The Republican Arizona Senate president says lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs are making progress in budget negotiations and could finalize a deal by early June.
“I feel like we’re probably 97% of the way there. We’re very close,” Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Gilbert) said.
Hobbs and Republican lawmakers have spent most of the 2026 legislative session stuck in a budget stalemate that came to a head when Hobbs promised to veto every bill sent to her desk until GOP lawmakers unveiled their budget proposal.
The governor then promptly vetoed that plan, which passed out of the House and Senate without any Democratic support.
Republicans pushed that budget through after Hobbs walked away from negotiations in April, because GOP lawmakers would not include a renewal of the Prop. 123 education funding measure.
But, last week, Hobbs lifted the bill moratorium, a sign that negotiations were back on.
“I will say, now that the governor is back at the table, we are making progress,” Petersen said. “We’re meeting almost every single day.”
He said those meetings are focused on hashing out the details in the state’s spending plan, which is expected to carry a price tag of around $18 billion.
“It is an incredible amount of work to put a budget together, because you literally have to go every line,” Petersen said. “And you talk about the line, and you build a consensus on the line. Then you gray out that line.”
And then legislative leaders take that negotiated budget back to lawmakers and attempt to garner enough support to pass it.
The Legislature and Hobbs must agree to a budget by July 1 to avoid a government shutdown.
Petersen and House Speaker Steve Montenegro have sent those rank-and-file members home for most of May as negotiations play out.
The House adjourned on May 11 and isn’t expected back until June 1, and the Senate has only met regularly on Mondays for most of the month.
Asked when a budget could pass, Petersen said “early June is the best case scenario right now.”
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