A judge settled a dispute last night between Arizona’s Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs and our Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes over $115 million of opioid settlement money used to fill a hole in the state budget. Now, Maricopa Superior Court Judge John Hannah ruled that money can be used in state prisons, where the governor and the Legislature budgeted it.
In doing so, he dissolved a temporary restraining order that Mayes got just a few days ago that stopped the governor and the Legislature from taking the money. In his ruling, Hannah acknowledged the attorney general's concerns about how the state received the money and how it should be spent. But he said it isn’t clear that the governor’s plan to put the funds toward the Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry violates any of it.
Mayes sat down with The Show to talk more about it.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, attorney general.
KRIS MAYES: Hi Lauren, how are you?
GILGER: Good. Thank you for coming on. So, obviously this isn't the outcome you were hoping for here. Tell us about your reaction. Will you appeal this?
MAYES: Hi. Yeah. Well, obviously we're, we're really disappointed. Despite our best efforts, the judge in the case dissolved the temporary restraining order that had prevented the opioid funds from being swept into the state budget and, and sent to the Department of Correction. And you know, this is $125 million in funding that should have gone to the countless Arizonans who are on the front lines of this crisis, particularly in rural Arizona. And their needs have been just completely ignored by the governor and the Republican legislative leaders in this, in this action.
But I will say the judge did not rule on the more substantive questions about whether the actions of the legislature and the governor violate the settlement agreement. Or if this money will be spent in accordance with the approved purposes, those questions still, still still are out there. And I have serious concerns that the money won't be used appropriately. So we, we will see.
GILGER: So tell us about your broader concerns there. Like it seems like the judge agreed with the governor and the Legislature that these funds will go toward, you know, opioid-related issues in the prisons care treatment programs, things like that.
MAYES: I, I'm not sure. You know, I'm, I'm not sure that he, well, but perhaps, I mean, I, you, you could take that inference but I don't think that that has been proven. And one of the things we were hoping to get was to a hearing where we could present evidence essentially that that's not the case. I mean, we know, for instance, that the Legislature and the governor's staff were telling legislators that the money was going to be used to backfill the department corrections budget, not to provide new opioid treatment.
And that's what this money is supposed to be used for is new money, new opioid treatment. And you know, they, they called it a, a budget backfill in documents that were presented to legislators. You know, they had JLBC staff saying that it would just supplant the Department of Corrections budget. And so there's a lot of evidence that they, that they weren't gonna be use using it for approved purposes. And unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to, to really present that evidence.
So, you know, they, the lawyers for the governor and the Legislature said in front of a judge that they plan to spend all of this money on opioid-approved purposes and we will be watching like a hawk to make sure that that actually happens that they follow through on that. They set it in front of a judge, court of law and they'd better follow through on it.
GILGER: So let me ask you about another topic on your radar this week, the death penalty. The Arizona Supreme Court announced this week that it will weigh in on a dispute between you and Maricopa County attorney Rachel Mitchell over basically who has the power to request a warrant of execution in the state. This comes after Mitchell did that, requested a death warrant for a prisoner on death row, which is traditionally the, you know, area under the AG. What's your argument here?
MAYES: Well, you know, we're confident that the law is clear, that the, it is the attorney general who requests death warrants. You simply can't have 15 county attorneys going rogue, requesting execution warrants. There's no legal basis for that. We've researched this, and for the last 40 to 50 years. All execution warrants have been requested by the attorney general. It has never been done by a county attorney and, you know, on the, the attorney general under law speaks for the state before the Arizona Supreme Court. And so we will, we will make that case. We've made that case already before the Supreme court. We're pretty confident that we'll, we'll win this one.
Unfortunately, Rachel Mitchell is wasting taxpayer dollars with this. You know, I would, I would say it's pretty, pretty clear, she's doing it because she's in a tough primary race. She's got a very conservative, far right opponent and, and, and this is sort of, you know, obviously geared toward that.
GILGER: Last minute here for you. I want to ask about the broader picture when it comes to capital punishment because you had suspended this kind of alongside the governor when you took office. But you told Mitchell's office recently, you plan to take up executions again next year. Are, do you no longer have, you know, the concerns going forward about how the death penalty has been playing out here?
MAYES: You know, I, I, yeah, I absolutely did, tell the county attorney that we intend to move forward in, in January or early, in the year. Look, the, the Department of Corrections, the head of the Department of Corrections Ryan Thornell has indicated he is operationally ready to move forward. We have done our, you know, some of our own due diligence on this. Obviously, I would like to see the judge who is doing the independent review, finish his report. He was, I believe, supposed to finish that after a year. Now, we're going into the second year, I think, you know, it's time to, it's time to go.
We have victims’ families who are waiting for, for the sentences that were levied against the killers of their loved ones to be implemented, and in fairness to them and in honoring the fact that we do have the death penalty in Arizona, it's time to move forward.
GILGER: All right, we will leave it there for now. Attorney General Kris Mayes joining us. Thank you as always, appreciate it.
MAYES: Thanks, Lauren.
