By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
PHOENIX -- Joan Serviss is out as the state housing director.
The Senate voted late Tuesday along party lines to reject the choice of Gov. Katie Hobbs to head the Department of Housing. Sen. Jake Hoffman who led the effort, said Serviss proved to be a bad choice.
Exhibit No. 1 was evidence that she had copied -- Hoffman used the word ``plagiarism'' -- in her prior position as head of the Arizona Housing Coalition when sending letters of support for policy changes as the federal level.
Serviss, during her 2023 confirmation hearing said it was common practice among advocacy groups. But Hoffman said she also had lifted whole paragraphs, without attribution, from Bloomberg News.
But her problems multiplied after becoming director when it was revealed the agency had made a $2 million wire transfer to people pretending to represent a nonprofit organization.
State auditors blamed that on the failure of the agency to develop protocols. Hobbs press aide Christian Slater said that Serviss made the necessary changes to prevent a repeat.
Slater also said the loss was covered by insurance. But that is a bit of misnomer as the state is self-insured, meaning the missing dollars were replaced by other state funds.
Serviss, in a prepared statement, detailed what she said were accomplishments by the agency under her direction. And she said she would remain ``a leader in the fight to end homelessness and address our state's affordable housing crisis.''
But Slater had no immediate answer to the question of whether Hobbs would keep her in the administration in some fashion.
The vote to oust Serviss came over the objections of several Democrats who praised her accomplishments in dealing with what has become an increasingly difficult situation of making affordable housing available.
As to the complaint of plagiarism, Sen. Mitzi Epstein said the Republican senators were guilty of a double standard, with lawmakers themselves -- she did not name names -- copying statutes from other states word for word and passing them off as their own ideas. She also said that during the administration of Republican Doug Ducey the Senate approved his nominees without question, people the senator said later had to leave because they were ``disgraced.''
Hoffman, however, said there was more than enough reason to conclude that Serviss lacked the skills to run the agency.
None of this, however, is occurring in a vacuum.
Prior to Hobbs taking office in 2023, gubernatorial nominations were handled in quite a different fashion.
They were sent to whichever Senate committee appeared to have expertise in that area. So, for example, someone to head the Department of Financial Institutions would go to whatever committee reviewed banking legislation.
That all changed with the election of the Democratic governor and the decision by Senate President Warren Petersen to form a special Committee on Director Nominations and appoint Hoffman, who has made no secret about his feelings about Hobbs, to head the panel.
Hoffman, in turn, acknowledged that the panel ``goes to great lengths'' to do a thorough vetting of candidates, saying that's part of the Senate's constitutional role to ``advise and consent'' on gubernatorial nominees. And he said the findings of his committee -- and the nominees it rejected -- proves that Hobbs was not properly screening those she chose.
None of this fight over the governor's choices is new.
In 2023, with Hoffman scheduling a hearing on only a few of her nominees to head state agencies, Hobbs executed a maneuver to have all of them ``demoted'' to deputy directors, positions that do not need Senate confirmation. But with no actual directors at each agency, she gave them the title of ``cabinet executive officers.''
The Senate sued.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney ruled that Hobbs was ``arguably'' within her powers to withdraw the names of those she had tapped as directors after she could not get them confirmed.
Where she broke the law, he ruled, is giving those deputies the exact same duties and powers they would have had as Senate-confirmed directors.
``The governor ... took those actions for an improper purpose, culminating in an improper result -- one that violates Arizona law,'' Blaney wrote. The governor eventually gave up and resubmitted all of the names in January, including that of Serviss.
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