This week at the Arizona Legislature: Senate is expected to take up budget Hobbs calls 'reckless '

The Arizona Senate this week is expected to take up the House-approved budget plan.

The Governor’s Office has called the plan “reckless and unbalanced,” although the governor herself has said there are some provisions in it that she supports.

The House OK’d the package of bills along party lines last week.

Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services joined The Show to talk about what to expect in the coming days at the state Capitol.

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: Good morning, Howie. Howie, are you with us?

HOWIE FISCHER: Oh, there we go.

MARK BRODIE: There we go. How you doing, Howie?

HOWIE FISCHER: You gotta teach us print people to press the little button that says "on." We are low — definitely low-tech here.

MARK BRODIE: All right. Well, speaking of pressing the buttons, it seems like the Legislature is trying to press some of the governor’s buttons here in terms of providing her with a budget that some of it she likes, some of it she doesn’t. The House, as I mentioned, approved it last week. Any reason to think the Senate won’t follow suit in along party lines this week?

HOWARD FISCHER: Oh, I don’t see any reason. I mean, we may get one senator who keeps talking about just going off the reservation, but the votes are lined up. There are 17 Republican senators. They could even lose one and still go through.

I think there’s also belief of even if there’s folks on the Republican side who don’t like everything that’s in there, they need to send a message to the governor that her $18.7 billion plan is just too large. There are too many things in there; there are too many proposed tax increases like on short-term rentals, on certain kinds of sports gaming operations, that just are not acceptable.

Now, then we go back to — we essentially have a situation here of two teenagers. "Well, I won’t call so-and-so, they should call me." And then you’ve got the speaker of the House saying, "No, the governor should call me." The governor saying, "No, he should call me." I don’t know where we go from here. Obviously, we have a June 30 deadline, and somebody at some point has to pick up the phone.

Politics

GOP lawmakers working on sending budget plan to Hobbs, but they aren't talking to each other

Camryn Sanchez

Republican lawmakers are halfway through the process of sending a budget to Gov. Katie Hobbs, but both sides say the onus is on the other to pick up the phone.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so Howie, I’m curious about the timing of all this because, traditionally, when the Legislature has a budget ... both chambers sort of work in tandem, and sometimes they work through the night. They pass it and they send it to the governor, even if, you know, in this case, the governor’s going to veto it. But that was not the way this happened. Is there anything to be read into the fact that the Senate waited several days to take up the House budget?

HOWARD FISCHER: No, I think they wanted to make sure that the votes were there. And as you know, because you’ve been out at the Capitol, what they try to do sometimes to expedite a bill is you will pass your own version and then sub out the other chamber’s version.

So I think what’s going to happen is the Senate is going to pass what is identical to what the House passed. It will go back to the House, which then can say, "OK, our version’s being identical to the Senate, we don’t need to go — put those through a hearing, and we’ll go ahead and get it to the governor," perhaps as early as tomorrow afternoon.

MARK BRODIE: So, there had been some speculation — maybe wishful thinking — that instead of just doing what you just outlined, that ... after the House passed the budget, there’d be some room for negotiation with the governor, and maybe they would come to some kind of agreement and then, you know, the bills would go back to the House for them to approve the changes made in the Senate to align with the governor. Seems like that’s not what’s going to happen.

HOWARD FISCHER: No. Again, they’re not even talking. I mean, the governor will say, "Well, we’re having staff-to-staff communications," but that’s just not the way it works. Everyone is sort of dug in at this point. You know, the governor’s saying, "You know, we need these revenues. We need these programs for the poor, we need the utility assistance programs." And the Republicans are saying, "We can’t afford that because of the fact that, A, we adopted a much bigger package of tax hikes. That’s the old HR1 issue of adding the business tax cuts to everything else that the governor also wants, you know, like the higher standard deduction."

But that the governor’s budget relies on what they believe is, you know, phony money. I mean, $760 million coming from the feds to reimburse us for border costs, which may or may not be coming but hasn’t been seen yet. I mean, you’ve got the — that tax on short-term rentals, never going to pass in a Republican Legislature. The higher fees on the gaming, never going to pass there. She said she built a budget based on $89 million in savings from capping enrollment in voucher programs based on parental income. Not going to happen in this Legislature.

So, by definition, there’s really no place to go until maybe she vetoes this budget, then they say, "OK, we now have two months to get something out. Now we have to figure out what we can each live with."

MARK BRODIE: Does it seem, Howie, among lawmakers that you talk to at the Capitol, that there’s an appetite for negotiation? Like, ... do they need to send her this to show that this is what they want to do, she vetoes it, and then, as we’ve seen in years past, then the real talk starts? Does it seem as though that’s where this is headed?

HOWARD FISCHER: I definitely believe so. I think that they have to show: "We’re together." And, you know, their message is, "Look, governor, you know, we wanted to actually sit down and talk about the HR 1 tax cuts last fall when we knew they were coming." And she didn’t want to do that. Then she puts out her budget with only some of the HR 1 tax cuts. They send her a full package, she vetoed them again.

And then, of course, the whole issue of she walked away from negotiation because she said: "You’re not negotiating in good faith." They felt the need to say, "We’re united." They felt the need to send a message to the governor saying, "We have the votes to pass out a budget."

Now, obviously it lacks the governor’s signature, but they need — this is sort of sending a message saying, "We can do this without you. We don’t need your ... various plans for raising taxes." And, "OK, now we recognize we need a signature on here. Let’s see if we can move forward before we send the state into a position of we’re trying to figure out what do we do on June 30?"

MARK BRODIE: Right. All right. That is Howie Fischer with Capitol Media Services. Howie, I suspect we’ll be talking about this topic again maybe next week, at least a few more times.

HOWARD FISCHER: Oh, please, please make it stop!

MARK BRODIE: [LAUGHS] Howie, thanks as always. Appreciate it.

HOWARD FISCHER: You’re welcome.