Arizona’s wild legislative session saw bipartisan results

PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) — State lawmakers wrapped up the longest legislative in state history this week. But it wasn’t the only record to be broken in 2023. When Gov. Katie Hobbs kicked off the 56th Legislature in January, she ushered in the first era of divided government in nearly 15 years. And the numbers bear out the political tension. Over the 204 days, the Republican-controlled Legislature passed 348 bills and then watched as the Democratic governor vetoed 142 of them, setting a record for a single year.

Hobbs and Republican leaders eventually set aside their differences. In May, the governor signed a nearly $18 billion budget that boosted school funding, deposited money into the “Housing Trust Fund,” and gave Arizona parents a $250 tax rebate for every child.

Beyond the budget, Hobbs and the Legislature compromised to kill a rental tax and let Maricopa County voters extend or reject a decades-old transportation tax next year. “It was a great session proving that with a divided government, we can still produce legislation that works that keep the economy going,” said Danny Siden, the head of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce.

While the state’s business community was mostly pleased with the session’s outcome, education activists and teachers appeared far less satisfied. Even though the governor got more school funding, Republicans refused to curb the explosive growth of the state’s school voucher program. The Empowerment Scholarship Account program, commonly called ESAs, allows parents to send their kids to private schools with taxpayer money.

Recent estimates show the costs ballooning to over $1 billion and threatening to blow a hole in the budget. Beth Lewis, the executive director for Save Our Schools Arizona, slammed the Legislature for not addressing the program’s growing costs. “I would say the entire Legislature spent the entire session tilting at windmills and culture wars and didn’t accomplish anything. Got a very modest into one-time spending issues and didn’t move the needle whatsoever and also didn’t address ESA,” Lewis said.

See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? Please click here to report it.

Do you have a photo or video of a breaking news story? Send it to us here with a brief description.

Copyright 2023 KTVK/KPHO. All rights reserved.