Arizona Capitol Times Your Inside Source for Arizona Government, Politics and Business

Gov. Katie Hobbs signed her first bill into law on Friday, a measure that will allow cities to set up a fast-track development approval process for some building proposals.

A Democrat in the Arizona House of Representatives filed an ethics complaint against Rep. Liz Harris, R-Chandler, after Harris invited a speaker that made “defamatory” allegations of bribery among elected officials in a legislative committee hearing last month.  

Arizona won’t execute the state’s only inmate on death row even after the Arizona Supreme Court issued a death warrant in the case, Gov. Katie Hobbs said on Friday. 

The Senate passed a resolution March 1 that would allow the previous year’s budget to go into effect for the next year, if the governor won’t sign off on a new budget.  

Gov. Katie Hobbs and Republican lawmakers took some small steps toward negotiation this week, sending invitations and promising to meet to talk about putting together a state budget – the main task that will require cooperation between the opposing parties this year. 

Democrats in the state House of Representatives voted “no” against every single bill up for a floor vote on Tuesday and Wednesday to protest Republican leadership.  

Republican legislative leadership expressed heavy criticism toward a freshman lawmaker for inviting a speaker who made unfounded allegations of bribery against several elected and appointed officials.

Officials on both sides of the aisle want to do something about the deal that’s letting a Saudi-based company pump Arizona groundwater for nothing more than the price of a cheap land lease in La Paz County.

Gov. Katie Hobbs’ choice to lead the Department of Child Services on Feb. 22 is out, the governor announced on Feb. 23, saying the move was in the “best interest of all parties involved.”  

Former Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office found in a March 2022 report that a range of voter fraud allegations stemming from the Arizona Senate’s audit of the 2020 Maricopa County election were either “unfounded” or couldn’t be corroborated.