This last legislative session, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs was able to secure several bipartisan measures that will help move the state forward and lift Arizonans up.
These include bipartisan victories on
- The state budget which put a downpayment of many of her Arizona’s Promise Priorities including investments in child care, school meals, health care, housing assistance to veterans, and community college scholarships.
- The AG to Urban Water Bill.
- Aid for children with disabilities.
- Keeping Axon in the Grand Canyon State.
- Securing a stadium maintenance deal for the Diamondbacks.
Fresh off these achievements, Governor Hobbs spoke with Blog for Arizona about the victories from the last session, where she would like to build on that success in moving forward next year, and how her team will work to stem the tide coming from Mr. Trump’s MAGA economic bill and counterproductive Anti-Immigration agenda.
The questions and the Governor’s responses are below.
What are at least three ways you would like to build on and expand on your Arizona’s Promise program from the recently adopted budget going to next year? Please explain.
“I am really proud of the bipartisan balanced fiscally responsible budget that we were able to work across the aisle this year. It includes a lot of the priorities I laid out in terms of the Arizona Promise in my State of the State Address.”
“We know there’s more to do starting with education. We need to renew Prop 123. I’m hopeful we can come back and come to agreement on getting something to the ballot that voters will support that invest in public education and gives our teachers more pay.”
“We certainly need to continue addressing housing issues in our state. I’m proud this year that we included funding my Heroes Initiative, which is geared towards ending veterans’ homelessness by 2030. But we didn’t get the low-income housing tax credit renewed, and I really like to see that across the state with the investment and the amount affordable housing that program has already created. We need to do more of that.”
“On the childcare initiative, which we were able to invest nearly 45 million dollars that will cut the childcare waitlist in half, but I’d like to see other initiatives adopted that help expand public-private partnerships so that there is more access to quality affordable childcare in Arizona communities.”
What are some ideas that did not make it into either the budget or separate legislation. last session or new policy proposals that you would like to pursue next year?
“I am really excited about what we got done, and I’m really focused on what this budget does deliver rather than what it doesn’t. And certainly, the action of Washington politicians are going to impact what we’re able to do here. We’re still going through the I’m not going to call it the title that they call it, but the budget bill. It’s been really clear that we don’t have the funds to pay for all of those cuts, but we certainly want to look at how we can mitigate that, and that’s going to be a priority moving forward.”
Craig Harris just came out with a report yesterday about of parents in the ESA program hoarding money to pay for their child’s college education. Did you want to comment on that and how you would like to address that possibly in the next session?
“Yeah. The Universal ESA’s are a billion-dollar boondoggle. Since I took office, I have wanted to reform that program and bring it back to its original intent which was helping kids with disabilities and low-performing schools. It was never intended to subsidize private education for people that can already afford it and the more we speak about the unaccountable spending now with this new information about people not using the fund, but keeping them, that’s very concerning. And I think we’ll continue to make the case of why we need to put reasonable guardrails in place and the need to get back to with the original purpose and not bilking the Arizona taxpayers.”
With the passage of Mr. Trump’s Reverse Robinhood economic passage last week, what budget or program ideas you and your team are considering meeting the expected cuts for Arizona’s in areas like Medicaid, SNAP, school meals, Pell Grants, and actually infrastructure clean energy projects?
“I’ve been really clear since this budget was first introduced that Arizona doesn’t have the funds to back all these cuts. That Federal funding is critical for keeping these programs available for the Arizonans who rely on them. I think the question really needs to be for these Washington politicians, our Congressman, who voted for that bill. What do they want to do? How are they going to answer to their constituents, the 360,000 Arizonans who will lose their Medicaid, the thousands of other rural patients who are going to lose their healthcare altogether, because rural hospitals will close, the thousands of Arizonans will lose active school nutrition assistance. They were debating these terrible cuts with some of them wanting to go further and do more harm. We were talking about funding healthcare and investing in school meals for kids, and I just can’t and don’t know who runs for office so that they can harm the people who elected them and that’s what this bill does. It’s so frustrating and the impact’s going to be devastating. We’re going to do everything we can, but we can’t solve all the gaps. The infrastructure projects are another piece too. The loss of the energy tax credits is going to cause Arizona’s energy bills to go up.”
Looking at what is happening in California and Florida, to what extent are you worried that Mr. Trump will deploy additional resources like ICE and the National Guard in cities like Phoenix and Tucson, and use federal monies to expand and build new detention centers throughout the state. Please explain.
“The immigration enforcement issue is why I took a lot of proactive steps and built collaborative relationships on the border with federal officials so we could work cooperatively and address border security. I don’t think the indiscriminate roundup of people, going after folks including Dreamers, people who have been here for years and are following the law is right. That’s not what the President campaigned on, and certainly not something that that we can support. And it’s not something that is keeping our communities safer and I focused the efforts of the state on law enforcement and keeping the community safe. We’ve deployed a 100 million dollars to border communities to enhance coordination and technology resources. We’ve had success in going after a border-related crime, like drug smuggling and human trafficking, and those are where we should be focusing our efforts. I don’t necessarily want to speak to hypotheticals. We have seen increased ICE activity in our communities. We’re continuing to try to get as much information as possible. We’re not surprised by enforcement actually taking place. But ultimately, the best scenario is that we are able to coordinate rather than be working at odds and harming our community.”
Is there anyone on your team that you would like to single out for their contributions to making your job easier and helping move Arizona forward. It can be more than one person.
“I have a really great team, and I’ve always said that hiring is one of my superpowers. It’s really a team effort. Ben Henderson, my Director of Operations, who recently moved to the budget office did a tremendous job in a very short time in helping to negotiate the budget and get us to the finish line. I have a lot of quality staff working on the policy area that are right now coming through the federal bill to see the impact and what we might do. It’s really hard to single out one person. I really am proud of the whole team in the Governor’s office.”
Is there anything not covered in the first five questions that you would like the readers to know about your Governorship over the last six months and your goals moving forward? Please explain.
“I have had said since day one that I wanted to work with elected leaders who are focused on tackling the challenges that we have and not the partisan politics that really turned people off. We were able to do big things because we are willing to come to the table and focus on solving the problems. The budget is one of them. The funding for the developmental disabilities, that the Republicans wanted to slash in half and put future restrictions on, was saved for the sixty thousand Arizona that rely on it. The AG to Urban bill that allows unused agricultural land to be converted to lower water use residential land. It creates jobs and helps build the housing that we need. We saved Axon, a local company that started in a garage in Tucson, and it’s creating thousands of good paying jobs in our state and making a huge investment. And we kept the Diamondbacks in Arizona in a way that protects the taxpayers and ensures that facility will be here for generation to come, and the revenue along with it that’s generated that economic impact. When you have leaders who are focus on getting the job done, we really can do that and I’m really proud of what we did.”
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