at nearly 4 a.m. on June 13

The Arizona Legislature adjourned for the year early Saturday morning, after four days of rapid-fire votes on hundreds of pieces of legislation and a marathon last day that saw Republicans send a series of measures to the November ballot in the hopes that voters let them enact policies Gov. Katie Hobbs won’t. 

Legislators started the day around 10:30 a.m. and voted on many of the proposals late into the night, when most of their constituents were likely asleep or had stopped paying attention. The Arizona Senate voted to end the annual legislative session at around 12:30 a.m. Saturday, and the House of Representatives finally wrapped up its work at 4:45 a.m.

Democratic Rep. Alma Hernandez, of Tucson, also blamed her own party for the late night voting, saying her colleagues shouldn’t have agreed to support a bipartisan budget without a guarantee that Republicans would end the legislative session after the budget vote on Thursday. Hernandez was among a handful of Democrats who opposed the annual spending plan.

“We knew this was going to happen, and here we are, bringing all the bills that never made it, or either died, and then they came back to life, and then we’re here at 3:36 a.m. passing bills that the governor has no ability to veto,” she said, referring to the ballot referrals, which circumvent the governor’s veto pen. “So, now we’re going to continue just making the ballots longer and longer and longer. And we truly did this to ourselves.” 

The 152nd and final day of the legislative session, was marked by the revival of multiple pieces of legislation that had previously been voted down or fallen by the wayside — and by open hostility between Republican and Democratic legislators just a day after they banded together to back the budget. 

At one point, Republican Rep. Neal Carter screamed at House Minority Leader Oscar De Los Santos for “impugning his motives” in violation of House rules. De Los Santos accused Carter of attempting to start a physical fight with him. Senate President Warren Petersen barred a group of school teachers from sitting in the public gallery for what he said was an illegal disruption of a legislative hearing and disorderly conduct. 

As the House of Representatives and the Senate worked late into the night, Republicans approved along party lines several resolutions to ask voters to amend state statute or the Arizona Constitution, bypassing a veto from Hobbs. 

Bills need a majority in both chambers and a signature from the governor to become law, but resolutions only require approval from both chambers, bypassing Hobbs to be placed on the ballot for voters to decide. Republicans use resolutions as a workaround to attempt to get legislation on the books that they know would never make it past Hobbs. 

While Republicans suspended the rules of the House and Senate to push through partisan legislation, Democrats made several procedural motions to end the legislation session, and Republicans blocked all of them. 

“I believe we should sine die (end the legislative session) because this body has done enough harm and caused enough hate for one day,” Sen. Mitzi Epstein, D-Tempe, said during one of those attempts hours before the Senate finally adjourned. “That’s enough hate for one day from the Republican Party, so I really want to sine die.” 

Dozens of pieces of legislation that were voted down earlier in the week, or early in the day Friday, were quickly amended and brought for another vote. 

Legislative Republicans voted to send to voters an amended version of House Concurrent Resolution 2001, an election overhaul that Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin has been trying to pass for two years. The resolution, which he said was intended to restore trust in the state’s elections and to speed up results, was significantly pared down from Kolodin’s initial proposal. 

The amended version would prohibit foreign nationals from spending money to influence elections, require every voter to show government identification before casting a ballot in every election and require all polling locations to provide on-site tabulation of ballots for voters who want it. 

“I would like to remind everyone that this bill is very important to the public,” GOP Rep. Teresa Martinez said. “Election integrity is extremely important.” 

Rep. Lisa Fink, R-Glendale, said that the No. 1 issue for voters when she was campaigning was election integrity. 

“They wanted ID, and they wanted to make sure that they were eligible citizens that were actually voting in our elections,” she said. 

Arizona is the only state in the nation where people must prove their citizenship when they register to vote, and it requires voters to show ID at the polls. Both were enacted by voters in 2004, when they approved Proposition 200, the “Arizona Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act.”

Sen. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, and other Republicans repeatedly said that HCR 2001 would not impact vote by mail, despite concerns from county recorders, elections officials and Democrats. They continually shut down questions from Democrats about how mail-in voters would provide their ID prior to each election. 

Voters who cast a ballot in person are already required to present ID, but those who vote by mail use signature verification to confirm their identities. 

“I think the public cannot miss the fact that this is a voter suppression bill,” Sen. Analise Ortiz, D-Phoenix, said. “This is intended to make it harder for you to vote, to make your voice heard in your democracy. This should terrify every person who understands United States history.”

The Senate on Friday voted along party lines to send House Concurrent Resolution 2044 to voters, a measure written by the Goldwater Institute that would “enshrine permanent protections against racially discriminatory DEI practices and programming throughout all state institutions, including K-12 schools and universities,” according to the libertarian group. 

Also on Friday, the Senate voted along party lines to approve Senate Concurrent Resolution 1004, sponsored by Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, which would ask voters to prohibit using cameras to enforce speeding and red light laws, unless voters specifically approve their use within their community. Rogers has been trying for years to get legislation passed that would ban red light cameras. 

One of the most controversial and hastily-drafted resolutions passed Friday was House Concurrent Resolution 2048, which would nullify two citizen-led initiatives aimed at regulating the state’s billion-dollar school voucher program. 

The move came after a deal between legislative Republicans and the Arizona Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, fell through. Per the deal, the AEA would drop its campaign to ask voters to impose major restrictions on the universal voucher program, if Republicans agreed to abandon a retaliatory referral that would effectively defund the teachers union by prohibiting school districts from deducting membership fees from employee paychecks — even though that is done at the employee’s request. 

After the deal fell through, both chambers voted along party lines to put the union-busting House Concurrent Resolution 2040 to voters. 

Republicans say that HCR 2048, dubbed the “Military Families College Savings and Scholarship Protection Act,” is a constitutional amendment that would protect military families from having their school voucher money “swept” or taken. Any measure approved by voters this year that takes voucher money those families are saving for college — something done by the AEA-backed initiative — would be deemed void.

But the legislation does far more than Republicans touted: Buried in the legislation is a clause that says it is not just limited to “scholarship account programs that are established and maintained by this state for only children of military families.” Democrats said that means it would effectively bar any reforms to the ESA school voucher system.

De Los Santos, and several other Democrats accused Republicans of “using military families as a political tool.”

At nearly 4 a.m. Saturday, Republicans in the House voted to approve Senate Concurrent Resolution 1032, which would ask voters to require most school districts to spend at least 60% of their operational spending on “direct instructional expenses.” The directive would only apply to school districts with 7,500 or more students and all districts in Maricopa, Pima and Pinal counties. 

For districts that don’t comply, the state could reduce their Classroom Site Fund allocations by 25% annually, until they zero out. 

Looking back 

The state’s legislative session, which began Jan. 12, set a record for the most pieces of legislation proposed, with a total of 2,190 bills, memoriams and resolutions. 

As of late Friday afternoon, Hobbs had signed 125 of the 188 bills that had been sent to her and had vetoed 63 of them. All of the vetoed bills and the overwhelming majority of those that Hobbs signed into law were sponsored by Republicans, who control both chambers of the Arizona Legislature. 

Only five bills sponsored by Democrats have made it through both chambers to be signed into law by Hobbs. Most pieces of legislation sponsored by Democrats were either never assigned to be heard in a legislative committee or were never placed on a committee agenda, set by Republican chairmen.