I-10 expansion bill survives latest hurdle in saga 

One senator’s last-minute amendment saved I-10 expansion funding from making it through the Legislature as a bill this session. 

The I-10 expansion is a project near and dear to a handful of legislators, but every time it seems like the funding is secured, there’s a new bump in the road.  

Last session, the Legislature passed a bill to secure about half of the funding needed for the I-10 expansion, with the hope – and assumption – that the state could get the rest of the money through a federal grant.  

However, in the interim between sessions, the federal government rejected Arizona’s grant application in favor of other projects. This session, Sen. T.J. Shope, R-Coolidge, and Rep. Theresa Martinez, R-Casa Grande, filed identical “mirror” bills that would require the state to pay the rest of the $360 million in funding if the federal government won’t. 

Shope’s bill passed the Senate unanimously, but Martinez couldn’t get her bill passed in the House Transportation Committee by Chairman Rep. David Cook, R-Globe.  

Cook had a bill important to his district dealing with health insurance claim denials, which was assigned to Sen. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek’s Senate Government Committee, but Hoffman did not hear the bill.  

Shope’s I-10 widening bill came to Cook’s House Transportation Committee and Cook tried to amend it to strike out the I-10 widening language and put the language for his health insurance bill on there, but that effort was blocked by Democrats and Martinez, who is the vice chair of Cook’s committee.  

Martinez confirmed that she and Cook had a fight in the members’ lounge about the bill and said she doesn’t know why Cook wouldn’t let the I-10 widening go forward. “If I knew why Senator Hoffman did what he did and Representative Cook does what he does, I would make a lot of money,” she said on Tuesday.  

Rep. Keith Seaman, D-Casa Grande, represents the same district as Shope and Martinez; LD16. He is on the House Transportation Committee and said he strategized with other Democrats to get Cook’s striker killed. “Thinking that maybe then would free up the original I-10 bill,” Seaman said, adding he hoped the bill would be resurrected in Cook’s committee, and he also heard rumors of a conference committee, but that never happened. 

Cook didn’t have the votes for the striker amendment, but he wouldn’t let Shope’s original bill pass. The whole thing died, and it seemed for a moment that the bill wouldn’t make it through the Legislature after all.  

But then, Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, agreed to let Martinez add the I-10 widening bill onto one of her own bills in the Senate Appropriations Committee – which Kavanagh chairs. The amendment is in Kavanagh’s name and the bill was heard in the very last committee meeting of the year for any legislation to be heard in the Senate. 

On Wednesday, Cook voted ‘no’ on two of Hoffman’s partisan bills in the House along with Rep. David Livingston, R-Peoria, killing them. 

Shope said in a text that he hopes Cook didn’t kill Hoffman’s bills in retaliation, but he wouldn’t be surprised if he did.