More Arizona agencies have Senate-confirmed directors now than they did earlier this year. That’s after the chamber voted to confirm 12 directors this year, including those for the Departments of Economic Security, Administration, Homeland Security and Child Safety, among eight others.
That means those nominees advanced through the Senate Committee on Director Nominations, or DINO committee, before facing the full Senate.
That committee process has been a point of contention between the Senate and Gov. Katie Hobbs since the committee was formed after she won election in 2022.
It led to a lawsuit when the governor tried to get around the committee to appoint people to lead these agencies; a court ruled that move was illegal.
Sen. T.J. Shope, the committee’s vice chair and Republican from Coolidge, joined The Show to talk about what’s different.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: So what changed?
T.J. SHOPE: Well, I think that there was a period of time obviously after the lawsuit where it seemed that, well, leading up to the lawsuit, obviously there was definitely a standoff, if you will, that obviously the Senate decided to file suit in order to prevent the governor from just naming every director, a deputy director, to essentially have the same position and have no direct report.
But, I think cooler heads prevailed after the, after the suit was won by the Senate, if you will, and, and we decided to go down the path.
That doesn't mean that there weren't any slight skirmishes along the way, including, I think at one point, the governor saying after, I believe it was the Department of Insurance and Financial Institutions potential Director Barbara Richardson, when we rejected her, that she would no longer Send any nominees to the DINO committee.
And if you follow me on social media, you'll know that before we start, I always have my favorite Dino from the Flintstones that I tweet out just to tell you what the mood of the day is, but we did subsequently come back and have hearings on others like the Department of Agriculture, which is one of the most expansive agencies in state government that people are not aware of, even if you don't farm, odds are you probably go to a grocery store or fill up your tank with gas, which is regulated by the Department of Agriculture, for example.
Along with some of the other entities like military affairs, the emergency management, things like that. So, which obviously, some of those are just in essence, almost pass throughs of federal dollars that come into the state of Arizona in the event of a disaster, for example, or other things that like Homeland Security issues and and such.
So, so it's, it kind of ran the gamut. And we closed up the session confirming a couple more nominees, and I think that the batting average was actually pretty good and, and frankly, I think that we have good people when there was availability for agreement between a, I think, a very right of center Senate and a leftist center governor, we came up with the best nominees to lead these agencies.
BRODIE: Was there conversations between Gov. Hobbs or her staff or office and Republican members of this committee to see, OK, “I'd like to put this person up. Is that somebody that you can accept?” Or did she just kind of take her chances and you guys were more OK with the people that she sent this time?
SHOPE: I think that if you talk about year one, there was a lot of let's roll the dice with the people that we want to lead. We got elected, we have a mandate, I'll be it the mandate was obviously very small. It was a very tightly contested election.
And, and admittedly on, on my end, I would say at the time, ours was, you know, we had just picked up a seat, we had just, you know, we were coming into it, with that one-seat majority and and we had, I would argue, an equally a small mandate.
We were able I think really when we expanded the majority by that seat, it kind of put us in a stronger position to say, look, I think that we have to have an equal footing here. We have the advise and consent portion of the constitution of the state that we have to respect.
Let's work together to make sure that the people that you're placing in front of this committee are, are, they're going to go through a vetting process that is most definitely going to happen, but let's make sure that it's somebody that has a chance to make it through.
I, I have to say the people that put themselves into the hot seat, and I always mention this during the committee hearings, kudos to them because they know that they are going to be grilled. But the reality is I don't foresee a future state Senate going back to the old rubber stamp, and this is whether it's a Republican administration or a Democratic administration.
These are multibillion dollar agencies. If you were going to try to take over a business and you had to go in front of a board of directors, you're trying to the CEO, my odds are they would have a book about you prior to leading an agency such as the Department of Corrections, for example, which is multiples of billions of dollars. So yeah, we're going to go ahead and do the proper vetting that is befitting of the taxpayers' dollars.
BRODIE: One of the criticisms that this committee got, and I know you heard it, is that some of the questions were maybe a little off-topic, I guess, or talking about a director's personal views on something that that agency didn't have really anything to do with.
Did you see less of that as nominees started getting started getting approved by your committee and ultimately the Senate?
SHOPE: I think that you definitely saw more of a look, it was a learning experience for both sides here. I think the governor had a learning experience on what was going to be what the politics of the possible were getting through that committee and through the entire Senate, and I think the committee had a a learning experience as well because we had not tried a committee like that before in the state Senate, so it was brand new and I think we were both feeling out how this was supposed to operate.
I will say that as time went on, it most definitely in my opinion anyway, seemed more professionalized with each meeting that we had. And I, I, I believe that we felt that, that in the end we had better prepared nominees to, to go to the full Senate.
Remember, as we go through this, that committee, all it, what it does, its task is to recommend a yes or no vote for the rest of our colleagues in the entire state Senate. So we have that discussion.
We bring out all the information that we possibly can so that people have a comfort level with a vote that they are going to take affirmative or negative on the floor, and the preparation that goes into it is tremendous because we want people to feel comfortable with what they're voting on just like we would on any other bill that's being heard in the state Senate.
