By Matthew Holloway |
In an exclusive interview with AZ Free News, Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives Steve Montenegro revealed that Republican legislative leaders had been warning Governor Hobbs of her potential budgetary failure as far back as January. He further revealed that a notice from the Hobbs administration was only sent to House leaders two weeks prior to the funding crisis deadline and was sent to an incorrect email address.
Montenegro called out Hobbs for her administration’s “incompetence,” and explained the purpose of the House Ad Hoc Committee on Executive Budget Mismanagement, which met for the first time last week.
Montenegro explained, “The purpose of the ad hoc was literally on executive budget mismanagement and the failures that the Governor has demonstrated from the start. I mean at some point we understand that there are shifting numbers. There’s sometimes you budget for a certain amount of caseload or you budget for a certain amount of students or you budget for a certain amount of individuals that are going to have need of services in the state and that can fluctuate a little.
“We’ve seen that throughout the year it fluctuates. But the mismanagement that’s coming from this Governor’s office is startling—to see that they’re not factoring certain budgeting items in, completely ignoring it from start.
“In January, we pointed out there were failures in her proposal failing to include certain budget items. But now we’re seeing that in, specifically this latest debacle where we get an email sent to the wrong place and when we finally are able to see the email, there’s less than two weeks left before the Congregate Care program goes bankrupt. Then, the letter that she emailed states almost as a demand, ‘If this happens, kids will be sleeping in offices.’
“It’s almost as if there’s, first of all, no care, and second, no understanding that she should have let us know early on specifics on where we would need supplementals. So asking the question, is this a level mal-intent or incompetence?
“This is sheer incompetence in mismanagement of budgets, not understanding how to manage a budget, and when you’re talking about kids and the most vulnerable individuals in the state, it’s gross incompetence. Arizonans deserve better.”
Asked about the possible perception of the Ad Hoc Committee as having a political intent, Montenegro answered bluntly, “There are no games here. I haven’t even sat to consider politics in this subject. When we receive a letter, when our team receives a letter that kids are going to be sleeping in offices, there’s a certain level of indignation that I can’t ignore, especially when you’re saying kids will be sleeping in offices. And then we find out that the reasoning is because we can’t manage a budget.“
When asked about the potential intent of the Governor, Montenegro was equally direct:
“When we’re talking about kids here, I don’t care about the politics. What we do care about is making sure that these kids are taken care of and holding this Governor accountable because it’s gotten to a point now that we can’t ignore it. We genuinely can’t ignore the fact that we’ve got kids that are gonna be affected.
“We’ve got a Governor that decided to raise rates on the same program earlier this year. We know there’s an ongoing investigation, so we’re not gonna get in the middle of the investigation by Kris Mayes or Rachel Mitchell, County Attorney, or even others higher.
“But we want to find out, we want to get to the bottom of the budget mismanagement so that as we proceed forward in how we make sure these kids are taken care of and these vulnerable communities are taken care of, that from the legislature’s perspective, we’re putting safeguards and ending up some reforms that don’t allow the Governor’s incompetence to hurt these kids.”
Asked what recourse the House will have against a recalcitrant Governor, Montenegro answered, “Well, to start, that is why we’ve had our Appropriations Committee from the beginning asking the questions. Right now, the Governor refuses to give us access to her staff, to her policy advisors, to the people that know the numbers in these agencies. She refuses to make them accessible for us to talk to them, to understand where these numbers are.
“So what we’re doing is, we’re going to turn up the heat on holding her accountable. The Ad Hoc committee is formed to say, ‘Look, for weeks, we’ve been asking for your staff to sit down with our policy advisors on the numbers, on finding out where things are.’
“We get a letter two weeks out. We have been asking for weeks to sit down with them for numbers, to understand where these are. So, the whole purpose of this is now to take a deep dive in understanding where these numbers are so that Republicans can execute our plan. We are going to make sure that she’s using funds from her executive budget to fulfill these needs. And we’re going to make sure that, as we start stepping into the budget, we have the right reforms and we have the right safeguards for these kids.”
Referring back to the work of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, he added, “If you go back and see the JLBC committee hearing that we had, that’s a preview of what we expect to happen with this Ad Hoc Committee on Executive Budget Mismanagement that I put together.
“Because by forcing them to come to talk to us, to finally get somebody to speak, which I’ve told you before, she’s been preventing her staff from coming to speak with our staff about numbers. But by her folks having to come to the committee, we’ve learned a lot, specifically, by learning how they’re mismanaging DCS. We’ve learned a lot, and the goal is through the Ad Hoc to expose the rest of what’s happening in other areas of either DCS, or DDD, or in general DHS on the mismanagement.“
Matthew Holloway is a senior reporter for AZ Free News. Follow him on X for his latest stories, or email tips to Matthew@azfreenews.com.
