Less than an hour had passed from when Republicans delivered a budget to Katie Hobbs desk yesterday to when she stamped it with a ‘veto.’ No one is surprised, since from the moment she walked out of negotiations six weeks ago and “challenged” Republicans to show their budget hand, she had already made up her mind about vetoing it. She just needed them to do all the work first.
Hobbs has grown far too comfortable being the only one setting conditions on budget negotiations, considering every condition she has set has been unreasonable, unworkable, or erratic.
She tried to anchor the entire budget to an unprecedented raid of the state land trust, speculative revenue requiring voter approval that could never functionally bridge her reckless spending. She wanted to deliver only half the conformity relief Arizona taxpayers are entitled to under the One Big Beautiful Bill, in direct contradiction to tax forms her own Department of Revenue already issued, creating tax filing chaos. She tried to “trade” not forcing that tax hike on Arizonans for kicking kids off the ESA program (insane). And when Republicans said no to all of it, she flipped the table and stormed off, openly admitting she was out of ideas, and demanding Republicans produce a budget on their own.
While the veto from Hobbs was largely expected, Hobbs’ explanation for her veto was such brazen hypocrisy that it raises the genuine question of whether she is being ironic or fails to see the numerous contradictions in her opposition to the GOP budget.
She rails against “tax breaks for billionaires,” a line that would land better if the bulk of what she’s opposing weren’t no taxes on tips, overtime, and the depreciation schedules thousands of Arizona small businesses use to offset investments. The one provision that skews toward higher earners is the SALT deduction, which is only in play because Hobbs:
- Vetoed an earlier Republican conformity bill in January that replaced the SALT deduction with a child tax credit;
- Included the SALT deduction on this year’s tax form, which means she was in favor of the deduction before she was against it.
She positions herself as an opponent of data center tax carveouts, despite voting for them as a state legislator, while seeking to protect millions in solar and wind subsidies. She derides sweeping excess funds from the Arizona Commerce Authority, an agency that under her watch was found to have violated the state’s gift clause by blowing $2.4 million on Super Bowl tickets and lavish CEO forums. For Hobbs, hosting cocktail parties for wealthy executives apparently is a worthy taxpayer expense.
The bottom line is that Republicans did the job she walked away from and told them to complete. And now she thinks she can sit back and lazily redline their work from the sidelines. That is not how this works. Criticizing is not the same thing as governing. “Budget for All” platitudes are not the same thing as a real budget.
It’s time she put her budget cards on the table.
Governor Hobbs needs to produce an actual budget now.
She wants to pretend the “executive proposal” she unveiled in January was a real budget. It was not. It was a political document riddled with budget sins. The proposal relied on a $760 million federal border reimbursement that no one expects to materialize. She proposed raiding a voter-protected education fund and added $1.5 billion in new debt. It included fake budget cuts that will never happen. This isn’t just about fundamental disagreements in priorities, Katie Hobbs “budget” was a bunch of fabricated revenues and phantom savings designed to paper over a structurally broken spending plan.
But perhaps the most reckless component was her “solution” on tax conformity; the capstone of a months-long parade of failures since the One Big Beautiful Bill passed last July.
Just to recap, last year when Republicans called on Hobbs to convene a special session to conform Arizona’s tax code, she refused. Hundreds of thousands of Arizona families were left hanging, uncertain whether their tips, overtime, and higher standard deductions would survive on their state return. Then in November, she apparently decided the whole thing was actually a great idea, if she could just get away with taking credit for it. She issued an executive order branding Trump’s tax relief as her own “Middle Class Tax Cuts Package,” after spending months trashing the One Big Beautiful Bill as “devastating” and “dangerous,” a hypocrisy so bold not even the legacy media gave her a pass.
Her knockoff plan had another problem: it was a half-measure. Full conformity would guarantee Arizonans $420–440 million in tax relief. Hobbs’ cherry-picked version added up to about $215 million, meaning her plan would still leave Arizonans with a net tax hike of over $200 million compared to full conformity. Then she tried to torpedo her own proposal by recasting it as a bargaining chip to defund school choice, proving she was never serious about delivering the relief in the first place. The executive order in question was also a legally dubious power grab, directing a tax collection agency to effectively rewrite tax law. Her own Department of Revenue resolved the conflict by issuing 2025 filing season forms assuming full conformity. Arizonans filed on that basis. Hobbs’ “budget” would pull the rug out from under all of them, forcing hundreds of thousands to refile and pay more.
She simply won’t say that plainly (or put it in an actual budget), because saying it plainly would end her political career.
Hobbs knows her fake plan is an unworkable mess that will raise taxes and create filing chaos. That is why she will push to retreat into secret negotiations to avoid a public debate and further exposure of her bungling of the whole affair.
That is a request Legislative Leadership should flatly reject.
Instead, Republicans should not lift a finger until Katie Hobbs produces an actual budget. They should allow the minority party the latitude of late introductions and drop actual budget bills. Then let it be scored by the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, receive public hearings and testimony, be debated on the floor, and evaluated in full public view, which is exactly the standard she applied to Republicans. If she has a better way, she should show us.
Arizonans deserve to know what their governor’s actual plan is. A real Hobbs budget would end the fog, put her priorities on paper alongside the Republican plan, and let Arizonans draw their own conclusions. That transparency is good for Arizona and deeply inconvenient for a governor whose strategy is to never be pinned down.
Critiquing is not leading, and vetoing is not governing. Show us your plan, Governor. For real this time.
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