PHOENIX — Accusing Republicans of playing games, Gov. Katie Hobbs said Monday she will veto any legislation they send her until they actually deliver their long-promised budget proposal.
Hobbs said she publicly released her proposal for a $17.8 billion spending plan in January. It was immediately denounced by GOP leaders as unbalanced as it relies on sources of revenue they contend will not develop.
The governor said her office was involved in negotiations until three weeks ago when she walked away, saying that nothing can be negotiated until the Republicans who control and House and Senate publicly release their own plan.
To date that has not happened. So now she is upping the ante by telling lawmakers that all their other pet priorities are not going anywhere until they provide some basis to resume negotiations. And that, Hobbs said, means a plan that, like hers, is subject to public scrutiny.
The move drew sharp criticism from Republican leaders who cited the governor's decision to quit the negotiations.
"Gov. Hobbs quit the budget talks more than three weeks ago after it became clear her numbers did not add up, and now she is trying to distract from that failure with a bill-signing freeze,'' said House Speaker Steve Montenegro.
"That is political theater,'' said the Goodyear Republican. "Arizona needs a balanced budget built on honest numbers, not press stunts and invented revenue.''
Senate Majority Leader John Kavanagh said that it's clear where the fault lies.
"First, the governor abandoned her responsibility to help construction a state budget,'' he said. "Now she is abandoning her duty to process bills.''
And the Fountain Hills Republican had his own thoughts if that's the way Hobbs wants to be.
"I can only hope that she follows her trail down the path which logically leads to her resigning so we can get someone in office who will do the job,'' he said.
This isn't the first time the governor has used such a threat.
Last year she told lawmakers not to send her any new bills until there was a resolution to the problem that the state's Division of Developmental Disabilities was scheduled to go broke before the end of the fiscal year on June 30. That problem was resolved before lawmakers sent her anything else.
This time, however, her threat is coming as lawmakers are scheduled to give final approval early this week to a number of measures, ranging from allowing teens to get a learner's permit at 15 instead of 15 1/2 to new requirements for those who display certain sexual images to have proof that everyone pictured has given consent.
Put simply, Hobbs said, now that she's shown how she would balance the budget, it's now the turn of Republicans.
"The legislative majority has done nothing but say 'no' and hide their budget from the people of this state,'' she said in a prepared statement. "They're focused on the wrong things.''
Those "wrong things,'' Hobbs said, include pushing for what she calls "tax breaks for billionaires and special interests.''
That goes to the fact that the governor's own plan for tax cuts is limited to what she calls the "middle class.'' That includes increasing the standard deduction for individuals who do not itemize expenses — about 88% of all Arizonans — as well as eliminating taxes on tips and overtime and providing an additional tax break for those over 65 and allowing people who do not itemize to deduct the interest they pay on the purchase of a new U.S.-built car or truck.
All that is modeled in part on the federal HR 1 approved by Congress last year.
But that federal law has even more deductions. And Republicans here sent Hobbs a bill that included not just her tax cuts but other provisions from HR 1 like deductions for those who are rich enough to have high state and local taxes as well as additional deductions for business purchases.
That was Hobbs' first veto of the year.
Since then, there have been dozens more she has swatted down — even before Monday's bill moratorium — with the governor taking particular aim at what she called the GOP "working to strip health care and food assistance from vulnerable children.''
"Arizonans deserve more than these political games,'' Hobbs said.
"They deserve a budget that cuts taxes for the middle class, funds our public schools and lowers costs for everyday Arizonans,'' she continued. "I'm ready to negotiate.''
Hobbs said that she and lawmakers managed to cobble together a budget in three prior fiscal years.
"But until the legislative majority shows us their plans for a balanced budget that works for middle-class Arizonans, their bills will be dead on arrival,'' she said.
The message not to send anything new to her desk without a budget plan comes as the governor on Monday vetoed more than a dozen Republican proposals. These included:
• Setting up a fund to recover "brackish'' groundwater;
• Taking attorney licensing away from the state Bar of Arizona and giving it to the Supreme Court;
• Barring the use of public money for genetic sequencing procedures performed using a device produced in a county considered a "foreign adversary'';
• Requiring students in grades six, seven and eight to get parental consent before they can join student clubs or organizations.
Hobbs made it clear, though, that each of these were vetoed because she found them unacceptable. Any veto from this point forward, the governor said, will be strictly because lawmakers have yet to show her their own plan for balancing the budget.
To this point, all GOP leaders have done publicly is argue that the governor's own plan is unrealistic. And the key, they say, is that she is relying on money that just won't be there.
The biggest chunk of that is the governor's request that the federal government reimburse the state nearly $760 million it spent on border security during the Biden administration. That includes more than $163 million spent by her predecessor, Doug Ducey, to erect a wall of shipping containers along the border and then, after the state was sued for trespass, remove them.
Funding for that request come from another part of HR 1 that set aside $15.5 billion in grants to states. So far, though, none of that federal money has been distributed.
Hobbs also says the state could save $80 million by putting income caps on families who want vouchers of tax dollars to send their children to private or parochial schools or to home school them. GOP lawmakers have pronounced that a non-starter.
And one big sticking point is the renewal of Proposition 123.
Approved by voters in 2015, it increased the withdrawal of funds from a special education trust account that is financed by the sale and lease of state land. That produced about $300 million a year.
Only thing is, that authorization expired last year.
Lawmakers have so far used other funds to keep the money going to schools. Hobbs, however, says renewing the trust withdrawals would free up that cash for other priorities and balance the budget.
One area of disagreement is that lawmakers have said they want all those dollars earmarked for teacher salary increases, something they estimate could boost pay by $4,000 a year. Hobbs also wants more money for teachers but also for support staff, school safety and general education funding.
There are other issues, including that any extension would have to be approved by voters. That leaves the risk that voters would reject the plan, meaning none of the funds actually would be available.
But there's also a political component to this.
In a social media post in March, Sen. Jake Hoffman, who chairs the Arizona Freedom Caucus, said that "some Republicans'' may be tempted to make a deal with the governor on a Prop 123 extension.
"The only winner in a political drug deal like this is Hobbs,'' wrote the Queen Creek Republican, saying the Democratic governor would take all the credit. "If Republicans decide to surrender on 123, they will be effectively underwriting the Hobbs' reelection campaign.''
Hobbs said there are two exceptions to her bill-signing moratorium.
One is a measure to provide another $4.75 million to the Department of Public Safety to improve 24/7 coverage on state roads by troopers.
The other would expand laws providing death benefits for first responders to also include a pilot who is employed by a law enforcement agency. That measure, which requires voter approval because it amends a fund set up by voters, would be retroactive to the first of the year to cover the February death of DPS helicopter pilot Robert Skankey, though it also would cover future such incidents.
