KJZZ's Sun Up is a weekday morning podcast giving you the Arizona news you need to start your day. It is the biggest stories of the day from KJZZ News.
Transcript
ANNOUNCER: KJZZ’s Sun Up is supported by Banner Health, Arizona’s largest nonprofit healthcare system. Last year, Banner reinvested more than $1.1 billion in community health and charity care. Banner Health, nonprofit for Arizona. BannerHealth.com/nonprofitforAZ.
PHIL LATZMAN: Hey, this is KJZZ’s Sun Up, your daily news update from here in Phoenix on our state and region. I’m Phil Latzman, the host for this podcast, a daily digest of Arizona news as reported by our KJZZ news team. It’s Tuesday, June 16, 2026. Thanks for being here. Hope the week’s off to a good start. Let’s seize on that good start and keep going with the latest information that starts now.
The Maricopa County Recorder and Board of Supervisors were back in court on Monday in a fight over control of the county’s elections that has now dragged on for more than a year. From the politics desk, Wayne Schutsky has details.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Recorder Justin Heap accused the board of ignoring a court ruling that found it had illegally withheld information technology staff and resources from the Recorder’s Office. Heap's attorney, James Rogers, also accused the board of blocking Heap from taking control of election duties that belong to the recorder’s office and asked Judge Scott Blaney to hold them in contempt.
JAMES ROGERS: There’s been a — from the recorder’s perspective — basically no movement from the board to comply with any aspect of it, which is particularly concerning given that early ballots are set to be mailed out in just over a week.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: The board’s attorney denied the allegations and accused the recorder’s team of blocking negotiations and misleading the judge. However, both sides agreed to tentative plans to meet with a mediator to hash out their issues. Wayne Schutsky, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
PHIL LATZMAN: Meanwhile, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge has called on Recorder Heap and other county officials to resolve their differences outside of the courtroom. Judge Scott Blaney made the statements after the latest hearing in the ongoing legal fight over election responsibilities.
JUDGE SCOTT BLANEY: I keep saying it, this court has no desire to be in between elected officials, especially around election time.
PHIL LATZMAN: A lawyer from Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell asked Blaney to block a Trump-aligned law firm from providing election advice to the recorder, saying that job belongs to Mitchell alone. But Heap's attorney, James Rogers, denied the allegations and said he is abiding by an earlier order that found he could represent the recorder in a lawsuit against the Board of Supervisors.
Well, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs has signed a bipartisan budget into law, which includes massive tax cuts. Also from our politics team, Camryn Sanchez has details on that.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: The state budget includes $1.4 billion in tax cuts over the next few years to align with federal cuts the Trump administration passed last year. Hobbs advocated all year for only implementing some of those cuts, calling it the "middle-class tax cuts package." However, in negotiations with GOP lawmakers, she eventually adopted full tax conformity. Hobbs touted the fact that every year she’s been in office, the state has cut taxes.
KATIE HOBBS: While Arizonans are struggling with higher costs because of Washington’s misguided policies, um, I am going to continue to fight to lower costs and ensure that working-class families in Arizona can get ahead.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: The state budget also includes slight cuts to most state agencies with some exceptions. Camryn Sanchez, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
PHIL LATZMAN: Well, Republican state lawmakers say they are not obligated to budget for prison healthcare workers, even after a federal judge ordered them necessary to adequately care for inmates in state-run prisons. The budget deal includes less than half of the funding Governor Hobbs sought to comply with the court order — about $45 million of the more than $100 million that Hobbs had asked for. Republicans like Rep. David Livingston have argued that the federal judge has overstepped her authority.
REPRESENTATIVE DAVID LIVINGSTON: We appropriate. And if she wants to negotiate with us, or any judge does, they’re allowed to? They’re not doing that because they don’t think they need to. And we don’t need to fund what she’s asking for, either.
PHIL LATZMAN: It’s now up to the judge to determine if the limited new funds are enough to satisfy her order.
In other news, a judge has ordered the Trump administration to restore exhibits at national parks. As the Mountain West News Bureau’s Rachel Cohen reports, they were removed under an executive order to eliminate negative portrayals of American history.
RACHEL COHEN: A federal judge in Massachusetts has ordered the government to restore the signs within three weeks, accusing the administration of attempting to rewrite the nation’s history with a white-out pen. Conservation and historical groups sued after the Interior Department targeted hundreds of exhibits on climate change, civil rights, and diverse communities.
According to the lawsuit, officials removed a sign at the Grand Canyon explaining how the federal government claimed tribal land to create the park. In a statement, the Interior Department says the order came from a Biden-appointed judge and that it’s looking at options for appeal. For the Mountain West News Bureau, I’m Rachel Cohen.
PHIL LATZMAN: Well, just a year ago state lawmakers and Gov. Katie Hobbs agreed that people who were wrongfully convicted deserve some compensation from the state. Well now, that program is gone. And back to our politics team, Ben Giles has more on that.
BEN GILES: Strictly speaking, a provision tucked into the new state budget doesn't repeal the 2025 law that established the state's first-ever erroneous convictions fund. But the $3 million put into the fund last year is already spoken for. So far, 11 people have applied for restitution, in total seeking more than lawmakers budgeted for.
And the state's latest spending plan, approved last week, includes no new dollars for the fund. Republican budget negotiators said they never intended to put more state funds into the account. They argued county prosecutors are to blame for wrongful convictions and incarcerations, not the state. Ben Giles, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
PHIL LATZMAN: A bill designed to reform how family courts treat parents with a history of domestic violence unanimously passed the Arizona Legislature and awaits Governor Hobbs’ signature. Jill Ryan has more.
JILL RYAN: The bill is dubbed the Alec and Lydia Act after two children murdered by their own father in 2024 before he turned the gun on himself. Their mother, Hope Hooton, has been advocating to make it harder for parents with evidence of domestic violence or abuse from getting decision-making rights or access to their children.
HOPE HOOTON: There has to be a reason that I'm still here as well. I'm trying to turn what was a horrific tragedy into something positive that can help other children and other families.
JILL RYAN: The passing of this bill follows a separate tragedy last month where a mother had killed her two small children and then herself in Glendale. Jill Ryan, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
PHIL LATZMAN: Salt River Project has announced it'll be building a new battery storage site in Eastern Arizona. As Greg Hahne reports, the utility says it'll have new tech capable of lasting for twice as long as traditional utility batteries.
GREG HAHNE: That's because the new batteries will use carbon dioxide. The CO2 is stored as a liquid, then when energy is needed, it is heated into a gas which drives turbines. SRP says those batteries will be able to power more than 4,200 homes for over 10 hours. Traditional lithium-ion batteries tend to cap out at four hours.
That time constraint is often cited as one of the major limitations for renewable energy sources like solar, which can't provide energy overnight. Tessa Murdock with SRP says the project comes through a partnership with Google.
TESSA MURDOCK: Google will kind of cost share with us a portion of the pilot cost, and then in return they will receive the operational performance data and also input on some of the research.
GREG HAHNE: The plan is expected to be operational in 2029. Greg Hahne, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
PHIL LATZMAN: Well, a Flagstaff-based company will try to make history in outer space later this summer. Tony Perkins has more.
TONY PERKINS: Catalyst Space Technology CEO Ghonhee Lee says his company will launch a satellite designed to rescue a space telescope in danger of burning up in the Earth's atmosphere.
GHONHEE LEE: This is one of the most technically complex missions that you can do in space right now, to autonomously dock to a satellite that was never designed for servicing.
TONY PERKINS: NASA officials say this has never been done before, using completely ground-controlled spacecraft. The telescope is in a low Earth orbit, and Lee says it can be grabbed by a smaller satellite and boosted into a higher, safer orbit using noble gas thrusters.
The telescope is named after University of Arizona graduate Neil Gehrels, who went on to have a distinguished career as an astrophysicist. Gehrels died in 2017. The Catalyst mission is scheduled to start June 28.
PHIL LATZMAN: That's Tony Perkins reporting from Tucson.
In sports, baseball, Pavin Smith hit a tie-breaking solo homer off the right field foul pole, Ryan Nelson pitched seven quality innings, the Diamondbacks beat the Angels 4-3 last night in Phoenix. Smith broke a two-all tie in the seventh and launched his first homer, a homer in nearly a year, and he spent most of the season on the injured list after elbow surgery.
Lourdes Gurriel Jr. was also back in the lineup for the D-backs after missing three weeks with a hamstring injury; he had an RBI single. So the D-backs play the middle game of three with the Angels this evening at Chase Field.
And that will do it for this edition of KJZZ's Sun Up, Arizona's morning news podcast, this Tuesday, June the 16th. I'm Phil Latzman. Thanks so much for being with us, and we'll do it again tomorrow. Talk to you then.
