Gov. Katie Hobbs’ agenda for the new year includes a focus on affordability, border security and ensuring a key public-education funding measure doesn’t lapse.
Ahead of her State of the State speech on Monday, Hobbs said she plans to focus on cost-of-living issues affecting Arizonans in 2025.
The governor said that will include proposals focused on housing and child care, both topics that received significant attention last year, when the governor signed several proposals — and vetoed one against the wishes of many fellow Democrats — designed to increase the state’s housing supply.
“We're going to have a pretty ambitious proposal around child care,” Hobbs said. “We've been working with the business community, and want to create a public private partnership that will lower child care costs for up to two, by up to two thirds for Arizona families that right now can't access it.”
Last year, lawmakers approved just $12 million of the $100 million Hobbs sought for child care assistance for individuals who qualify for federal subsidies.
“So this proposal will go beyond that in terms of the income level of families that it will help,” Hobbs said.
Like the first two years of her tenure, Hobbs will have to contend with a Republican-led legislature to push that agenda. Republicans — who held slim, two-vote majorities in the Arizona House and Senate last year — won additional seats in both chambers in the November elections.
“I feel really good about the legislative team we have in place and the work we've done over the last year to really build relationships across the aisle, to work with legislators on getting legislation to the place where I feel good about signing it,” Hobbs said. “… I don't just sit up here and wish for bills that I can veto.”
Border security is one area of potential agreement.
“I think that safety and security of our communities is a big priority for Arizonans,” Hobbs said. “I think that came through loud and clear in the election, and I've been focused on border security even before the election.”
Republican leaders in the Arizona Senate also listed border security as a key pillar of their agenda for the upcoming legislative session.
That includes a commitment to “ensure statewide law enforcement support of federal efforts to keep our communities safe and end the scourge of fentanyl and human trafficking,” according to their plan.
Hobbs said she plans to ask for continued funding for Operation Secure, a program using state-level resources to support federal border security operations, including National Guard support for efforts to disrupt fentanyl trafficking through Arizona’s border communities.
“Those are the kind of things that we should be working in partnership with federal agents on that provide real and meaningful security for our communities,” Hobbs said.
Hobbs may have engendered some goodwill amongst Republicans in recent days when she spoke out in support of the Laken Riley Act, federal legislation that would require undocumented immigrants who are charged with certain crimes to be taken into custody.
“With this particular piece of legislation, it is responsive to what Arizonans are asking for,” Hobbs said. “We don't want criminals in our communities, and this gives law enforcement just one more tool.”
The Republican-backed legislation recently passed through Congress with some Democratic support, including from Arizona Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego, but angered other Arizona Democrats.
“This political statement of a bill infringes on constitutional standards and gives Trump the green light to unleash racial profiling and mass deportations,” state Sen. Analise Ortiz (D-Phoenix) said on social media. “It violates due process rights of the accused. Its potential to allow states to upend federal immigration policy is chilling.”
Hobbs hasn’t ruled out collaborating with the incoming Trump administration on border security efforts, though she said she won’t support any attempt to deport Dreamers, undocumented residents brought to the U.S. as children who have received temporary protection from deportation.
“Dreamers, they are Arizonans in every sense of the word, and I want to make sure that they're not being harmed,” Hobbs said.
The governor could run into more GOP opposition trying to push her education agenda, which has long included a desire to rollback Arizona’s expansive school voucher program.
Hobbs acknowledged that type of rollback is a non-starter with the Republicans who control the legislature but said she plans to introduce a “robust plan” to combat fraud within the system after Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes brought charges against individuals accused of defrauding the system in two separate cases last year.
“I think from Day 1, those of us who opposed this … universal ESA program talked about the potential for fraud and abuse, and we have seen that time and again, because there are no guard rails,” Hobbs said. “And so I think that the more that information is made public, while the ESA program is a popular program, nobody wants their taxpayer dollars being spent so that mansions can add a grand piano or kids are taking ski lessons and things like that.”
Hobbs said she will introduce the specifics of that plan in her State of the State speech on Monday.
Hobbs also expressed optimism that lawmakers will act quickly during the new legislative session to begin the process to renew Proposition 123, an education funding measure set to expire at the end of June.
Since voters narrowly passed Prop. 123 in 2016, it has injected billions of dollars into Arizona public schools by boosting the share public schools receive from the state’s land trust fund to 6.9%, up from 2.5%.
The fund was valued at $9.3 billion as of December and is scheduled to disburse a total of $481 million this year to 13 beneficiaries, including K-12 schools and universities, according to the Arizona Treasurer’s Office.
Voters narrowly passed the proposition in 2016, and lawmakers need to send a new proposal to the ballot to renew the measure, which expires at the end of June.
Whatever plan lawmakers approve does not need Hobbs’ approval to make it to the ballot, but she is taking part in negotiations.
“We've been talking throughout the interim with stakeholders, with legislative leadership on both sides of the aisle, and I think there's agreement in principle on what an extension needs to do,” said Hobbs, who hopes lawmakers act in time to put the extension in front of voters in a May special election.
Separate Prop. 123 extensions put forward by Democrats and Republicans last year failed to gain traction at the legislature. The parties disagreed over how much money schools should take from the trust fund and how exactly that funding should be used.