Arizona Senate president sues Gov. Katie Hobbs for bypassing director confirmations
Arizona’s Senate President filed a lawsuit against Gov. Katie Hobbs on Tuesday, accusing her of circumventing the law by letting her agency heads serve without confirmation by the Senate.
Governors must assign directors to lead state agencies and committees, who then must be approved by the state Senate within a year of their appointment.
Republican lawmakers rejected several of the Democratic governor’s nominees this year and left others waiting without hearings.
Frustrated, Hobbs pulled the nominees in September and announced they would serve under the different title of “executive deputy directors.”
Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Gilbert) argues in his lawsuit that Hobbs is violating the law.
Petersen said multiple times over the past three months that he was trying to work out a solution with Hobbs, but they seemingly could not reach an agreement.
Under past administrations; the director nominee would pass through existing Senate committees. But in the 2023 session, Petersen’s administration created a new committee for the sole purpose of vetting Hobbs’ director nominees — run by Sen. Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek), who heavily criticizes Hobbs.
In Hoffman’s committee, only a handful of Hobbs’ nominees received favorable recommendations and made it through confirmation of the full Senate.
Hobb’s spokesperson Christian Slater said in a text that the governor is still willing to work with the Senate to come up with a fair confirmation process
“Extremists like Jake Hoffman would rather engage in partisan attacks to push their radical political agenda than work across the aisle to support Veterans, grow jobs and invest in small businesses, and protect Arizona children. Arizonans want sanity, not chaos caused by radical obstructionists,” Slater said.
Her decision to install what are effectively directors as “executive deputy directors” who perform the same duties is not unprecedented. It happened under former Republican Gov. Fife Symington, but it wasn’t challenged in court.
The provision of the law requiring agency directors to get Senate confirmation within a year also hasn’t been strictly adhered to. Directors have served under former governors for longer than that amount of time without Senate approval.
Petersen did not respond to a request for comment.
