Key Points:

• Gov. Hobbs launches political attack on Sen. T.J. Shope over government contracts

• Shope received over $4,900 in meals and entertainment from lobbyists last year

• The attack is a response to Hobbs’ own reform proposal being rejected by Senate

Upset by his refusal to accept her plan for accountability in government contracts over his, Gov. Hobbs is launching a political attack on Sen. T.J. Shope.

Gubernatorial staffers have prepared a list showing that the Coolidge Republican was the beneficiary of more than $4,900 in meals and other entertainment last year from lobbyists. That number comes from reports that lobbyists are required to file.

And press aide Liliana Soto, when sending that report to the media, pointed out that none of that showed up in the annual financial disclosure statement that Shope and all elected officials are required to file. That statement specifically requires the disclosure of all gifts with a cumulative value of more than $500.

Soto, however, refused to say whether any of what Shope failed to list actually runs afoul of state financial disclosure laws.

“Whether that’s a violation is up to the appropriate authorities to decide,” she said.

But if Shope is violating the law, as Soto suggests, he is hardly alone.

Capitol Media Services has reviewed annual financial disclosure reports filed by Hobbs back to 2011, as a legislator, then as secretary of state, and now as governor. And none of them lists any meals.

Instead, her list of “gifts” includes only travel expenses — just as does Shope.

Soto did not immediately respond to questions about the governor’s own disclosure forms.

Shope, for his part, told Capitol Media Services he has filled out the forms every year he has been a legislator.

What seems to be driving the attack is a dispute between Hobbs and Shope over the best way to address the fact that it is often impossible to determine whether a company has been awarded lucrative state contracts because of its donations to the governor and her allies.

What is known is that Sunshine Residential, a company that provides group homes for children in the state’s foster care system, donated $400,000 to Hobbs and the Arizona Democratic Party. And it was later rewarded with more money for the same services.

It was Shope who then called for an inquiry into what he called a “pay-to-play” scheme, with probes launched by Attorney General Kris Mayes and Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell.

Shope also separately proposed what he said is a method to make such dealings more public: Every company or individual seeking state business would have to report, up front, any donations they made in the prior five years to the governor or any of her political entities.

Hobbs nixed that plan last year.

In her veto message, she said the current procurement and award processes for the state’s Medicaid program “are consistent with Medicaid industry best practices.” But she did not address that the scope of what Shope has proposed went far beyond Medicaid and affected all state contracts.

Hobbs finally said in November she would propose her own alternative. That was finally made public last week, what she dubbed the “largest ethics reform package in modern Arizona history.”

Her plan involves setting up a searchable database of the people who control companies that do business with the state. But it would take a second step to link them to any political contributions: People would then have to plug those names into a separate database, this one run by the Secretary of State’s Office, to find out to whom they had donated.

Shope contends the governor’s plan, aside from being more complex, has loopholes.

Most notably, the system fails to provide public access to donations that a state contractor might have made to entities not in the database maintained by the Secretary of State’s Office — such as an inaugural fund or a legal defense fund.

Hobbs has created both.

So he reintroduced his original plan — the one Hobbs vetoed last year.

Soto won’t address those gaps in what the governor’s plan would make readily available. Instead, she is criticizing Shope because his plan does not address something else the governor wants: the elimination of lobbyist funded dinners, travel, speeches, lodging and outings. 

And that is why Soto alleges that Shope is acting improperly by omitting any mention of those meals from his annual personal disclosure statement. She contends that none of this would be necessary if he and other lawmakers would agree that there can no longer be free meals from lobbyists.

Shope is far from being the only lawmaker, from either party, who has been taken to lunch or dinner by a lobbyist. But Soto admitted she is singling him out because his conflicting plan doesn’t address the question of lobbyists paying for lunches, dinners and drinks.

And Soto did not respond to questions about what Hobbs included or did not include in her own reports going back more than a decade — and whether the governor was as culpable as Shope.

Hobbs, seeking a second term as governor, has been on the political defensive since it was first revealed that Sunshine Residential gave $100,000 to her 2023 inaugural fund. Only the $250,000 donation by Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest utility, was larger.

Close to $1.7 million was raised for the event. But the governor’s campaign said it actually cost less than that to put it on. That meant Hobbs could set aside the balance for political purposes, including electing Democrats.

Other reports found that Sunshine also gave $300,000 to the Arizona Democratic Party.

All this came as the state was deciding whether to increase the amount of money the Department of Child Safety, run by a Hobbs appointee, was paying Sunshine for out-of-home cases for foster children. Sunshine eventually got a 60% boost, with DCS officials saying they needed the beds that Sunshine could provide.

It was those reports that led Shope to introduce his legislation last year to require contractors to disclose donations to the governor and any campaign committees. When Hobbs vetoed it, Shope then asked for an investigation, angering Christian Slater, the governor’s communications chief.

“Just like past investigations instigated by radical and partisan legislators, the administration will be cleared of wrongdoing,” he said at the time. Slater said it should be no surprise that a company involved in children’s welfare would want to contribute to Hobbs, citing her background as a social worker.

So far, neither Mayes nor Mitchell has released any findings.

More recently, House Republican lawmakers hired an attorney to serve as an investigator into their own probe, with no report on that, either.