Az Legislature ends 2026 session after late-night GOP push to send conservative agenda to voters

The Arizona Legislature adjourned for
the year early Saturday morning, after four days of rapid-fire votes on
hundreds of pieces of legislation and a marathon last day that saw
Republicans send a series of measures to the November ballot in the
hopes that voters let them enact policies Gov. Katie Hobbs won’t.

Legislators started the day around
10:30 a.m. and voted on many of the proposals late into the night, when
most of their constituents were likely asleep or had stopped paying
attention. The Arizona Senate voted to end the annual legislative
session at around 12:30 a.m. Saturday, and the House of Representatives
finally wrapped up its work at 4:45 a.m.

Democratic Rep. Alma Hernandez, of
Tucson, also blamed her own party for the late night voting, saying her
colleagues shouldn’t have agreed to support a bipartisan budget without a
guarantee that Republicans would end the legislative session after the
budget vote on Thursday. Hernandez was among a handful of Democrats who
opposed the annual spending plan.

“We knew this was going to happen,
and here we are, bringing all the bills that never made it, or either
died, and then they came back to life, and then we’re here at 3:36 a.m.
passing bills that the governor has no ability to veto,” she said,
referring to the ballot referrals, which circumvent the governor’s veto
pen. “So, now we’re going to continue just making the ballots longer and
longer and longer. And we truly did this to ourselves.”

The 152nd and final day of the
legislative session, was marked by the revival of multiple pieces of
legislation that had previously been voted down or fallen by the wayside
— and by open hostility between Republican and Democratic legislators
just a day after they banded together to back the budget.

At one point, Republican Rep. Neal
Carter screamed at House Minority Leader Oscar De Los Santos for
“impugning his motives” in violation of House rules. De Los Santos
accused Carter of attempting to start a physical fight with him. Senate
President Warren Petersen barred a group of school teachers from sitting
in the public gallery for what he said was an illegal disruption of a
legislative hearing and disorderly conduct.

As the House of Representatives and
the Senate worked late into the night, Republicans approved along party
lines several resolutions to ask voters to amend state statute or the
Arizona Constitution, bypassing a veto from Hobbs.

Bills need a majority in both
chambers and a signature from the governor to become law, but
resolutions only require approval from both chambers, bypassing Hobbs to
be placed on the ballot for voters to decide. Republicans use
resolutions as a workaround to attempt to get legislation on the books
that they know would never make it past Hobbs.

While Republicans suspended the rules
of the House and Senate to push through partisan legislation, Democrats
made several procedural motions to end the legislation session, and
Republicans blocked all of them.

“I believe we should sine die (end
the legislative session) because this body has done enough harm and
caused enough hate for one day,” Sen. Mitzi Epstein, D-Tempe, said
during one of those attempts hours before the Senate finally adjourned.
“That’s enough hate for one day from the Republican Party, so I really
want to sine die.”

Dozens of pieces of legislation that
were voted down earlier in the week, or early in the day Friday, were
quickly amended and brought for another vote.

Legislative Republicans voted to send to voters an amended version of House Concurrent Resolution 2001,
an election overhaul that Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin has been
trying to pass for two years. The resolution, which he said was intended
to restore trust in the state’s elections and to speed up results, was
significantly pared down from Kolodin’s initial proposal.

The amended version would prohibit
foreign nationals from spending money to influence elections, require
every voter to show government identification before casting a ballot in
every election and require all polling locations to provide on-site
tabulation of ballots for voters who want it.

“I would like to remind everyone that this bill is very important to the public,” GOP Rep. Teresa Martinez said. “Election integrity is extremely important.”

Rep. Lisa Fink, R-Glendale, said that the No. 1 issue for voters when she was campaigning was election integrity.

“They wanted ID, and they wanted to make sure that they were eligible citizens that were actually voting in our elections,” she said.

Arizona is the only state in the
nation where people must prove their citizenship when they register to
vote, and it requires voters to show ID at the polls. Both were enacted
by voters in 2004, when they approved Proposition 200, the “Arizona
Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act.”

Sen. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, and
other Republicans repeatedly said that HCR 2001 would not impact vote
by mail, despite concerns from county recorders, elections officials and
Democrats. They continually shut down questions from Democrats about
how mail-in voters would provide their ID prior to each election.

Voters who cast a ballot in person
are already required to present ID, but those who vote by mail use
signature verification to confirm their identities.

“I think the public cannot miss the
fact that this is a voter suppression bill,” Sen. Analise Ortiz,
D-Phoenix, said. “This is intended to make it harder for you to vote, to
make your voice heard in your democracy. This should terrify every
person who understands United States history.”

The Senate on Friday voted along party lines to send House Concurrent Resolution 2044 to voters, a measure written by the Goldwater Institute that would “enshrine
permanent protections against racially discriminatory DEI practices and
programming throughout all state institutions, including K-12 schools
and universities,” according to the libertarian group.

Also on Friday, the Senate voted along party lines to approve Senate Concurrent Resolution 1004,
sponsored by Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, which would ask voters to
prohibit using cameras to enforce speeding and red light laws, unless
voters specifically approve their use within their community. Rogers has
been trying for years to get legislation passed that would ban red
light cameras.

One of the most controversial and hastily-drafted resolutions passed Friday was House Concurrent Resolution 2048, which would nullify two citizen-led initiatives aimed at regulating the state’s billion-dollar school voucher program.

The move came after a deal between
legislative Republicans and the Arizona Education Association, the
state’s largest teachers union, fell through. Per the deal, the AEA
would drop its campaign to ask voters to impose major restrictions on
the universal voucher program, if Republicans agreed to abandon a
retaliatory referral that would effectively defund the teachers union
by prohibiting school districts from deducting membership fees from
employee paychecks — even though that is done at the employee’s
request.

After the deal fell through, both chambers voted along party lines to put the union-busting House Concurrent Resolution 2040 to voters.

Republicans say that HCR 2048, dubbed
the “Military Families College Savings and Scholarship Protection Act,”
is a constitutional amendment that would protect military families from
having their school voucher money “swept” or taken. Any measure
approved by voters this year that takes voucher money those families are
saving for college — something done by the AEA-backed initiative —
would be deemed void.

But the legislation does far more
than Republicans touted: Buried in the legislation is a clause that says
it is not just limited to “scholarship account programs that are
established and maintained by this state for only children of military
families.” Democrats said that means it would effectively bar any
reforms to the ESA school voucher system.

De Los Santos, and several other Democrats accused Republicans of “using military families as a political tool.”

At nearly 4 a.m. Saturday, Republicans in the House voted to approve Senate Concurrent Resolution 1032,
which would ask voters to require most school districts to spend at
least 60% of their operational spending on “direct instructional
expenses.” The directive would only apply to school districts with 7,500
or more students and all districts in Maricopa, Pima and Pinal
counties.

For districts that don’t comply, the
state could reduce their Classroom Site Fund allocations by 25%
annually, until they zero out.

Looking back

The state’s legislative session,
which began Jan. 12, set a record for the most pieces of legislation
proposed, with a total of 2,190 bills, memoriams and resolutions.

As of late Friday afternoon, Hobbs
had signed 125 of the 188 bills that had been sent to her and had vetoed
63 of them. All of the vetoed bills and the overwhelming majority of
those that Hobbs signed into law were sponsored by Republicans, who
control both chambers of the Arizona Legislature.

Only five bills sponsored by
Democrats have made it through both chambers to be signed into law by
Hobbs. Most pieces of legislation sponsored by Democrats were either
never assigned to be heard in a legislative committee or were never
placed on a committee agenda, set by Republican chairmen.