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Happy opening day of the 2026 legislative session, readers!
And welcome to a big day for the Agendaverse.
Lawmakers officially gavel in today, and we’ll be at the Capitol (with a brand new reporter!) soaking it all up.
We’re also marking opening day with a little milestone of our own: This is our first edition on our new publishing platform, Beehiiv. Our infrastructure is still a little rough, but after a lot of behind-the-scenes tinkering, we’re far enough along to officially make the jump.
Switching to Beehiiv will open up all sorts of new opportunities for us — like this beautiful new newsletter format that Nicole put together, and the ability to tap into their ad network.
Like this ad here, for Beehiiv. It seemed fitting for today.
A big 2026 starts now
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Besides the occasional ad to support local journalism and a pretty new email format, nothing should change for you as a reader or subscriber. But if anything looks off or this email generally misbehaves, email us at [email protected] and we’ll fix it.
To help you get through this very long day of political posturing, we brought back our State of the State Bingo card. Just click the image below to get your own card. First 10 readers to send in a completed card to [email protected] gets a free Agenda sticker!
Ok enough housekeeping and games — on to today’s edition!
This week’s forecast: sunny, dry and predictable.
This year’s legislative session forecast: Ideological crosswinds, scattered partisan infighting and a budget storm moving in. Meaning, also pretty predictable.
That’s the takeaway from the various speakers at the annual Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry “Legislative Forecast Luncheon” on Friday, where the Chamber hosted politicians from across the state to rub elbows with the business community’s power brokers.
The annual event gives business leaders face time with political leaders, and delivers moderated discussions with the state’s top decision-makers, including Gov. Katie Hobbs and both parties’ legislative leaders.
The Legislature’s four chamber leaders at a moderated panel during Friday’s luncheon. (@AZSenateGOP / Twitter)
The guest list spans the political spectrum — from Democratic leaders telling business owners they won’t be getting tax breaks, to the likes of Republican Sen. Janae Shamp, who roamed the room with a bright pink handgun on her waistband.
It’s an overtly friendly audience for the business-minded GOP wing. But as Hobbs runs her reelection bid from the political center, it didn’t feel like hostile territory for a Democratic governor, either.
Hobbs offered a business-tailored spin on the pre-session message she previewed during a press run last week, but she also tacked on a plug for the Axon bill she signed last year that overrode local attempts to halt the company’s Scottsdale headquarters.
“Local government has a role in deciding how things grow up in our communities, but there has to be some balance,” Hobbs said. “And in this situation, we had to step in and say we need to let common sense prevail and we’re not going to let politicians drive business out of our state.”
In another panel with the four legislative leaders, Senate Democratic Leader Priya Sundareshan made clear she wasn’t there to pander.
The big fight taking shape this session is over how to conform to the myriad new federal tax cuts. Hobbs and legislative Democrats want to adopt some of the income tax deductions, but not the corporate carve-outs.
“We are supportive of the middle-class tax support … but not the tax cuts that support the corporations here in this room,” Sundareshan said.
Meanwhile, Senate President Warren Petersen was proud to announce “one of the largest tax cuts in the history of Arizona,” which he said will be on Hobbs’ desk “in a matter of days.”
The Republican proposal adopts all of the ”Big Beautiful Bill’s” tax changes, including the cuts for corporations. It would wipe out an estimated $1.2 billion in tax revenue over the next three years.
The House and Senate are holding a joint finance committee meeting on Wednesday to hear mirror versions of the bills, which Hobbs will almost certainly veto.
The other covered policy topics were more of the same — House Speaker Steve Montenegro declared, “ESAs are not going away,” while House Minority Leader Oscar De Los Santos referenced last year’s reports of insane school voucher spending.
“You all are business leaders. Imagine if you had an employee going out with your money — buying lingerie, diamond rings, ski trips — that have nothing to do with your business operation. That is what's going on with taxpayer money,” he said.
The outlook for a Prop. 123 renewal this year is no clearer than it was last session. Lawmakers let the school funding mechanism expire after Republicans tried to pair its renewal with constitutional protections for school vouchers. With the money temporarily backfilled in the budget, there’s little urgency to send Prop 123 back to voters.
While Petersen said “it’s a real possibility that this session, we reach that consensus” on a version of Prop 123 to send to the ballot this year, Montenegro said Prop 123 shouldn’t be passed in the name of “election year theatrics.”
Petersen, who’s in full campaign mode for state attorney general, has made several recent trips to DC to meet with Trump administration officials. He said he’s already met with federal officials three times about the Colorado River talks — and he’s betting Arizona comes out ahead when the feds step in after the states’ negotiations stall out.
“The real issue is the northern basin versus the southern basin,” Petersen said. “I think what will happen is, we won't have the deal until the Trump administration steps in and starts to negotiate.”
And to close out the luncheon, the four legislative leaders drew applause for a rare point of unity: Arizona should get its fair share of water in the Colorado River negotiations.
WELCOME, TJ!
Say hello to TJ L’Heureux, the newest addition to the Arizona Agenda team!
TJ joins us after more than two years as a staff writer at Phoenix New Times, where he’s covered politics, police, courts, homelessness and the many ways those beats collide. Before that, he earned his master’s at ASU’s Cronkite school and worked at the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism.
A Tempe native and University of Chicago graduate, TJ spends his off-hours reading history books, playing guitar and piano and escaping into Arizona’s outdoors whenever the news cycle allows.
We’re thrilled to have him on board — and to put his reporting instincts to work at the Capitol.
We’ll share more about TJ and his role at the Agenda later this week. For now, help us welcome him aboard.
IN OTHER NEWS
On edge: After an ICE agent killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis last week, protesters spread across metro Phoenix on Saturday, including more than 100 in Maryvale, a community with a large immigrant population, the Republic reports. Reports that ICE plans to increase its presence in Phoenix this year — as it has in Minnesota — are adding to the tension, and Gov. Katie Hobbs told 12News’ Brahm Resnik she can’t keep ICE out of Phoenix.
Taxing the bad guys: Hobbs is pitching taxes on two of Arizona’s biggest villains — short-term rentals and data centers — to pay for new programs in a tight budget year. During her Capitol press rounds last week, Hobbs proposed getting rid of current data center tax exemptions while creating a data center water-use fee to fund a new Colorado River Protection Fund. But she wants $30 million in the next state budget to jumpstart the fund, the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger reports. The governor also previewed her plans for a $3.50 nightly fee for short-term rental stays to fund the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, plus a pooled bond fund for housing development.
Snow wants receipts: The U.S. Department of Justice is now supporting Maricopa County’s push to end the federal oversight of its sheriff’s office from the Joe Arpaio-era racial profiling case, per AZFamily’s Amy Cutler and Cody Lillich. U.S. District Judge Murray Snow wants county officials to stop citing inflated figures for the cost of federal oversight, which an independent audit found was overestimated by $160 million, Courthouse News’ Joe Duhownik reports. Snow will set oral arguments in the coming weeks to determine whether the county must explain how it spent the $226 million it reported spending since 2014. But Supervisor Debbie Lesko again citing the disputed figures in the AZFamily story probably doesn’t help.
The ICE ROI: Democratic U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari wants a meeting with federal immigration officials to get details on reported plans to build a massive ICE detention center in Glendale, the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy reports. Meanwhile, Avelo Airlines is ending its deportation flights out of the Mesa Gateway airport because it wasn’t making enough money.
Reel ‘em in: A new Phoenix ordinance goes into effect Thursday that requires stores to submit annual certifications that they have plans to keep their shopping carts from leaving their properties through things like locking wheel systems, KTAR’s Bailey Leasure reports. It’s a city effort to stop abandoned carts.
TODAY’S LAUGH
Republican secretary of state contender Rep. Alexander Kolodin is a wanted man.
A western-themed fundraiser flier featuring Kolodin’s mock “wanted” poster suggests he’s wanted for office, but former Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer wondered aloud whether it could point to something more serious: a potential Hatch Act violation.
That law bars federal employees from using government resources for campaign activity, and Kari Lake, now head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, appears prominently on the flier. Richer posted an AI chatbot’s take, which said, “Yes, a federal employee hosting a partisan political fundraiser is a clear violation of the Hatch Act.”
The event appears to be hosted by the Arizona Patriots PAC — not by a federal employee, which likely keeps it on the right side of the law.
So for now, Kolodin’s wanted for office, not for questioning.