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With just 18 days to go until the deadline to pass a budget before the state government shuts down, Arizona lawmakers are finally taking action — but the spending plan put together solely by House Republicans was criticized by opponents as farce that will never actually become law.
As with any other legislation, the state budget must be approved by a majority in both the Arizona Senate and House of Representatives — which are both controlled by Republicans — and get a signature from Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. The deadline to pass the budget is the end of the state’s fiscal year, June 30.
Senate Republicans and Hobbs have collaborated on their own budget proposal, which is expected to be introduced June 16. After negotiations between Hobbs and House Republicans broke down a few weeks ago, that chamber’s budget leaders decided to craft their own proposal.
During a House Appropriations Committee meeting Thursday, committee Chairman David Livingston said that, even though Hobbs, House and Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans were left out of the drafting process, the budget proposal still included some of their requests.
“Some people in this room are very happy,” the Peoria Republican said. “I have other people in this room that are very disappointed. That’s the case. This budget, I think, comes down the middle.”
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But during a Thursday morning press conference, Democratic lawmakers fiercely disagreed with that assessment, claiming that the House Republican budget proposal was cobbled together rapidly after the lawmakers who created it skipped out on three weeks of budget negotiations between Hobbs and Senate Republicans.
“Now, in a desperate attempt to become relevant to the budget, House Republicans have introduced this sham, written haphazardly behind closed doors to appease the far-right Freedom Caucus. And, as you would expect, it is awful,” said House Minority Leader Oscar De Los Santos.
The proposal, De Los Santos said, is dead-on-arrival and has no chance of getting a signature from Hobbs. And that’s assuming it garners the backing of at least 31 of the chamber’s 33 Republicans.
Livingston agreed that the final budget will look different than the one his committee approved Thursday, saying that he welcomed amendments to it. But Republican Rep. Matt Gress, a former budget director for Gov. Doug Ducey who worked with Livingston to craft the House proposal, repeatedly promised that the majority of their plan would make it into the final product.
Livingston said that the top priorities in the budget bills that he sponsored are supporting law enforcement — including a 5% raise for Department of Public Safety and corrections officers — as well funding roads, infrastructure and rural hospitals.
While the proposal provides continued funding for the Department of Developmental Disabilities Parents as Paid Caregivers Program, which was at the center of a bitter fight between Hobbs and legislative Republicans this spring, it includes proposals that lawmakers know Hobbs would never agree to.
Those include new restrictions and monitoring requirements on entitlement programs, like the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System — the state’s Medicaid program — and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly called food stamps.
It would also bar Arizona’s public universities from providing scholarships to students without legal immigration status, even if the money comes from private donors.
“I mean, this is a hodgepodge of vetoed bills,” De Los Santos said, claiming that the scholarship ban is a “slap in the face” to the voters that passed Proposition 308.
In 2022, Arizona voters approved Proposition 308, which guarantees in-state tuition and access to state-funded financial aid for every Arizona student regardless of citizenship status as long as they attend a high-school in the state for at least two years and graduate.
The blame game
During Thursday’s Appropriations Committee meeting, Livingston blamed Hobbs for ending budget negotiations between her office and House Republicans, claiming that she simply stopped sending them counter-proposals.
A spokesman for Hobbs told the Arizona Mirror that wasn’t true.
“Representative Livingston’s comments are out of touch with reality and make clear he is in over his head,” said Christian Slater. “His sentiment is not shared by the number of stakeholders who spoke today in opposition to his partisan and reckless budget, or Senate Republicans, House Democrats, and Senate Democrats, who are all in active negotiations with the Governor’s Office.
“As Senate Republicans themselves have publicly noted, the House Republicans have refused to engage in serious negotiations.”
Taking a dig at Republicans in the Senate, Livingston also called the proposal they’ve negotiated with Hobbs the “governor’s budget.”
Senate GOP leaders declined to respond to Livingston’s statement.
Criticism from the public
During the Appropriations Committee meeting, representatives from industries, state departments and other causes gave some praise to the budget plan, but mostly criticized it for cutting funding to programs they said were vital to people in need.
Livingston asked that any of them who requested more funding for their causes to find an equal amount of money from somewhere else in the budget to cut. None of them had immediate suggestions. Budget documents were first posted online late Wednesday afternoon, and were made up of 15 complicated, multipage bills. The Appropriations Committee meeting began at 10:30 a.m. Thursday.
Democrats on the Appropriations Committee complained that the process of voting on the House Republican budget was a waste of time, with a bipartisan budget plan soon to be released by the Senate.
“A vote on this budget is a vote to waste time on distraction,” said Rep. Kevin Volk, a Tucson Democrat.
The budget bills ultimately were approved by the Appropriations Committee along party lines. Lawmakers in the House are in for a long day Friday, with plans for amendments to the proposals and a possible vote likely sometime that evening.
***CORRECTION: This story has been corrected to remove an inaccurate statement about a shift in control of federal funds.
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