Arizona lawmakers pass budget and adjourn for 2024

Lawmakers passed a budget, along with a handful of other bills, and adjourned for the year over the weekend.

The big picture: A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers approved a $16.1 billion spending plan for fiscal year 2025 and trimmed about $729 million from the current year's budget.

• The budget deal, negotiated by Republican legislative leaders and Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, remedies a $1.4 billion combined shortfall for the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years.

Zoom in: The budget pulled back all $333 million from the final installment of a three-year, billion-dollar plan to fund major water infrastructure projects.

• It delays tens of millions of dollars' worth of planned road projects.
• Most state agencies, including universities, will see cuts across the board.

What they're saying: Proponents described the budget as a reality of divided government.

• "We put together a bipartisan budget," Senate President Warren Petersen told the Arizona Republic. "It doesn't have anything super liberal in it, nothing über-Republican."
• "I have served under Republican administrations and now Democratic administrations, and we will never see a perfect budget," said Rep. Alma Hernandez (D-Tucson), who voted for the spending package.

The other side: There was opposition from both parties.

• Some Republicans, including members of the conservative Freedom Caucus, felt the budget spent too much and that the process was too rushed, leaving lawmakers with too little time to properly consider the spending plan.
• Meanwhile, some Democrats believed there should be more spending in certain areas and objected to their lack of input during Hobbs' negotiations with Petersen and House Speaker Ben Toma (R-Glendale).

Between the lines: One of the biggest sticking points was a provision that removes $75 million from the state's share of a national opioid settlement and puts it into the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Re-entry.

• Attorney General Kris Mayes said the proposed plan is illegal and her office said she'll be "analyzing the best legal course of action from here," the Republic reported.

Friction point: The budget imposes new restrictions on the voucher-style Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program for K-12 schools, including fingerprinting requirements for private schools that accept the money, random auditing and a prohibition on parents using ESA funds over summer break.

• Those changes are expected to save the state $2.5 million.

State of play: Lawmakers passed several other bills and ballot measures in the session's final days, including:

• A measure that eliminates retention elections for most judges. If voters approve it in November, it'll be retroactive to this year, meaning judges who lose retention elections will get to keep their seats.

Meanwhile, a proposed ballot measure that would prohibit Election Day drop-offs of early ballots, which is the primary driver of Arizona's notoriously long ballot-counting process, fell short in the Senate.

What's next: Most legislation goes into effect 90 days after the Legislature adjourns for the year, including the repeal of the pre-Roe abortion ban that the Arizona Supreme Court reinstated in April.

• That means there won't be a gap in which abortions are temporarily illegal before the law repealing it goes into effect, meaning abortions through 15 weeks of pregnancy will be allowed.
• The Arizona Supreme Court has delayed implementation of the pre-Roe ban, and the earliest it can be enforced is Sept. 26, nearly two weeks after the repeal goes into effect.