issue,’’ Wadsack said of Hobbs.

As to the claim of Hobbs being biased against single-family development, though, that appears to be beyond the governor’s reach. A spokesman for the Department of Water Resources said the 1980 law requiring an assured water supply applies only to subdivisions which are being built for purchase as single-family homes and exempts commercial development and apartment complexes.

Hoffman claims “executive overreach”

But it was the accusations of plagiarism that ultimately torpedoed Serviss’ nomination, despite her widespread support from various veterans’ organizations that praised her work with them when she headed the Arizona Housing Coalition. Her supporters also included a developer and the organization that represents apartment building owners.

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It was clear, though, that Hoffman, who had amassed the paperwork with the duplicate writings, came to Thursday’s hearing prepared to attack not just her nomination but, more specifically, the Democratic governor with whom he has had an openly hostile relationship.

“Katie Hobbs’ repeated attempts to legislate via executive order and force her nominees to act as accomplices to doing so have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the statutory and constitutional restraints placed on her executive power,’’ Hoffman said. He said it is the role of the committee he chairs to determine whether her nominees will enforce the law as written “or whether they’ll choose to bend, change or create new law, whether by their own ideological motivation or as an accomplice to Hobbs’ despotic executive overreach.’’

Hobbs’ office cites “political games”

In a prepared response, Hobbs’ press aide Christian Slater did not address any of the comments about whether Serviss was trying to pass off the work of others as her own. Instead, he accused Hoffman and his committee of being “interested in nothing more than playing political games and making a mockery of the nominee confirmation process.’’

“Extremists in the Senate made it clear they’re more interested in creating a political circus than fairly scrutinizing cabinet nominees,’’ Slater said, citing the near-unanimous support for Serviss from those who testified.

“Rejecting the director is a disservice to the people of Arizona who she is committed to serving,’’ he said.

Serviss: Using templates isn’t plagiarism

In questioning Serviss, Hoffman cited a 2018 letter she wrote on behalf of the Arizona Housing Coalition to the Food and Nutrition Service about policy changes.

“In six full paragraphs of that comment letter that you authored, it appears to have copied and pasted, without attribution, the text offered by Northwest Harvest and the Arizona Community Action Association that they submitted weeks before you submitted your letter,’’ he told her. “Would you consider this to be plagiarism?’’

Serviss said she did not.

“A common practice among advocacy organizations was to utilize templates to submit a shared chorus of support or concern on policy priorities,’’ she responded. Serviss said the ACAA, like her former group, is a member of the “basic needs coalition’’ which includes advocacy organizations that work on issues of housing, food insecurity, child care and other social issues.

Hoffman was not convinced that was legitimate. A “similar world view’’ did not allow Serviss to “regurgitate it as your own,” he said.

Sen. T.J. Shope, R-Coolidge, said he was prepared to back Serviss — and provide the necessary margin to advance her nomination to the full Senate for consideration — until he saw materials from Bloomberg News that ended up in a Serviss letter to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development without attribution.

“That was a change for me,’’ Shope said.

Previous thwarted nominations

This isn’t Hobbs’ first run-in with Hoffman and the nominations panel.

The Republicans on the committee previously voted to reject Dr. Teresa Cullen to head the Department of Health Services after expressing concern about how she handled the COVID pandemic while heading the Pima County Health Department. That included her recommendations on a mandatory curfew, mask wearing, the closing of schools and classrooms, and her method of urging people to get vaccinated.

Hobbs, even before a hearing was held on the matter, also withdrew her nomination of Matthew Stewart to head the Department of Child Safety after Hoffman said the governor wasn’t properly vetting her nominees.