KJZZ’s Friday NewsCap revisits some of the biggest stories of the week from Arizona and beyond.
To talk about budget drama at the state Capitol overnight, the ongoing fight between Maricopa County supervisors and the recorder and more, The Show sat down with Paul Bentz of HighGround and attorney Tom Ryan.
Conversation highlights
MARK BRODIE: So Paul, I assume that you were up at 2 o'clock in the morning this morning when the Senate wrapped up its work. Thank you for still coming in just a few hours later. Seems like a few one-fingered salutes maybe between the two, the two chambers at the Legislature yesterday.
PAUL BENTZ: Well, fortunately, I was asleep in my bed, but I know some of my colleagues were not. I did, I did get texts at 2 a.m. And if you wonder why the listenership is down potentially this morning, it's, you know, folks are starting to wake up, have their coffee. Hope, hopefully they're waking up with us.
Yeah, it certainly seems like a contentious relationship between the House and the Senate right now. You had, the Senate come together with a budget bill that was ostensibly going to be sent over to the House. And instead of working on it today and maybe tomorrow and trying to get it done before the end of the weekend, the House adjourned until Monday.
Seeing that, then we saw the Senate turn around, pass their bills about 2 o'clock, and then abruptly end the session without the concurrence of the House, which is fairly unheard of in Arizona politics.
BRODIE: Yeah, Tom, what do you, I mean, it seems like, and it's not necessarily a contention just between the House and Senate. It seems contention between Republican leadership in the House and Senate.
TOM RYAN: Oh my, yes, this is a, this is a fight for the MAGA base. They are, the disputes about what are what's going to get funded in the state of Arizona is, is dividing these people. You know, what's interesting between the Senate and the House, they're both led by the Republican Party. They're showing that they're just as dysfunctional as the Arizona Democratic Party.
BRODIE: We'll get to that.
RYAN: It's really sad because this is something that, the budget, it should be the priority every session, that should be done first, and then you can nibble around the edges and all the culture war issues and everything else that they like to fight about. But The budget should, should have been something that should have been addressed upfront a long time ago. And now we, we end up with these partisan politics not only between Democrats and Republicans, but within the Republican Party itself.
BRODIE: Yeah, so Paul, like what's the, what's the endgame here because the Senate, you know, they, they're, they're saying we're done. So House, take it or leave it on the budget. The House, of course, late last week passed their own budget, which was policy-wise, money-wise not super different, but policy-wise pretty different from the Senate's, right?
BENTZ: I mean, one of the challenges is that one of them was clearly negotiated with the governor and the other one was clearly not. And there's some different priorities here. The Republicans want to significantly cut Medicaid, which I think is a big mistake. They also want to stop the enrollment of childless adults onto the Medicaid expansion that was passed and has been incredibly successful for the state, which is, again, I think a mistake.
So there's some different politics here. There's also bills on both sides that have been passed around that are priorities for some of the legislators that they've been trying to hold out their votes or, you know, trying to negotiate that as part of the budget discussion.
And basically the Senate put an end to that. They passed their bills, they sent them to the House and, and said they want to end the session. The House doesn't necessarily need to accept that. In fact, I don't think that they will, which will bring people back.
The unfortunate thing, and that most folks may not know is that there is a huge wedding coming up in Italy, and many legislators are going to this Italian wedding, so it's not because our state's running out of money. It's not the July 1 budget deadline that's driving these budget negotiations. It's a grand beautiful wedding in Italy that's driving this deadline that we're looking at.
BRODIE: It is worth noting though that there, there is another deadline that of course, the end of the fiscal year, which is a week from Monday.
RYAN: Right, we could be facing, we could be facing a government shutdown because one, somebody wants to go to a wedding in Italy, and two, they can't get their act together.
And I, I just want to address one thing that Paul brought up because it's an important issue, the cuts to Medicaid and Medicaid expansion, those are financially harmful to the state of Arizona, not only to the individuals who, who need Medicaid coverage, which we call AHCCCS here in Arizona, but it's gonna, it's going to it's going to do damage to rural health care facilities and, and restrict and reduce health care facilities, health care availability in rural areas. That's not a good thing.
BENTZ: And that's been one of the priorities and what, what the governor's negotiated and it's part of what is in the Repub, the proposal, the bipartisan proposal that was passed out of the Senate. But what we saw is several of the more conservative legislators, some of the MAGA legislators, as Tom was calling them, not support it and vote no.
And in fact some of leveled criticisms against the speaker of the House, who's running for now for, for attorney general …
BRODIE: Senate president.
BENTZ: Sorry, the Senate president, who's now running for attorney general, that he's not proposing an actual Republican budget, but rather that this is a Democratic budget, you know, backed by the governor. A
BRODIE: And we did hear a lot of that in for Republican senators who voted against it and presumably you'll hear that when the House comes back and takes this up or does something else, right?
BENTZ: I think so. It also portends what's going to happen next year for the Senate president race. I think one of there's some, you know, machinations behind the scenes, but as we know, as you just mentioned, Senate President [Warren] Petersen is running for attorney general. He will not be back. There will be a new Senate president.
There are two senators who are both term-limited that were former speakers of the House in both Gowan and Mesnard who are not going to be eligible. So you're looking at really what does it shape up for the Senate president race next year?
It's, it's presumed to be T.J. Shope versus Janae Shamp as sort of the general consensus of where it's likely to go. But where one voted for the budget, one did not vote for the budget, and I think that that budget fight is going to carry over to next year.
RYAN: I, I just want to bring up one thing about the government shutdown. It's going to be owned by the Republican Party in the Legislature, and a, and a government shutdown in the state of Arizona means essential services are going to be cut. It's going to be noticed and, and in this time frame, when, when the economy is not doing well, it's going to be noticed at the ballot box next year is my best guess.
BRODIE: Tom, let me sit with you and ask you about one other bill. The Senate did pass yesterday, which was a bill dealing with Chase Field, helping the Diamondbacks do some upgrades and maintenance to Chase Field. This is a bill that has been going through a lot of different iterations over the course of the year, in terms of are we going to allow the team to divert sales tax money? Is it going to be bonding, like what's it gonna be? How much is it gonna be?
This, I mean, this seems like one that at the end of the day seems to have bipartisan support. There's been a lot of negotiations on this.
RYAN: Oh yeah, no, there's a, there's a lot of moving parts. And here's the thing about having a professional sports team in your community. Once you get it, you can't get rid of it. And, and I'm not saying that to be mean or cruel or funny, but, they, these are massive structures that they build like, you know, the Chase build. I, I always think of it as the BOB still, but here's …
BRODIE: Old school.
RYAN: Yeah, oh yeah, I'm old school, baby. I, I was here when the Hindenburg went down. But the, the thing about the, the thing about what they're doing is one, they're, they're capping the, the amount of money that It's going to be public money.
That's good, but they're going to be raiding other they're going to be raiding other tax funds to, to make up for it, and they're making the Kendrick family put in …
BRODIE: Quarter of a billion.
RYAN: Quarter of a billion, but that's kind of a squishy commitment I think from the way I read it. But you know, once you get a team, you're either gonna, either got to play ball or you got to see them go like what happened with the Coyotes.
BRODIE: Well, and Paul, politically speaking anyway, one of the big holdups previously had been that, the city of Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego was not on board. Maricopa County supervisors were a little bit iffy in terms of how much tax money they would lose if it was diverted to the stadium district. It seems as though those entities are now on board, which means it seemingly means if the legislature sends this to the governor, she'll sign it.
BETNZ: It does appear that way. And anytime you can pay $250 million to get $500 million, I think most folks are going to do that. Phoenix got their sales tax capped at about 3.5 or $3 million something like that out of their sales tax. It also taps into other sales tax sources.
There's a bit of irony here that the Kendricks have spent a lot of time supporting their group, the Free Enterprise Club, which came out against the Prop. 479 half-cent sales tax for transportation. That fund is going to be tapped to help pay for this, as well, as well as some other sources.
So, ultimately, it sounds like the negotiations stalled for quite a while, but at the end it, it looks like they have a deal. It does look like it's going to cut into things that Phoenix has priorities for. It does look like it's going to cut in to transportation funding, it does look like it's going to cut into the state general fund as well, but ultimately, it's used.
They, they say that they put in some guideposts there, and I see Tom reading the same article I was from Fourth Estate 48, which was a great rundown. Fourth Estate 48 has a great rundown of what's involved in it, and there's guideposts, that's not supposed to be used for luxury boxes. It's not supposed to be used to redo the pool or anything like that. But, but there's still a lot of wiggle room in what they can use the funding.
RYAN: I thought one interesting thing was, and, and you're right, Dylan Rosenblatt's been on this like, you know, like a maniac. He's been doing great work, but it redirects 82% of state income taxes from Chase Field employee salaries, including players. That is not a minor thing.
If you think about the tens of millions and even hundreds of millions of dollars that go to these players, that money is not going back to the state coffers. It's going to be going back to make the Kendrick stadium here even nicer. There, we had been, or they had been asking for 100%, but we, the state gets to at least keep 18% of the income tax instead of the, you know, losing it all.
BENTZ: So one other item that was mentioned is that related facilities, I mean, I, I, you know, when you look at some of the palatial training facilities that we've seen, some of the locker rooms, things like that, there, you know, if, if we're talking about flat screens in the locker room that this funding can be used for, I, I, you know, when you say, oh, good news, it won't be used for luxury items, I do sort of wonder if, if we're really going to get a transparent look at this. It's not been incredibly transparent on how the money has been spent in the past.
I do think that it is valuable to have a sports team here. I do think that they're an economic generator. I do think they're a key portion of downtown. So I'm not saying anything negative there, but I do think just like in other parts of government, whether it's ESAs or other spending that folks, taxpayers would like a little bit of transparency on how the money is.
RYAN: One man's, one man's Dom Pérignon is another man's cold duck.
