Fernando Tatis Jr. hit just his second home run of the season with two outs in the ninth inning to lift the San Diego Padres to a 5-4 win against the Cincinnati Reds on Wednesday.

Tatis lined a 2-1 pitch from Chase Petty (0-1) into the first row of seats in left field, with a launch angle of just 18 degrees. He spread his arms wide in celebration as he approached second base and did an exaggerated stutter step around third. His jersey was torn off during a wild celebration.

Alaska ranked 47th in the nation in a recent analysis of children’s overall well-being, after dropping seven places since the last report.

The nationally recognized survey is part of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count data book. It looks at four key aspects of children’s well-being, including education, health, economic well-being and family and community.

While the overall ranking for Alaska’s children was not good, the state’s rankings for education and economic well-being were particularly low, at 49th and 48th respectively.

Trevor Storrs, president and CEO of the nonprofit advocacy group Alaska Children’s Trust, says the Kids Count ranking is a dire warning.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Trevor Storrs: This is a further sign that our state is facing some real challenges when it comes to our children and families. To be ranked 47th in the nation should be a red flag, and we should be asking the questions, “Why are we 47th, and what does it mean to be 47th?”

We need to step back and really have the honest conversations around what do we need to ensure that our children and families are not just safe but thriving.

Casey Grove: What contributed to Alaska dropping seven places in that ranking?

TS: Well, I think the biggest thing is other states are investing differently and more. So one of the things to recognize is our 2025 budget. We just passed a ’26 (budget). If the governor approves it, that’s yet to be decided.

So, one, we’re investing less. When you invest less, you get less return on your investment. And then when you speak of return on investment, it’s about where you put your money, so if you put your money in something that has high return, you’re going to see better impact and progress, right?

Well, the example is, this year, if I’m correct, the only budget that really saw a major increase was (the Department of) Corrections. They walked in and said, “Hey, we need 25 million more dollars,” as our schools are closing. We had conversations, although it didn’t happen, people were going, “Well, we don’t have enough money if we pay them, so maybe we need to cut early childhood (education). Early childhood provides a $7 to $13 return on investment, depending on the specific activity.

Corrections, there’s no return on investment, or very little. It usually costs us more, and there’s no return. So, where should we put our dollars? But yet we continually put our dollars after the fact, versus upstream primary prevention.

CG: Specifically, drilling down on education, we were 47th overall in these rankings but 49th in education, right? Can you tell me more about that?

TS: Well, and I think this is a topic that everybody knows, we are not 49th because we don’t have good schools (or) we don’t have good teachers. It’s the system and the way we invest, and, or more importantly, what we haven’t (invested in).

And kudos to the Legislature last year, they stood up and made sure that schools got more dollars, so that negative impact was less. But it was not enough, and those are the conversations that we need to have. The idea of the Kids Count (data book) is not to shame anybody orpoint fingers, but we as a state need to own them, and really have a conversation going, “Is this what we want to be?”

And I will promote and remind people, in 2026, it’s a huge election, not only the federal, Senate and Houses (seats)up, we’re guaranteed a new governor and 50 of the six state legislators. We need to make sure that they’re not just voting for the development of oil and all of our other resources, but more importantly, are investing in our most important and future asset, and that’s our children. They might only make up 25% of our population, but they make up 100% of our future.

CG: Have there been more recent improvements on some of these things that you’ve seen here in Alaska that that give you hope?

TS: Oh, absolutely. So one, I think there’s improvements in the system. I will say our state has really done well with the Rural Health Transformation (Program) funds that, under the commissioner of the Department of Health, really, it’s been challenging, and they’re still facing challenges, but through our SNAP program and Medicaid and dealing with the backlogs, they still have them, they still have challenges, but they’re working so diligently in doing that.

Our maternal health program, they do an exceptional job, and at times we might lose some of our ranking in that, our percentage, they show (might show a) decrease, but when you compare us to the other states, we’re doing good. So there are some bright spots, and they’re bright spots because of how we invest in it and how we’re being strategic with it. I want to take that and enlarge it on the state level, like, let’s work off of those and be, not just successful with that, but with all the other areas as well.

Key points:

• Legislature to send Gov. Katie Hobbs a bipartisan budget deal

• Governor anticipated to sign, lawmakers expect to adjourn for summer on Friday

• The $18.3 billion deal fully conforms Arizona to President Donald Trump’s federal tax cuts and pauses subsidies for new data centers for three years 

Gov. Katie Hobbs is expected to sign a bipartisan budget package now moving through the Legislature, calling the deal a compromise with legislative Republicans after including full conformity to President Donald Trump’s tax cuts and a three-year pause on subsidizing taxes for new data centers. 

The Joint Appropriations Committee passed the $18.3 billion package on Wednesday morning with only three lawmakers on the 28-member panel voting against it. Both chambers are expecting to vote on the budget package Thursday and adjourn sine die on Friday. 

Hobbs in May vetoed a $17.9 billion GOP-led budget proposal that kept the state’s sales tax exemption for data centers, but lawmakers and the Governor’s Office have reached an agreement after a month-long recess to focus on budget negotiations. 

“This bipartisan compromise shows what we can do when we put common sense before political games and focus on delivering real results for our communities,” Hobbs said on Tuesday. “It will put money back in the pockets of Arizona families and lower costs, make our communities safer and protect the vital services that Arizonans rely on.”

Republicans were primarily seeking to become the only state that fully conforms to the federal tax policy in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, H.R. 1. Full tax conformity is expected to reduce state revenue by over $1.4 billion over four years. While Democrats have largely opposed full tax conformity, Hobbs has supported “middle class tax cuts” that are also implemented in the budget, which includes the elimination of taxes on tips and overtime, an increased standard deduction and a new $6,000 tax deduction for seniors. 

“This is a $1.4 billion tax cut budget,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. David Livingston, R-Peoria. “It’s all that matters in this budget. Everything else is small potatoes.”

Hobbs had proposed some revenue sources of her own in her $18.7 billion budget proposal released in January. Those were kept out of the bipartisan deal, including a short-term rental $3.50 nightly fee and a sports betting fee that was expected to generate $146 million in revenue. The state’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program is also untouched after Hobbs asked for an income cap on the program earlier this session. 

“Arizona families will keep more of what they earn. Parents will keep school choice. Public safety will be funded. Government will be smaller. Welfare programs will be held to basic standards, and Governor Hobbs’ push for higher taxes and bigger government was stopped,” said House Speaker Steve Montenegro, R-Goodyear.

But Hobbs and Democrats did get the pause on tax breaks for new data centers, which lawmakers believe will save about $38 million annually. House Minority Leader Oscar De Los Santos, D-Laveen, said Arizona’s three-year moratorium on data center subsidies will be the longest of any state in the country.  

House and Senate Democrats are touting other wins in food assistance and public education support after a near 50% cut to the enrollment of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program since last year. The budget funds free school meals for two years and allocates $235 million for food assistance programs and $66 million that will help public schools acquire textbooks, technology and transportation. 

“We’re also using the money from stopping the data center tax giveaway to invest in food security and affordability,” De Los Santos said on Wednesday. 

And as Democrats secured money for those programs, Republicans got reforms to Medicaid and SNAP to include more strict eligibility and residency requirements for both programs as lawmakers are trying to reduce the state’s error rates to comply with federal requirements. 

“The reforms that we secured in this budget are going to drive down those error rates,” said Rep. Matt Gress, R-Phoenix. 

The only Republican who voted against the budget package on the joint committee, which included almost a third of the Legislature’s 90 members, was Rep. Justin Olson, R-Mesa. 

While Olson supports full tax conformity and the budget’s taxation omnibus bill, House Bill 4168, he said he couldn’t support the mass motion or the other budget bills with how much the state planned to spend.

Republican leaders at the Legislature do consider this year’s budget spending growth to be a win relative to previous years. The budget has grown by 3.1% compared to last year, below the 3.9% combined change in Arizona’s population and inflation.

“I’m pleased that it increases much smaller than the amount that we increased the budget by last year, but I’m still very uncomfortable with a $716 million increase in state spending on top of the more than double the increase in population and inflation that was adopted last year,” Olson said.

Two Democrats, Sens. Mitzi Epstein D-Tempe and Lauren Kuby, D-Tempe, also voted against the budget in the appropriations hearing. Epstein did not support the tax conformity provisions in the budget, although she commended Democratic leaders for reaching a more favorable deal than the Republican budget presented earlier in the session. 

The GOP budget proposed cutting state agencies across the board by 10%, but that has now been reduced to a 2.5% reduction in operation spending which eliminates 1,000 unfunded full-time positions and requires the sale of vacant government buildings. The bipartisan budget also increases state employee healthcare spending by about $100 million and removes a 20% increase in premium payments that was in the GOP budget. 

Under the earlier budget, about 40,000 Arizonans would have been removed from the state’s Medicaid program, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, but Democrats negotiated $20 million for 163 new full-time employees at AHCCCS and the Department of Economic Security to help administer the programs.

“House Democrats stuck together and forced a better deal: one that feeds kids, supports public schools, lowers childcare costs, and protects healthcare,” Assistant House Minority Leader Nancy Gutierrez, D-Tucson, said in a Tuesday statement. 

The budget deal also includes a 4% stipend for correctional officers, $48 million to state childcare assistance programs, and $58 million for child safety operations.