KJZZ’s Friday NewsCap revisits some of the biggest stories of the week from Arizona and beyond.
To talk about the governor issuing a moratorium on new bills, the debate over a measure on Axon’s proposed new campus and more, The Show sat down with Paul Bentz of HighGround and Sam Richard of Consilium Consulting.
Conversation highlights
MARK BRODIE: So, Paul, let me start with you on the latest ratcheting up of this controversy over funding for the Department of Developmental Disabilities has been going on for a few weeks now. It’s slated to run out of money in just a couple of weeks now if it doesn’t get an infusion of cash.
Both the House and Senate Appropriations Committee held hearings this week on a bill that would give the agency the money to do this, but it came with a number of other restrictions that Democrats and the governor — and some Republicans also — don’t like.
PAUL BENTZ: Sure. One of the challenges was that there was a bipartisan solution on the table. And instead of adopting that, the chairman added three additional legislators to the panel just to ensure that it wouldn’t succeed. And some of the cuts that they’re proposing — including cutting parents’ time that they can be paid to help take care of their children in half — is some of the things that the governor hasn’t stood for.
And now she’s evoked what some folks are calling the nuclear option. She is saying that until this issue gets solved, she’s going to veto every bill that comes across her desk.
BRODIE: Yeah. Sam, I mean, it seems like there’s a lot of bad will and bad blood on each side of this one.
SAM RICHARD: Absolutely. And I think what’s really unfortunate is there are real people in the middle of it. Right. These are tens of thousands of families and individuals that require extraordinary care. And their parent caregivers are there to do that.
And it’s not because they’re looking for an extra couple of bucks. It’s because there aren’t people who know the child and know the care that these children require.
And what’s happened is legislative leaders at the Capitol have really turned this into a very unfortunate football. It was an issue that needed to be addressed. And there were some real honest and serious solutions on the table. And I think the fact that those weren’t taken up with integrity, I think says a lot about the state of affairs of the Capitol.
BRODIE: Sam, I want to ask you about the issue that Paul brought up, which was that the House Republican leadership added members to the Appropriations Committee, essentially to make sure that this amendment by Rep. Julie Willoughby (R-Chandler) — we heard from her in tears during the montage there — to make sure that her amendment, which had bipartisan support, would not pass.
This is something that we see from time to time at the Capitol, right? Like members are added to committees for particular reasons.
RICHARD: Yeah, absolutely. And just a couple of other things that I would say there. One, this is an issue area and a policy area that Rep. Willoughby knows. Health care and human services is one that she’s really dedicated a lot of her time and energy and understanding in her tenure at the Capitol.
But the other thing that’s interesting is Rep. Willoughby is not a rank and file backbencher. She is the whip of the majority caucus. So not only did she bring a serious bipartisan proposal to the table to be considered in that committee, she was rolled by her own leadership, and she is in leadership.
I think that what you know is going to happen over the course of the next few days and weeks in response to that action is going to be very interesting to see.
BRODIE: Yeah, that could be really interesting. That’s a good point that Rep. Willoughby is in leadership. And as Sam said, her own leadership did not support her on this.
BENTZ: That’s right. And it’s just one of the things that folks are really sort of fed up with when you look at the legislative shenanigans. Only 35% of the electorate think the state is headed in the right direction. And this is one of the things that we see: not focused on the issues that matter most.
Dealing with this issue and moving on to the other items of the day seems like it would be an easy fix, bipartisan slam dunk to be willing to say, “These are the things we can get together on and agree on so that the differences play out.” But Republicans are not wasting this opportunity. They’re making a point about it, and they’re trying to use it as leverage.
Meanwhile, things like Prop. 123, the budget itself — those issues are not being addressed because we’re mired in these types of controversy where they’re playing games.
BRODIE: So let’s talk about the governor’s step here, which she took, which other governors before her have taken. Gov. (Jan) Brewer said, “Don’t send me any bills, I’ll veto them,” when she was waiting for a budget and Medicaid expansion. Gov. (Doug) Ducey, of course, did this as well. He actually did veto a bunch of bills while waiting for a budget.
Gov. Hobbs has said “If the budget has already been sent to me, those are excluded. Those don’t count. If you send me anything new, I’m going to veto them.” Does she get her way on this?
BENTZ: Well, I mean, I think it’s a smart move by the governor. We’ve seen other governors use it, Republican governors. So it’s hard to decry it.
BRODIE: It tends to work.
BENTZ: It does. And also they are decrying it. (Rep. David) Livingston (R-Peoria) said some things about her in her ivory tower, drinking wine or something like that. It’s gotten to the level here where she’s done what folks already said is the nuclear option. It’s generally really effective.
And so she’s going to take action on the bills that arrived before yesterday. And then now from here on out, she’s basically challenging them to forward things. Democrats took it a step further by actually voting no on things that they might have even wanted to support in solidarity with the governor.
BRODIE: And so Sam, we heard just before, Rep. David Livingston, the chair of the Appropriations Committee, saying she’s not going to get her way. So something’s got to give here.
RICHARD: Yeah. I think that it’s really easy to believe that when you have the gavel in a certain moment of time. But I’m not sure that Chairman Livingston is going to get his way either. I think that there’s going to be perhaps solutions that we haven’t even discussed publicly at the Legislature or around the Legislature that are going to start to show themselves in the coming days and weeks.
BRODIE: I mean, it kind of has to happen in the coming days, right? I mean, the money runs out at the end of the month.
RICHARD: Absolutely. It is an urgent need. I was more kind of speaking to the fact that I think the power position and the kind of the puffing of the chest of saying the governor’s not going to get her way is not going to bear well for any future conversations.
As Paul mentioned, we still have an $18 billion budget to negotiate. We have, you know, education funding that faces a fiscal cliff coming up here shortly. And there’s a lot of big, important issues that we need to be discussing. And this should have been taken care of three months ago when it was first identified as an issue.
BRODIE: One more thing on this I want to ask you guys about which is that recall petitions have been taken out against four members of the House: House Speaker Steve Montenegro (R-Goodyear), the Majority Leader Michael Carbone (R-Buckeye) and Rep. David Livingston — and also … Matt Gress (R-Phoenix).
Sam, we’ve only had one lawmaker actually recalled. That was Russell Pearce after SB 1070. This seems like a particularly steep hill to climb. But you also have some pretty motivated people, some pretty ticked off people here.
RICHARD: Yeah. And I think between elections, this is the moment and the tool that citizens have to kind of signal their broad-based disgust, frankly, with the direction of the leaders at the Legislature.
And just one point of clarification: Rep. Gress the chairman of the Education Committee.
BENTZ: So one thing on recalls, they’re incredibly difficult. You need 25% of the total vote for the past election. So we’re talking about tens of thousands of signatures in a short period of time. You have 120 days to gather them. Even after the 120 days, we’re talking about having a recall election right before the actual election next year, before these guys are reelected again.
So it’s more of a display of disgust, as Sam mentioned. It’s more of a challenge to bring attention to an issue. But I do suspect this problem will be solved. Our Legislature doesn’t really waste a good crisis. They’re just like other folks. They cram before the test.
Last week, good deadline. We’ve got a good deadline. Hopefully they’ll come together and find the solution. The governor has said, “Bring me something that I can support,” but the challenge is she probably needs to be at the table as well. This isn’t just “keep bringing things back to me until you give me something I like.” I think they need to sit down and negotiate.
BRODIE: Well, and that’s one of the issues that Republicans have been criticizing the governor over is that, “You’re not at the table. You won’t negotiate. You’re not meeting with us.”
I wonder if that is telling in any way, talking about things like the budget or Prop. 123, things that are going to need negotiation and bipartisan buy-in.
If Republicans are not happy with the governor’s level of involvement on this, does that say anything about the other things we have to do this year?
BENTZ: Well, it also speaks to what do they determine is negotiation, what the definition of is is. They’re saying they’re “negotiating.” But are they really truly negotiating as well? I mean, in some of these situations, you look at the position that they’re starting at, it’s also an unreasonable position. So really we’re so far apart on these things that I don’t know if anybody is walking into these negotiations really with good intentions.
And so it’s really a level-setting exercise. And the things like this, it seems like it would have been an easy way to get some of these challenges like this out of the way so they could deal with the bigger problems. But they seem to want to fight about everything.
RICHARD: Yeah. And I would also just add that I don’t think that that is a universal belief that there is a lack of willingness to negotiate or even have an open door policy. If you ask other leaders or just look at the demonstrable results of bills that the governor has signed so far.
I think that we’ll talk a bit later about a member of the Legislature who has had a very important piece of his own legislation signed while at the same time another bill that he marked as a priority piece of legislation vetoed. I think that there was probably some negotiations and some conversations that happened as a part of that.
I think leaders in the housing policy world are very well aware of how open and forward the governor’s office is in active negotiations, as with land use and water policy. So I think that if you come to the table with integrity and honesty and openness, I think that that would be received by the governor’s office.
And I think that if Chairman Livingston isn’t receiving that, then maybe take a look at the motivations that brings them to the table and start there.
BRODIE: So, Sam you kind of, teased this. Just before the break, state Rep. Leo Biasiucci of Lake Havasu City had two bills that went to the governor dealing with the so-called Make America Healthy Again movement. One was signed, one was not.
The bill that was signed would prohibit ultraprocessed foods from being in school lunches. The governor, though, vetoed a bill that would have prohibited people on SNAP, commonly referred to as food stamps, from buying soda with those benefits. Any surprises here?
RICHARD: No, none at all. I think that the seeds of Mr. Biasiucci’s bill on healthy school lunches, you can even point back to to shadows of administrations past federally that kind of talked about the importance of healthy food and responsible diets starting at the public school level.
And I think the other bill, what we’re talking about was very disparaging towards individuals that receive these SNAP benefits. And I think that no one necessarily disagrees that, you know, soda is something that we should limit in our diets. But I think the natural effect of signing that bill would have created a second class or an underclass of purchasers of these products. And I think that was the sole reason why the governor vetoed that one.
BRODIE: Paul, on a very political level, one of these bills had bipartisan support and one did not.
BENTZ: Absolutely. And I think that’s sort of the challenge. It’s ironic that the Republicans who have a president who has a Diet Coke button in the White House are the ones trying to ban soda for other individuals. Also it’s something that that limiting factor, while it is probably the healthiest solution, is just interesting that that’s the type of issues that they’re planning to push.
On the healthy school lunch issue, it certainly did have bipartisan support. It certainly makes a lot of sense. The challenge is, where does that money come from for a healthier item? Some of these items that we’re talking about, ultraprocessed, unfortunately generally is a little bit cheaper. That’s why people default to it, because schools are limited in their funding.
And the other question I really have is: When it comes to education issues like this, are these the issues that are front of mind, top of mind that people are caring most about when it comes to education? When we have, as Sam talked about, a fiscal cliff coming for one of our large education funding initiatives, Prop. 123, that reaches expiration. We also have an aggregate expenditure limit that will come up year after year because there’s no permanent solution to that.
Are we really caring what’s in the school lunches when we have these much, much bigger education issues to address?
BRODIE: It’s an interesting point. I mean, there’s certainly research that suggests that students, for example, who are hungry, who don’t have breakfast or don’t have a solid lunch don’t learn as well. Like, we learn better our bodies are sated, as it were. But to Paul’s point, are these really the top-of-mind education issues in Arizona?
RICHARD: Yeah, I would say that the funding definitely should be an integrated part of every one of these conversations. Although I will say that I trust our legislative leaders to aspire to being able to walk and chew cinnamon bark at the same time.
BRODIE: Maybe sugar-free gum.
RICHARD: That’s right. Sugar-free gum. But I think that is an interesting conversation when we talk about — the count the last time I looked was somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,850 unique pieces of legislation that were filed, in this legislative session alone. Not all of those ideas are serious and really going to move the needle in important topics.
Every now and again, you have an issue like this that, while important in kind of an esoteric way, also catches fire and brings people like RFK Jr. and celebrity doctors like Dr. (Daniel) Amen here to the Capitol to talk about the importance of moving these policies forward.
But I do think that it isn’t an either/or, it can be a both/and. And I think that that’s also why you saw the governor sign this, not just because of that bipartisan support, but because this is a piece of a broader conversation on responsible education.
