CEBV Weekly: May 12, 2025
Lawmakers on vacation. Keeping the pressure on to oppose bad ideas. Allies behaving badly. A metric buttload of veto bait.
Last week, we warned you about Republican lawmakers’ attempt to hijack teacher pay by stuffing vouchers into the renewal of Prop 123, which draws money from the state land trust for public schools. That unholy mashup is still moving, but fierce public opposition has derailed plans to steamroll it through. (This means our activism is working — keep it up!)
Hurry up and wait. First, Republicans planned to ram their “bad faith plan” through the Legislature on Tuesday, May 6. The next day, they announced they’d actually be doing so on May 7 with a press conference. Within hours of that, they’d pushed their press conference back again, to May 19, and the bill hearing to May 20. While their official line is that the measure is “complicated” and Republicans are “still trying to reach consensus on the final language,” rumors are swirling that not all Republican lawmakers are on board with the plan. As Democrats are unanimously opposed, proponents don’t have many votes they can afford to lose.
Gone fishing. Perhaps more interesting is that the Legislature is closing up shop entirely until then. The House will take two weeks off, adjourning until May 20. The Senate, not to be outdone, is taking three weeks off; they’ve adjourned until May 28 (but can come back with 48 hours notice).
Postponing the budget. Senator JD Mesnard (R-13) told press “there’s some feeling that, until we get a 123 outcome, we can’t even really get to the budget in a serious way.” It looks like David Livingston, who keeps telling press he wants a budget passed before Memorial Day, won’t get his wish. (For the record, we called it.)
An exclusive club. Unfortunately, it’s not surprising that lawmakers are sending themselves home for weeks. It’s a sign of just how few state lawmakers are actually involved in the creation of Arizona’s budget. For years now, the governor has met with a small group of lawmakers — typically Republican leadership — across weeks or months to hammer out an agreement behind closed doors, then presented that package of budget bills as a done deal to rank-and-file Republicans and Democrats alike.
“These days, a few legislative leaders knock out a plan in private... By the time it gets to rank-and-file legislators, it’s basically take it or leave it, and you have three minutes to decide.” — columnist Laurie Roberts on the budget process in today’s Arizona Legislature
Does this actually work? Defenders of the process say the handful of people involved in budget negotiations are having regular conversations with the rank-and-file and have their go-ahead to deal on their behalf. Still, there’s no substitute for actually being in the room. As we always say, if you’re not at the table, you’re likely on the menu. Last-minute changes and horse-trading are common, and the governor and leadership put so much pressure on individual lawmakers to stay the course that it’s rare to see the deal actually fall apart.
Bottom line. Is there a better way than this to create a state budget? Almost certainly. Will we see it this year? Don’t count on it.
⏰ If you have 5 minutes: Directly contact Gov. Hobbs (602-542-4331 / engage@az.gov) and ask her to veto HB2112. See “Veto Watch” below for more info.
⏰⏰ If you have 10 minutes: Also directly contact the lawmakers in the “Hall of Shame” section below to tell them what you think.
⏰⏰⏰ If you have 20 minutes: Also directly contact your state senator and representatives to demand they support only a clean renewal of Prop 123, one that contains no poison pills or voucher gimmicks. See Part 2 of the “Spotlight” section below for more info. If your reps are Democrats, thank them for their opposition and ask them to hold firm. If your reps are Republicans, tell them their scheme is unacceptable and they must correct course. If you’ve already done this, do it again!
⏰⏰⏰⏰ If you have 30 minutes: Also directly contact Gov. Hobbs (602-542-4331 / engage@az.gov), along with your state senator and representatives, to oppose billionaire tax handout HB2704. See Part 1 of the “Spotlight” section below for more info and a list of specific lawmakers who need extra attention. Use these talking points: the bill raises our taxes, offers little public benefit & no accountability, and gives billionaires our hard-earned money. If you’ve already done this, do it again!
⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰ If you have 45 minutes: Also choose one or more other bills from the “Veto Watch” section below and directly contact Gov. Hobbs (602-542-4331 / engage@az.gov) with your veto request.
⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰ If you have 60 minutes: Join us on Zoom for our next CEBV Happy Hour conversation. After our usual state legislative rundown, we’ll hear from Ashlyn Jones of Contest Every Race on the importance of running for local office. Happy Hour meets every Sunday at 4 PM through the end of legislative session. Sign up in advance here.
1. Billionaire Tax Giveaway HB2704
Despite fierce public opposition to this bill and to stadium giveaways in general, closed-door negotiations on HB2704 are ongoing. The giveaway remains very much alive and is likely wrapped up in budget negotiations. Gov. Hobbs is supporting the handout in both word and deed. Her chief of staff is leading negotiations intended to push the bill across the finish line. Last week’s meeting included a Diamondbacks team representative who escalated the team’s pattern of threats by “insinuating (threatening)” that MLB would move spring training out of Arizona if lawmakers refused to pass the giveaway — and the bill is getting worse as time passes. We’re told this week’s meeting stripped key provisions which had been added to get support from fence-sitters, such as limits on luxury spending, an engineering report on problem areas, and a requirement that the team pull its own financial weight with a public-private 1-1 tax dollar match. Hobbs urgently needs to hear from us.
Contact Gov. Hobbs (602-542-4331 / engage@az.gov), as well as your state senator and representatives, to express your opposition to HB2704. The following state lawmakers ESPECIALLY need to hear from us:
LD2: Stephanie Simacek
LD5: Lela Alston, Sarah Liguori and Aaron Marquez
LD6: Mae Peshlakai and Myron Tsosie
LD8: Janeen Connolly
LD9: Seth Blattman and Kiana Sears
LD11: Junelle Cavero
LD17: Kevin Volk
LD20: Alma Hernandez
LD21: Consuelo Hernandez
LD22: Lupe Contreras, Eva Diaz and Elda Luna-Nájera
LD24: Lydia Hernandez
LD26: Flavio Bravo and Cesar Aguilar
Use these talking points:
Raises taxes. Combined Arizona state, county and city sales taxes are already among the highest in the country, ranking 11th nationwide and rising. HB2704 only worsens the burden. It now requires Maricopa County to chip in, which means the cost of the handout will be a direct hit to county taxpayers. It will drain 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.
2. No Vouchers in the Constitution
Republicans are trying to hijack the popular issue of teacher pay to protect an unpopular one: their November 2026 ballot measure would cement Arizona's unchecked universal ESA voucher boondoggle, without any financial or academic accountability or guardrails, into our state Constitution.
Contact your state senator and representatives to express your opposition to this harebrained scheme. Use the below talking points:
Illegal. Putting two separate measures into one ballot proposal is an unlawful violation of the Separate Amendments provision of the state Constitution, and will not stand in the courts.
Unpopular. Tying ESA vouchers to teacher pay is a complete nonstarter for most Arizona voters. The original Prop 123 passed only narrowly, despite full bipartisan support and backing from the business and education communities — and universal ESA vouchers failed at the ballot box in 2018 by 2-to-1 margins. Tying teacher pay to unpopular vouchers will torpedo the whole measure.
Dangerous. Republicans refuse even the most basic guardrails for the $1 billion taxpayer-funded universal ESA voucher program. Meanwhile, universal vouchers are gutting our state budget, triggering massive deficits and dramatically reducing available resources for K-12 schools, higher education, health care, roads, transportation and water. Enshrining this unaccountable boondoggle forever into the state Constitution is reckless and irresponsible.
One of our tasks is to hold our allies accountable. This section calls out those who support harmful bills. We ask them to heed and do better.
👎 Kiana Sears (D-9), 👎 Seth Blattman and 👎 Kevin Volk for voting YES on HB2112. This is a censorship bill designed to attack content the extreme right doesn't like, such as LGBTQ+, sex ed, repro rights, etc. The broad language would effectively ban sites that contain information on HIV/AIDS, sex education and the LGBTQ+ community. The bill now proceeds to Gov. Hobbs for her signature or veto. Contact Sears at ksears@azleg.gov or 602-926-3374. Contact Blattman at sblattman@azleg.gov or 602-926-3996. Contact Volk at kvolk@azleg.gov or 602-926-3498.
👎 Gov. Katie Hobbs for signing HB2880 into law on Wednesday, May 7, making Arizona the first state in the nation to ban “encampments” on university and community college campuses. The bill’s broad language is an unprecedented and unconstitutional intrusion on First Amendment rights at a time when our government is literally disappearing people for exercising their First Amendment right to protest genocide. School administrators can already choose to restrict protests; lawmakers targeting encampments just because they dislike that point of view is the very discrimination they say they oppose, and in an environment where people are being abducted and deported without due process, it’s unconscionable. No one from any of Arizona’s three state universities or the Arizona Board of Regents testified in favor of the bill or used RTS to indicate their support. Hobbs did not explain her decision. Contact her at 602-542-4331 or engage@az.gov.
This past week, Gov. Hobbs exercised her power to protect Arizonans from the following harmful, CEBV-opposed legislation. The number of bills she’s vetoed this year now stands at 88.
Vetoed: Tuesday, May 6
HB2017 (Keshel, R-17) would have banned in-person early voting and vote centers in Arizona.
HB2154 (Keshel, R-17) would have required a voter on the early voting list be booted to inactive status if a single election notice mailed to them is returned as undeliverable.
HB2440 (Keshel, R-17) would have hobbled the ability of Arizona's attorney general to hold county supervisors accountable for refusing to certify election results, though the courts have said that this is their job and refusing is felony election interference.
HB2651 (Montenegro, R-29) would have banned all electronic voting equipment beginning in 2029 unless it meets Department of Defense cybersecurity standards, all pieces of it are made in the US, and the auditor general is given copies of the source codes. This type of equipment does not exist, which means Arizona could end up forced to count millions of ballots by hand based on a baseless conspiracy theory.
Vetoed: Wednesday, May 7
HB2824 (Rivero, R-27) would have allowed the legislature to arrest other elected officials who refused to comply with a legislative subpoena and to physically haul them before a committee.
On the Governor’s Desk
Even if we expect these bills to receive a veto, it remains important to contact the governor’s office to request one. This demonstrates that her actions have strong public support. Learn how to write a veto letter by reading our guide here.
SB1002 (Kavanagh, R-3) would ban teachers from using a student’s chosen pronouns without written parental permission if they differ from the student's biological sex. Coming out to parents is intimidating; coming out at school helps a student feel prepared to come out to their parents, which helps strengthen the relationship. Prohibiting students from coming out at school without also coming out at home will erode the trust and relationship between youth and parents. The bill also further politicizes teachers, which deepens Arizona’s ongoing teacher retention crisis. OPPOSE.
SB1003 (Kavanagh, R-3) would ban trans kids from using the school bathrooms, changing facilities and “sleeping quarters” that align with their gender identities. Trans kids wouldn’t be able to use any facilities at all without undue scrutiny of their bodies; the bills calls that a "reasonable accommodation." Anyone who “encounters” a trans person in a bathroom could file suit against public schools. OPPOSE.
SB1020 (Rogers, R-7) would prohibit universities and community colleges from banning anyone with a concealed weapons permit — not just students — from possessing, storing or transporting guns on campus. College campuses and guns are a deadly combination, increasing the risks of suicide, homicide and sexual assault. Even our founding fathers believed guns had no place on college campuses. OPPOSE.
SB1036 (Kavanagh, R-3) would expand an existing law that bans cities, counties and school districts from using taxpayer dollars to convince voters to cast their ballots a certain way. Any Arizona resident could file suit, and if they win, that resident would get a $5,000 taxpayer-sponsored reward. The sponsor says he's looking to encourage these lawsuits to combat what he sees as an increasingly prevalent problem, and isn't concerned about frivolous suits. OPPOSE.
SB1052 (Rogers, R-7) would ban US citizens from registering to vote in Arizona if they have a parent who is a US citizen and who is registered to vote in Arizona, but they themselves have never lived in the US. Banning citizens from voting is clearly unconstitutional. OPPOSE.
SB1091 (Hoffman, R-15) would require that ballots in school district bond and budget override continuation elections state how much voters' taxes would drop if they refused to pass the continuations. This is propaganda designed to discourage voters from supporting overrides in the name of "transparency." OPPOSE.
SB1097 (Hoffman, R-15) would require public district schools to be closed on every regular primary and general election day, and to provide their gymnasiums for use as polling places upon request. Teachers would be required to attend inservice training and banned from taking a vacation day, presumably to keep them from working the polls. Arizona and the nation are already struggling to find enough election workers; it makes no sense to legislate a ban on teachers doing their patriotic duty — to say nothing of the disruption this would cause to families. Whether schools offer their space for elections should be a local decision. OPPOSE.
SB1098 (Hoffman, R-15) would require voters to show ID in order to drop off their early ballots. Anyone delivering ballots for a family or household member would have to provide ID and attest to their relationship with the voter. Violations would be a jaw-dropping class 5 felony, with penalties of up to 2.5 years in prison for a first offense. OPPOSE.
SB1116 (Dunn, R-25) requires the director of ADWR to fast-track developers’ applications for alternative groundwater models, including a written response with rationale for any rejections. Developers are pushing for ways around laws that restrict construction in areas without adequate water supply. OPPOSE.
SB1300 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. OPPOSE.
SB1463 (Mesnard, R-13) would require initiative petitions to include a separate list, description and brief summary of existing statutes that “are likely to conflict with or be impacted by” the initiative. Prop 139, which voters resoundingly approved in November, conflicts with at least 40 separate statutes that the Legislature passed over decades to chip away at reproductive freedom. Including them all in this manner would have vastly increased the size of the petition, creating financial and logistical burdens on organizers and circulators, and thus on direct democracy. OPPOSE.
SB1518 (Dunn, R-25) would allow irrigated grandfather rights in a subsequent active management area like Douglas or Willcox to be sold or transferred, leading to more groundwater pumping. Like many other rural basins, Douglas relies solely on groundwater. It pumps out 3 times as much water as it returns to the basin, and its prospects for finding additional water resources are slim. Increasing pumping in this area is a recipe for disaster. OPPOSE.
SB1586 (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. OPPOSE.
HB2112 (Kupper, R-25) would require Arizonans to prove they are at least 18 before accessing "online pornography." This is a censorship bill designed to attack content the extreme right doesn't like: LGBTQ+, sex ed, repro rights, etc. The broad language would effectively ban sites that contain information on HIV/AIDS, sex education and the LGBTQ+ community. OPPOSE.
HB2206 (Taylor, R-29) would limit Arizona's participation in ERIC, a multi-state system that weeds out duplicate, deceased or suspicious voter registrations. The ERIC system, which allows states to exchange voter information to root out duplications and fraud, is one of the strongest safeguards for election officials; there’s no viable replacement. Republican-run states have been abandoning ERIC in the wake of far-right conspiracy theories and struggling to clean voter rolls without it. OPPOSE.
HB2274 (Griffin, R-19) would call a special election for Willcox to decide whether to establish a domestic water improvement district. This does nothing to address the underlying issue of overpumping. The area has been in a drought for 30 years; poor summer monsoons and virtually nonexistent winter rains have left the aquifer with no natural recharge and no way to recover. In December, Gov. Hobbs and the Arizona Department of Water Resources designated Willcox as an Active Management Area, a long-overdue move that protects water for rural communities and the local economies that rely on it. Right now, the area is working on implementing the AMA; this bill distracts from that important work and could even exacerbate groundwater depletion. OPPOSE.
HB2570 (Griffin, R-19) creates a high bar for establishing temporary non-expansion areas that would limit new irrigated agriculture, and stipulates that they expire after ten years. Temporary measures like these do not constitute real action on our state’s groundwater crisis. OPPOSE.
HB2700 (Martinez, R-16) would insert "a specific focus on the Gulf of America" into state high school social studies graduation standards. This is not only a waste of students' time, an additional textbook cost for districts, and an attack on local control, but subjects education to the fleeting whims of partisan politics. The directive would go before the State Board of Education in 2027, one year before control of the White House changes again. If a future president chooses to acknowledge 400 years of history and change back the name of the Gulf, Arizona would have a state law to the contrary. OPPOSE.
HB2868 (Way, R-15) would ban school districts from admitting students or hiring staff with race, sex or ethnicity in mind, as well as from holding any trainings on diversity, equity and inclusion. This framework seeks to promote fair treatment of all people, particularly groups that have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination. This culture-war-driven bill would keep school districts from specifically hiring black or brown teachers in an effort to increase representation, block teachers from discussing inclusion and equity issues that have arisen despite the 14th Amendment, and ban certain content from being taught in schools. This would negatively impact student learning, as well as teacher retention and recruitment. OPPOSE.
2025 Session Timeline
Monday, 5/13 120th Day of Session (lawmakers' per diem gets cut in half) Monday, 6/30 Last day to pass a budget before state government shuts down
Flag this handy list of contact info, committee chairs and assignments:
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