Last year, House Minority Leader Rebecca Rios called Gov. Doug Ducey’s State of the State speech a “great Democratic State of the State address.”

However, she told the Arizona Capitol Times last week that Ducey fell short on many of his promises, especially on education funding, and added that the Democratic caucus was not going to fall for his “lip service” again.

In this interview, Rios discussed Ducey’s 2018 address, her priorities for the legislative session, and what it would take for Democrats to consider this year a success.

You’ve said Ducey failed to follow through on the goals he set last year. How so?

I think for me that State of the State address was so focused on education and he put so much emphasis into outlining over a dozen different items. So in terms of did he deliver on that? No, I think it fell very short. At the end of the day it was an inch deep and a mile wide and didn’t move the needle in terms of funding. … I think Arizonans are trying to send a very loud and clear message to the governor and to the Legislature. I know that every one of us will want to do something but saying you’re going to do it and then actually doing it is two different things and I think people have caught on to the politicians that just tell you what you want to hear and then don’t produce any results.

What did you think of this year’s speech?

It took him a good 40 minutes to get to public education. Not a lot of substance on that. … (It was) short on details, short on substance and disappointing. … It’s very easy to get up there and say a lot of things that sound good. That’s exactly what transpired last year in his State of the State address, but then, come Friday, when the budget appeared, there was nothing, there were no dollars to back it. You’ve got to have the resources to back it.

What are your priorities for the 2018 session?

The priority for the Democratic caucus is the same as it has been for multiple years and that’s education. We keep falling further and further behind and it’s clearly a crisis state. So in terms of our platform, education is the number one issue. We started talking about the need to renew Prop. 301 three years ago. And again, at the end of the day, that’s the only funding mechanism that we have in place that we can renew and ensure it’s going to be there.

Aside from education funding, what do you think will be the biggest issues the Legislature will tackle this year?

The opioid epidemic is clearly something that the governor wants to get passed early on in the session. … But in looking at least at some of the preliminary ideas, the two largest components of addressing the opioid epidemic, from my viewpoint, are missing. There’s nothing in terms of treatment, providing treatment services. There’s nothing in terms of criminal justice reform. So it’s a lot of focus on prevention and preventing people from getting into that situation by monitoring doctors and limiting access to opioids. But what about the people that are already addicted or already imprisoned? The other big issue is going to be water policy. And what that’s going to look like, nobody really knows. My concern is that there have been a number of outside stakeholder groups that have sent letters, that have expressed concern, that there hasn’t been a very transparent or authentic public participation process and that’s my concern. Water policy is very complicated, so to come at this in a very expedited manner I think has made a lot of people uncomfortable.

You’re running for the state Senate next year. How would you characterize your time in the House?

It has been exciting. It has been good. It has been very interesting working under two distinctly different administrations, with Gowan and then with Speaker Mesnard. I think the ability to work under the current speaker and have a lot more mutual respect that he shows all the members, to have a lot more discipline in terms of the scheduling and just the atmosphere that he’s created that has really made it a more professional place to serve has been great. As Democrats we’ve done a hell of a job getting our message out to the public. I think it resonated last year. … We are simply mirroring what’s going on outside Arizona. We’re simply bringing that message and putting it out there in the public where it needs to be.

Do you think Democrats will be able to make gains in the Legislature?

I think if ever there was a time to make gains, it appears, if things continue to roll on the way they have, that this is going to be like the perfect convergence of a lot of different things happening. We’ve seen that play out nationally. I know that even locally for the past six months we’ve seen local legislative district meetings just bursting at the seams with people. In my district we were lucky if there was six of us who showed up, now it’s standing room only, there’s 75 to 100 people every month. And that’s playing out across the state. I think people are pissed, I think they are fed up. And I think that is going to result in more than just the average typical voter showing up.