Republican lawmakers in the Arizona Senate unveiled their list of priorities this week ahead of the 2024 legislative session that begins on Jan. 8.
The legislators highlighted previously announced plans to lower gas prices and raise teacher pay alongside a long list of other proposals that could potentially gain Democratic support, including solutions to address the state’s affordable housing shortage and bills to provide more resources for those experiencing homelessness
But whether Democratic lawmakers — and Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs will get on board with those proposals — will depend on the details.
And the Republican senators specifically took aim at Hobbs while discussing their affordable housing bills, blaming the governor’s comments about the dwindling water supply in some Arizona communities for dissuading homebuilders from manufacturing more housing.
Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Gilbert) said Republicans will be looking for ways to increase the state’s housing supply.
“As far as housing goes, it’s very simple: it’s supply and demand,” Petersen said.
He said Republican bills could focus on making it easier to build housing and helping developers secure the 100-year water supply they need to build subdivisions.
Petersen also said there will be no bills introduced to remove that 100-year water supply requirement, a condition Petersen has recently criticized as arbitrary.
In addition to housing, Republicans said they plan to introduce bills to provide more resources to individuals experiencing homelessness. Sen. T.J. Shope (R-Coolidge) said that could include providing additional resources to access treatment for substance abuse and mental health disorders.
Other Republican priorities are likely to face opposition from Democrats, including bills dealing with free speech on college campuses.
In describing his bill, Sen. Anthony Kern (R-Glendale) said he wants specifically to deal with protecting conservative speech.
“We want to promote an environment where students feel comfortable exploring different ideas and beliefs and not to potentially chill the learning experience,” Kern said. “Censorship and condemnation of conservative values will not be tolerated.”
Kern led a committee this year that looked into allegations that faculty at ASU attempted to cancel an event earlier this year featuring conservative speakers Charlie Kirk and Dennis Prager. The event was not canceled, but the fallout led a conservative donor who funded the T.W. Lewis Center at Arizona State University to pull his funding, which resulted in the closure of the center.
At those hearings, Republican lawmakers said they wanted to “gut” university funding.
Republican lawmakers also want to rein in the power of state agencies. Petersen said that could take the form of legislation that would require state agencies to come back to the Legislature for approval any time they want to implement new regulations.
Sen. Ken Bennett (R-Prescott) said Republicans will introduce bills to make Arizona elections “transparent, trackable and publicly verifiable,” though the exact language of those bills is not yet available. Last year, Hobbs vetoed dozens of Republican election bills, including bills that would have banned the use of electronic ballot tabulators.
Sen. Wendy Rogers (R-Flagstaff) did share details of one election bill Republicans plan to introduce. It would fix an issue caused by a recount law passed in 2021 that could potentially cause Arizona to miss a federal deadline to submit presidential election results next year.
Rogers said that bill would not move up the date for Arizona’s presidential preference election, but she did not rule out attaching other election reforms to that bill — a strategy that could put the recount fix at risk if Republicans decide to attach proposals that do not have Hobbs’ support.
Petersen, the Senate president, sounded optimistic about the upcoming session but hedged his bets when asked how Republicans will pitch those proposals to Hobbs, who set a record by vetoing 143 Republican bills last year.
“I would imagine fewer vetoes, but who knows; it’s really up to the body and the governor,” he said.
The state’s budget will loom large over the session as Arizona is facing a $400 million budget shortfall this fiscal year, but Republican lawmakers say the problem is manageable.
Democrats have put the blame for the deficit on Republicans, arguing the expanded school voucher program and “flat” income tax passed in 2021 under former Gov. Doug Ducey are the leading causes of the deficit.
The bipartisan budget signed by Hobbs last year also included billions of dollars in pork projects supported by individual lawmakers.
But Sen. John Kavanagh (R-Fountain Hills), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the budget shortfall is not a “cliff,” arguing it is not comparable to the Great Recession when the state was forced to cut billions of dollars in ongoing funding from its budget.
“These are all manageable and it’s not a cliff,” he said. “And anybody who starts screaming it’s a cliff, is doing it for political purposes.”
Kavanagh says much of the funding at issue is one-time spending, or spending that was not intended to extend beyond this year. That includes road projects that Kavanagh says are delayed anyway due to a worker shortage.
