Gov. Katie Hobbs gives her State of the State address on Jan. 13, 2025. Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy | Arizona Mirror
In her state-of-the-state address on Monday, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs on Monday gave nods to areas of possible bipartisanship with the Republican-controlled Legislature, like border security and pay increases for law enforcement.
But she also threw some barbs at the GOP majority for programs they have championed. She took aim at a lack of accountability in the state’s universal school voucher program, a darling of the state’s GOP, and touted a new alternative path to assured water supply implemented on advice from her council on water that Republican opponents have said the Arizona Department of Water resources didn’t have the power to implement.
On the first day of Arizona’s 2025 legislative session, Hobbs, along with Senate President Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, and House Speaker Montenegro R-Goodyear, preached the importance of working together — but only time will tell how committed they are to that goal.
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Republicans increased their slim majorities in both chambers in the November election, but still need to work with Hobbs to make their proposals into law.
Both Hobbs and Petersen shared their plans for the year ahead. And while many of their areas of focus overlap — like making housing more affordable, improving K-12 education and dealing with the state’s water future — it will undoubtedly be an uphill battle for the executive branch and the Republicans who control the Legislature to come to consensus on how to address those issues.
Hobbs focused her speech on restoring what she called the “Arizona Promise” that anyone in the state, through hard work, can build a good life for themselves and their children. That promise, she said, has “slipped away” for many.
“Since I became governor, we have achieved much together by finding common ground, but we must do more,” Hobbs said from the floor of the Arizona House of Representatives Monday afternoon.
Top priorities for both parties this year are housing affordability and water.
Hobbs said that it was imperative to extend the state’s low-income housing tax credit and to rein in “the proliferation of vacation rentals owned by out of state corporations” which contribute to increased housing costs.
Petersen, in his own speech from the House dais just moments before Hobbs arrived to deliver her address, blamed skyrocketing rental and housing costs at least partially on Hobbs’ moratorium on new residential construction in certain parts of the Valley due to the lack of the required 100-year assured water supply. The Senate president, who is mulling a bid for attorney general in 2026, called the moratorium “senseless” and promised that the state can increase its housing stock and protect its water supply at the same time.
However, when Hobbs mentioned the Arizona Department of Water Resources’ new alternative path to assured water supply, approved by the Governor’s Regulatory Review Council, some Republicans on the packed House floor booed.
The Alternative Path to Assured Water Supply, or ADAWS, is meant to open up more areas of the Valley to building. But Republicans on the Joint Legislative Study Committee on Water Security on Dec. 18 accused the Arizona Department of Water Resources, along with Hobbs and the council, of overstepping their authority and bypassing the Legislature when they created rules for the new pathway.
“We must build. We have the water to support the growth,” Senate President Pro Tem T.J. Shope said in a video response to Hobbs’ address.
Petersen argued that the best solution to shoring up Arizona’s water future was “ag to urban,” or repurposing agricultural land for other purposes like residential developments that use significantly less water. Hobbs vetoed legislation aimed at the same goals last year, but in the video, Shope encouraged her not to do so again.
“As I said when I stood before you last year, we must act now to protect Arizona’s water,” Hobbs said. “And when the Legislature didn’t, I did. I remain committed to true, bipartisan reform to protect our groundwater.
“But mark my words, if this Legislature fails to act. I will, again.”
The border
Petersen promised that legislative Republicans would stand behind Proposition 314, a measure approved by 60% of Arizona voters in November that would allow Arizona law enforcement officers to arrest undocumented immigrants that they believe broke the law.
The major provision of the law is not currently in effect while a similar law in Texas is blocked by the courts, but Petersen said that Republicans, either through legislation or litigations, will support President-elect Donald Trump and law enforcement in their efforts to secure the border.
In a video response to Hobbs’ speech, Petersen said that Hobbs’ action didn’t match her words last year, when she also promised to prioritize border security.
Hobbs didn’t mention Prop. 314 or illegal immigration, but praised the National Guard troops that she sent to the border to help U.S. Customs and Border Protection, touting the 8 million fentanyl pills and 2,000 pounds of narcotics that they helped to intercept.
“I will continue working with this legislature to protect our border because until all Arizonans feel secure in their communities, we will not be able to deliver on our promise of freedom and opportunity,” Hobbs said.
Education
Hobbs urged legislators to focus on making Arizona’s public K-12 schools “world class” by bringing in outstanding teachers and creating smaller class sizes.
She also called for putting “guardrails around ESAs to protect against fraud, waste and abuse,” something Democrats have been demanding since the Empowerment Scholarship Account voucher program was expanded to be available to all K-12 students in 2022.
The ESA program works by giving the parents of participating students a debit card that can be used to pay for various educational costs, or reimbursing the parents for those costs. The costs can include private school tuition, homeschooling supplies or the money can be saved for college.
The program originated in 2012, but was expanded in 2022 from serving a limited group of about 12,000 students who met specific criteria to a universal program available to all of the state’s roughly one million K-12 students. There are currently more than 83,000 students enrolled, according to the Arizona Department of Education, costing the state almost $1 billion annually.
“Taxpayer money being spent on a $10,000 luxury sewing machine? Your money to be spent on a flat earth curriculum? Ridiculous,” House Democratic Minority Leader Oscar De Los Santos said during a Monday press conference.
Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne accused Hobbs of lack of attention to the accountability measures he’s put in place.
“Under my leadership, the department has done a full-court press against waste and fraud,” Horne said in a statement. “I hired both a program auditor and an investigator, which had not been done before. I require that every expenditure be for a valid educational purpose and have been attacked for doing that.”
But to clear a backlog of reimbursement requests, Horne recently announced that the Department of Education would automatically reimburse parents for costs below $2,000 and would audit those expenditures later, after parents received the payments.
Save our Schools Arizona, which stridently opposes school vouchers, praised Hobbs’ commitment to increased accountability for the ESA program following her speech on Monday.
“This program has acted as a blank check for too long, practically encouraging fraudsters to take advantage of the lax accountability,” SOS Executive Director Beth Lewis said in an emailed statement. “The billion-dollar boondoggle must end. Arizonans deserve to know how their dollars are being spent — and the peace of mind that the universal ESA voucher program their taxpayer dollars are funding isn’t being defrauded by ‘ghost children’ and other voucher scams.”
Senate Republicans promised to keep public school money in classrooms by increasing teacher pay above the national average through the renewal of Proposition 123. They also pledged to protect parental choice via the ESA program.
The governor agreed with House Republicans, who released their plan for the coming year last week, that they must address the expiration of Proposition 123, which voters approved in 2015 to provide funding for public schools and teachers as part of a settlement to a lawsuit after GOP lawmakers illegally failed to properly fund schools.
“Renewing it is essential,” Hobbs said. “If we fail to act, we are throwing away an opportunity to fund teacher pay raises and give Arizona’s children the opportunity they deserve — all without raising taxes on a single Arizonan.”
Hobb said she would also work to help parents by reducing the cost of child care by two-thirds, through her Working Families Childcare Act.
Supporting first responders
Both Republicans and Democrats on the house floor on Monday cheered for Hobbs’ proposal to give a 5% pay raise to state law enforcement and correctional officers and to increase pay for firefighters.
“It’s time to put our money where our mouth is,” Hobbs said. “If we care about keeping our communities safe, if we care about supporting our officers, and if we care about public safety, then we should fund the police and our firefighters.”
Elections
Hobbs made no mention of election integrity and speeding up elections in her speech, but Republican leaders in both chambers have said it will be a top priority for them.
“Arizona is dead last on delivering electoral votes,” Petersen said. “It’s time to follow Florida model and deliver results the night of (the election.)”
He said that this will bolster confidence and decrease frustration in the state’s elections.
Reproductive rights
Democratic legislators and some people in the House gallery on Monday gave Hobbs a lengthy cheer when she mentioned their success last year in repealing an abortion ban dating back to 1864. As they stood and clapped, Republicans sat in stony silence.
Voters in November overwhelmingly supported the Arizona Abortion Access Act, which enshrines the right to abortion into the state constitution.
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