With a week left to avoid a government shutdown, Republican leaders in the Arizona House say they’ll advance their own budget plans despite opposition from Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs and GOP leadership in the Senate.
A bipartisan budget passed through the Arizona Senate late last week, but House Republicans adjourned instead of voting on the spending plan.
Shortly before the Senate passed that bipartisan package, Republican leaders in the House signaled they were on board, with Rep. David Livingston (R-Peoria) claiming most of the chamber’s GOP members could end up backing the budget.
But Livingston’s posture changed dramatically before the Senate had finished voting on its budget, chastising Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Gilbert) for supporting a “Democrat budget.”
And now House Republican leaders are refusing to explain what caused that change of heart.
“I’m not doing this guys. Go over there and talk to someone,” House Majority Leader Michael Carbone (R-Buckeye) said. “I’ve got no questions to answer. Sorry.”
Livingston also declined to comment, referring questions to House Speaker Steve Montenegro (R-Goodyear).
Over the weekend, Montenegro issued a statement claiming the Senate budget didn’t have enough support in the House to pass.
“The executive budget plan passed in the Senate does not have the votes in the House — with bipartisan opposition from Republicans and Democrats,” he said.
But those backing the bipartisan plan — both Republicans and Democrats — say that’s not true.
“If you put this Senate bipartisan negotiated budget on the board, it would pass and it would be signed into law,” House Minority Leader Oscar De Los Santos (D-Laveen) said.
Petersen made a similar statement Sunday.
“The plan last week was to pass out a bipartisan, bicameral budget and motion to sine die. We did that. Had it been put up for a vote, it would have passed and been signed into law,” he posted on social media.
The friction between the House, Senate and governor’s office has been ongoing for weeks and came to a head when the House passed its own budget proposal on June 14. That plan contained less spending than the deal that made it out of the Senate.
“The House from the beginning, from the start, has been very clear on what our priorities are. Our priorities are public safety, law enforcement, making sure that we’re keeping our communities safe,” Montenegro said. “Unfortunately, from the start the executive budget laid out a framework that did not line up with having those conversations, and we were pretty much told: take it or leave it approach.”
The Senate budget does include a 5% pay raise for Department of Public Safety officers, a 4% bonus for correctional officers, and a 15% raise for state firefighters.
But Montenegro said he was opposed to the way the Senate’s negotiations played out. Specifically, he said he didn’t like the way the Senate and Hobbs divided up an estimated $270 million budget surplus.
Under the plan, the governor, House Republicans and Senate Republicans each received about $90 million to spend on their priorities.
“The fact is that the House stated that we were not going to go with a framework that just focuses on member driven spending,” Montenegro said.
But Hobbs and Senate Democrats claimed they worked out their own plan because House Republicans refused to come to the negotiating table.
“For months I have worked with leaders of both parties, in both chambers, to craft a bipartisan, balanced, and fiscally responsible budget,” Hobbs said in a statement. “Sadly, House Republican leadership abdicated their responsibility and refused to meaningfully participate in those bipartisan conversations.”
The impasse comes with just a week left to pass a state budget. If the legislature fails to pass a new spending plan by June 30, some government functions would shut down in July.
To avoid that, House Republicans are again advancing their own budget plan without support from Senate Republican leadership or the governor. That so-called continuation budget would prevent a government shutdown if lawmakers don’t pass a new budget by the end of the month.
“The house is interested in making sure that our government is functioning and that we have the necessary resources moved forward so that there is no government shutdown,” Montenegro said.
But Hobbs has already said she will veto that plan.
“Speaker Montenegro knows this, yet he has chosen to continue with this farce as an exercise in pointless political grandstanding,” Hobbs said in a statement.
The House of Representatives is expected to vote on that continuation budget later this week.
