‘Arizona Promise’ takes center stage in Hobbs’ State of the State speech

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, such as
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 Steve Montenegro, R-Goodyear, preached the
importance of working together — but only time will tell how committed
they are to that goal.

Speech text: Hobbs: ‘The Arizona promise is personal to me’

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 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.”

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.