Arizona 2022 Legislative Session Ends with $18 Billion Budget, Failure to Ban All Abortions, and 79 Bills Waiting for Ducey

The 2022 Arizona Legislative session ended Friday, after passing the annual budget and 385 bills – 79 of which are waiting for Governor Doug Ducey to sign or veto. Among the spending priorities is a massive expansion of the state’s school voucher system, which Ducey is expected to sign.

However, some political watchers note that the nearly $18 billion budget, composed of 12 bills, is full of pork – one example of which is a large tax credit for Hollywood the Republican leadership insisted on passing.

A proposed bill banning all abortions, meanwhile, was blocked.

State Representative Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek), stated in a post on Telegram on Saturday, “Ben Toma, Regina Cobb, & Rusty Bowers have REFUSED every single offer by the Conservative members of the House to try and reach a fiscally responsible Republican budget. In the middle of the night last night when no one was awake to watch, they instead chose to BUY OFF Democrats. … They took a $5+ BILLION dollar surplus of your hard earned tax dollars and SPENT it on their pet projects.”

The budget contains $1 billion in transportation earmarks, up to 20 percent pay raises for 35,000 state employees, and over $1 billion for education, which includes more school counselors and social workers. Several million dollars are targeted to higher education, which Hoffman refers to as “woke public universities like ASU, U of A, and NAU that willingly provide taxpayer subsidized tuition amnesty to illegal aliens.”

Read the rest of the article at The Arizona Sun Times
bloated budget by is licensed under