By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
PHOENIX — With fellow Democrats now in control of the Legislature, Gov. Katie Hobbs Wednesday night promised to "crack down on the waste, fraud, and abuse in the out-of-control ESA entitlement program.''
In her first speech since easily coasting to reelection, Hobbs laid out what promises to be the agenda she presents to lawmakers in her State of the State speech.
"We're going to slash red tape for starter homes to lower costs to make it easier to build a life here at home,'' she told supporters at a rally at the Carpenters Local 1912 union hall.
And, in line with that location, Hobbs said she wants to keep increasing the opportunities for apprenticeship programs "so that "every Arizonan has a shot at a good-paying career, even if a four-year degree isn't the right path for them.''
Then there's the fight over Colorado River water.
And the governor noted that Tuesday's election results put Democrats in the positions of governor, secretary of state and attorney general when the 2028 election rolls around.
That's important, she said, given the kinds of pressure put on state officials by Donald Trump and his supporters after the 2020 election to refuse to certify the 2020 election results. But state officials — including then-Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican — did not bend.
Still, Hobbs said what happened here Tuesday night matters.
"In 2028, the whole country will be watching Arizona again,'' Hobbs said. "And the people who certify your vote will answer to you, not to anyone in Washington.''
But what got the biggest cheer from her supporters was her promise to make changes in Empowerment Scholarship Accounts that now allow any child to get state funds to attend a private or parochial school or to be home schooled.
It actually started out in 2011 as a small program designed to provide an option for students with special needs.
Since then, however, it has mushroomed, adding foster children, children from military families, youngsters attending public schools rated D or F, and those living on reservations.
All that changed in 2022 when the Republican-controlled Legislature removed all restrictions. The result was that the number of "vouchers'' — worth about $7,500 a year — jumped from 12,000 to more than 100,000, with the annual price tag now exceeding $1 billion.
One factor in this meteoric growth is that some families who had been spending their own money for a non-public education decided to seek the taxpayer-funded vouchers.
Hobbs has fought back for years.
In her first State of the State speech in 2023, she sought to repeal universal vouchers entirely and return the program to where it had been. That never got a hearing.
Since then she has tried a more modified approach.
That included means-testing of families: denying vouchers to children in homes where parents make more than $200,000 a year. And she sought greater oversight of purchases made by parents who home-school their children, responding to reports that voucher dollars were being used for everything from jewelry and expensive instruments to driving lessons and trips to out-of-state amusement parks.
These ideas, which Hobbs said would save taxpayers $150 million a year, fared no better with Republicans.
With Democrats now in charge of the House and Senate, Hobbs is going to try again.
She's also promising to deliver "$1 billion to our public schools without raising taxes.''
Gubernatorial press aide Christian Slater said that figure is not from savings from voucher reform but rather the governor's push to extend Proposition 123.
Approved in 2016, it took about $300 million a year a special trust fund to help fund public schools. But it expired in 2025. And efforts to date to renew it have so far faltered.
A potentially more difficult task Hobbs laid out involves water.
On one front, there's the fight with the federal government.
Arizona last month joined a lawsuit filed by the state of Nevada against federal agencies which are planning even further reductions in the amount of Colorado River water to which the state is entitled.
It lawsuit claims the Bureau of Reclamation is favoring the "Upper Basin'' states of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming by not forcing them to share in the cutbacks made necessary by years of drought.
The governor said she is prepared to do battle with the federal government.
But she also appears to be ready to take aim at others, saying she wants to also protect water "from the out-of-state corporations that want to use it for their own gain.''
That, however, could require some major changes in state water laws which, with few exceptions, provide no oversight or regulation of groundwater pumping in rural areas.
There are things that can be — and have been — done.
Hobbs cancelled leases of state land to Fondomonte which was growing alfalfa in western Arizona to be shipped to the the Middle East to feed dairy cows there. Such farming is prohibited in Saudi Arabia.
But the company still is growing alfalfa for export on land that is privately owned, beyond the reach of the governor's directives.
Attorney General Kris Mayes is taking her own crack at it.
She filed suit against Fondomonte, accusing it of violating state laws which prevent landowners from creating a "nuisance'' for others. Mayes said her proof is that wells of others in the basin are drying up.
But it is unclear whether state nuisance laws actually apply to agricultural operations. And the lawsuit, filed in 2024, has yet to come to trial.
There are some piecemeal things the governor can do, like order her Department of Water Resources to study a groundwater basin to determine if it should be declared an "active management area,'' a move that would limit new pumping.
The real solution, however, could come in something that has so far been blocked by several Republican lawmakers: expanding the reach of the state's 1980 Groundwater Code beyond urban areas.
But the opposition is not strictly partisan. There are concerns by family-owned farms who fear greater state oversight.
