CEBV Weekly: April 7, 2025
Now entering the Fog of Secrecy. Devastating budget cuts and destructive tax giveaways. Our next phase of action.
At this time of year, it gets tough to watch the legislature. What are they even doing, anyway? Does this just go on forever? What should we do?
Here are answers to the most common questions you've asked CEBV recently:
Where do things stand? The legislature is now most of the way through the 2025 session, to roughly step 7 on this graphic. This is where things start to get murky. Lawmakers might know where they want to go, but it's not as clear to the rest of us.
What should we expect next? At this point, all bills that are still alive are free of the weekly committee cycle and can show up on the House or Senate floor for a final vote within days — faster than our weekly publication schedule.
The fog of secrecy. In addition to floor votes, lawmakers will also turn their focus to state budget negotiations, which typically take place behind closed doors, in small groups that aren’t subject to the state’s open meeting laws. Capitol observers had hopes that this would change under Gov. Hobbs, but unfortunately, that wasn’t the case in 2023 or 2024. Hobbs negotiated largely with the Republican-led legislature, leaving out many members of her own party, and we expect that this year will be no different. Once a deal is reached, it will likely be presented and voted on as swiftly as possible, with very little opportunity for public input or even minority-party dissent. It’s also likely that some bills not voted on within the next week or two may be wrapped into budget negotiations, with their passage negotiated as the price of one or more lawmakers’ votes.
What should we do? It’s time to layer on phone calls, emails, and other forms of public pressure. Pick a bill or issue you care about, and start making calls. Call your state representatives for bills going to the House floor, and your state senator for bills going to the Senate floor. Then contact one more majority lawmaker in that chamber, such as someone in leadership or an Appropriations committee chair. Be brief and polite (you’ll likely get an assistant on the phone, not the legislator). State the issue, or the bill number and topic, and one reason you care. Say thanks and move on. You can also try leaving a voice mail after hours, or writing individual emails with your bill position (pro or con) and bill number in the subject line. Be personal, polite and brief.
What else can we do? It’s time to start contacting the governor’s office in earnest. As bills head toward her desk for a signature or veto, we’ll let you know which ones need our outreach. Our biggest call to action this week: Hobbs needs to hear from us on billionaire tax handout HB2704. See the Spotlight section for more.
When will session be over? There's no set date. A regular legislative session is intended to last 100 days (this year, that’s April 22), but it goes until lawmakers have passed a state budget — the only task they're constitutionally required to complete.
And then we'll be safe, right? As the saying goes, no one is safe while the legislature is in session — but our work doesn't stop once they adjourn. Helping people understand the huge effect our state government has on our lives is just beginning.
⏰ If you have 5 minutes: Act on billionaire tax handout HB2704: contact your own state senator and Gov. Hobbs (602-542-4331 / engage@az.gov) directly and ask them to OPPOSE the handout. See the Spotlight section below for more.
⏰⏰ If you have 10 minutes: Also contact your state representatives directly to oppose SB1164, which will be heard on the House floor on Monday.
⏰⏰ If you have 20 minutes: Also use Request to Speak on the Bills in Rules Committees, and choose one bill for which to directly contact your state senator (for House bills) or representatives (for Senate bills).
⏰⏰⏰ If you have 30 minutes: Also contact your own state senator and representatives directly, as well as Gov. Hobbs (602-542-4331 / engage@az.gov), about the breadth and scope of tax handouts at the Legislature. Express your alarm and make it clear that Arizona cannot afford any tax giveaways, especially this year given the chaos on the federal level. See the Budget Watch section below for more.
⏰⏰⏰⏰ If you have 45 minutes: Write a Letter to the Editor on the harms of tax giveaways. Our LTE Hub contains all the resources you’ll need.
⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰ If you have 60 minutes: Join us on Zoom for our next statewide CEBV Happy Hour conversation, featuring a state legislative rundown and in-depth discussion. Happy Hour meets every Sunday at 4 PM through the end of legislative session. Sign up in advance here.
Billionaire Giveaway
Billionaire tax handout HB2704 was pulled from last Tuesday’s Senate Appropriations agenda. Committee chair John Kavanagh (R-3) said the bill’s proponents asked for it to be held so they could negotiate amendments — but families affected by the Republican stonewalling of Division of Developmental Disabilities funding say the bill was pulled when its backers learned of their plans to protest the handout by showing up at the hearing.
Advocate Brandi Coon said she thinks the fact that the stadium bill is still on the table is an indicator of where lawmakers’ priorities lie: “Legislators are more concerned about funding their friends and their donors versus funding the essential services that children and disabled adults need.” They’re also trying to make the governor look bad, of course, and in the words of one columnist, that’s "small-minded, but it’s politics. It doesn’t cross the line to being evil unless the most vulnerable citizens in the state are being used as pawns. Which is happening."
As the handout bill has already been through one Senate committee, it remains alive until the end of legislative session and may become wrapped up in budget negotiations. Gov. Hobbs has said that “at this point” she plans to sign the giveaway into law, so she urgently needs to hear from us too.
Contact your state senator and representatives, as well as Gov. Hobbs (602-542-4331 / engage@az.gov), to express your opposition to HB2704. Use the below talking points:
Raises taxes. The bill now requires Maricopa County to chip in, which means the cost of the handout will be a direct hit to county taxpayers. It drains local budgets too: the city of Phoenix was just forced to pass a half-cent sales tax increase because state lawmakers keep pushing the cost of essential services onto local government.
Little public benefit, no accountability. More than 3 decades of studies have found stadiums to be consistent money pits that are not justified as worthwhile public investments. That’s especially true here, as there’s no enforceable provision requiring the handout to be spent on actual renovation. It could be diverted to luxury amenities or to tax-exempt hotels, restaurants, bars and retail.
Billionaires don’t need our hard-earned money. Diamondbacks team owner Ken Kendrick is rich enough to build several stadiums without any taxpayer handout. The team is valued at $1.6 billion.
The Cost of Federal Cuts
CEBV talks often about how our state lawmakers’ refusal to fund the services we all depend on, from roads and health care to public education, only pushes the obligation downstream onto local taxpayers. Unfortunately, that same scenario is now playing out on a much larger federal scale.
Systemic cuts teed us up for disaster. The chaos fascism of our current federal administration involves broad, destructive cuts. Pair this with Arizona’s Republican-led legislature, which has hacked away methodically over decades at our state’s tax structure and revenue base and chosen instead to rely heavily on federal funding, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
Dependent on the feds. Federal funds make up a shocking 44% of Arizona's revenue stream. That’s fifth highest in the nation, far above the 32% average. Looking at the pie chart above, it’s obvious that even a 10% cut to the federal section shown in red would devastate Arizona’s budget. With a slash-and-burn spending bill now moving through Congress, those cuts are likely coming. As leading Republican economic consultant Jim Rounds said on KTAR this week:
"If the state decides to backfill this money, we're going to have to raise taxes by $1.5 to $2 billion. We're going to have to cut the state budget by $0.5 to $1 billion. And that's going to have ramifications as well. So there's really no way out of this... The day that they do this is the day the recession starts in this country."
Arizona’s budget is running on fumes; it’s hard to pinpoint where an additional up to $3 billion could come from. And remember, not only does it take a two-thirds supermajority vote in Arizona to raise taxes, it’s hard to imagine our legislature’s hardline far-right lawmakers ever agreeing to such a thing. The economic pain of the Great Recession may pale in comparison to what lies before us.
Why cuts spell economic harm. Take AHCCCS, for example — our state Medicaid program. Roughly 30% of Arizonans (that’s 2.2 million people) rely on it, and nearly three-quarters of its $21 billion annual budget comes from the federal government. Most analysis of the harms of these cuts focuses on the negative health effects and financial hardship for the millions of families who rely on the program. However, these cuts also harm economies: initially in the health care sector, but rapidly spreading across other economic and employment sectors.
“The direct recipients of Medicaid payments and SNAP benefits are health care providers — hospitals, doctors’ offices, pharmacies, and nursing homes, among others — as well as grocery and other food stores. Cuts in federal funding for Medicaid and SNAP shrink revenue for those businesses and their employees. The effects ripple across other businesses and workers in their supply chains, such as medical equipment suppliers, food producers, and farms.
“The affected businesses are forced to respond by reducing staffing, salaries, or purchases of other goods and services. As employees lose their jobs or income, they must reduce their spending on consumer goods and services, like food, housing, and transportation. This also lowers how much state and local governments can collect in taxes, including sales, income, and property taxes.”
— a Commonwealth Fund / GWU report detailing how deep cuts to a core program like Medicaid ripple out across the economy to cause wide-scale devastation
Imminent devastation. A recent study found that, for every billion-dollar drop in AHCCCS spending, *in the best-case scenario*, Arizona could lose 36,000 jobs and $4 billion in economic activity. If cuts are deeper, the economic consequences would be comparable to the Great Recession, with 300,000 jobs lost. Another study found that the proposed deep cuts to Medicaid and SNAP would lay waste to economies at every level, with widespread job losses, supply chain disruptions, a sharp drop in state and local revenues, and more.
A reality check. CEBV has long held that state- and local-level action is far more effective than action on the federal level, and this moment is no exception. We must ensure our state lawmakers and governor look realistically and hard at current events. This is not the time for them to throw around tax handouts like candy at a parade. Whether it’s the billion-dollar ballpark boondoggle of HB2704, the income tax carve-out in SB1371, the one-way ratchet of SB1318 and SCR1014, ballot measures like grocery tax ban HCR2021, wide-scale cuts like HB2918, or the massive wealth-tax subsidy of SB1331, Arizona simply does not have the funds for wholesale tax giveaways — especially now.
🚨 We cannot depend on vetoes. Gov. Hobbs said last month she’s “willing to negotiate” with the Republican-controlled Legislature on tax giveaway measures, and has said she plans on signing billionaire tax handout HB2704. This is unacceptable. If Arizona has any unallocated revenue at all, lawmakers and the governor must repair the damage from last year’s budget cuts to colleges and universities, water system upgrades, road work and highway construction, job training programs, and more. Shoving through more carve-outs for special interests just compounds the damage.
The regular rotation of committees has ended for the year, but the Rules Committees are still meeting. These committees consider bills only for constitutionality and proper formatting; they don’t take public testimony or read comments. They meet weekly (or more often as determined by majority legislative leadership) and usually signal which bills are headed for a full vote.
Rules is the drive-through that means bills are about to hit the floor for a full vote. Consider this your last signpost, and take action: contact your representatives on bills ready for the House floor, and your senator on bills ready for the Senate floor.
Democracy
SB1280, sponsored by Mark Finchem (R-1), would make the “cast vote record” (a receipt of everything scanned by a voting machine) a public record. Election deniers insist baselessly that this tedious and routine document will somehow detect fraudulent voting patterns; it’s just another example of conspiracy theorists’ endless, fruitless quest for election wrongdoing. Gov. Hobbs has already vetoed this idea. Scheduled for House Rules Committee, Monday. OPPOSE.
SB1375, sponsored by Mark Finchem (R-1), would force county recorders to let anyone download voter registration rolls for free. Creating public, no-cost access to voter rolls enables spam and harassment, and allows bad actors to easily generate fake purge lists. This threatens the integrity of our elections. Scheduled for House Rules Committee, Monday. OPPOSE.
SB1705, sponsored by David Gowan (R-19), would create a civil fine of up to $5,000 for elected or appointed local government officials and administrative agency heads who “knowingly and wilfully” (sic) violate state firearm preemption laws, and bans the use of public funds to defend or reimburse them. These NRA-backed laws, which prevent cities from enacting tougher gun laws than Arizona’s purposefully, incredibly lax ones, leave cities and counties without the power to protect their citizens by enacting meaningful firearm regulation. This bill not only runs counter to Republicans’ professed preference for limited government, but attacks locally elected lawmakers for their attempts to represent their constituents’ wishes. Scheduled for House Rules Committee, Monday. OPPOSE.
HB2154, sponsored by Rachel Keshel (R-17), would require a voter on the early voting list be booted to inactive status if a single election notice mailed to them is returned as undeliverable. Currently, officials must make an effort to contact the voter at the voter's new address and update that voter's address; this bill removes that requirement. The sponsor asserted in committee that she is pushing the bill because “two-thirds of Americans don’t trust our elections.” Scheduled for Senate Rules Committee, Tuesday. OPPOSE.
Education
SB1584, sponsored by Janae Shamp (R-29), bans public schools from implementing hiring policies based on factors other than "merit" as part of the MAGA attack on diversity, equity and inclusion. The bill allows individuals to sue, which would lead to endless frivolous claims of “reverse racism.” Scheduled for House Rules Committee, Monday. OPPOSE.
LGBTQ+
SB1586, sponsored by Janae Shamp (R-29), would force health care professionals to pay the medical costs for minors who want a “gender detransition” to “reclaim their God-given gender” within 25 years of a procedure. The bill also enables civil lawsuits against providers for damages, including medical costs, pain and suffering, and loss of income. Similar to a vetoed bill from last year which Shamp based on her belief that “political ideology” is driving gender-affirming care. The bill, which does not define the term “gender transition,” is designed to harass providers with fear-mongering about future “liability” and to throw up unnecessary obstacles for transgender people getting the same types of care that cisgender people do. Scheduled for House Rules Committee, Monday. OPPOSE.
Water
SB1300 is subject to a striker that could allow farmers and ranchers to drill wells and pump unregulated water in San Simon Valley, Cochise County, by allowing a special election to declare an irrigation non-expansion area there. Over the past few years, big growers have bought up land, drilled wells and built large farms in the area; they now want changes in the law that would shut out competitors. Local residents say the change would render their land worthless by wrecking investments they want to farm or sell for retirement income. The state doesn’t regulate water use in parts of Cochise County, allowing pumping with no limits. Continued pumping at current rates will likely lead to collapse. In the past few years, well levels have dropped at an average of 1.2 feet per year, with wells under existing farmland dropping much more rapidly. Scheduled for House Rules Committee, Monday. OPPOSE.
SB1523, sponsored by Tim Dunn (R-25), adds new landscaping restrictions for cities within active management areas. The bill includes language that could prevent cities' future water conservation efforts, and does not include language about new development projects or redevelopment. These restrictions would result in minimal if any water savings, while paving the way for unsustainable communities, prioritizing developer interests. Scheduled for House Rules Committee, Monday. OPPOSE.
HB2201, sponsored by Gail Griffin (R-19), would give power companies new protections from lawsuits if their equipment starts a wildfire. Environmental protection groups are calling it the “bill that lets APS burn your house down.” The new legal standard would be harder to prove than in other civil cases, leaving injured homeowners on the hook for losses caused by utilities. Scheduled for Senate Rules Committee, Tuesday. OPPOSE.
SB1164, sponsored by Warren Petersen (R-14), would force public schools in Arizona to open their doors to ICE agents. The US Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that all children, regardless of immigration status, have the right to a free public education. Some Arizona districts are instituting “safe zone” policies to protect their students, stating that no individual or organization that would create an educational disruption is allowed on school grounds. This bill would override those policies. Scheduled for a House floor vote, Monday. Contact your representatives directly to OPPOSE.
2025 Session Timeline
Tuesday, 4/22 100th Day of Session (the stated end goal; can be changed) Monday, 6/30 Last day to pass a constitutionally mandated state budget
Flag this handy list of contact info, committee chairs and assignments:
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