Gov. Katie Hobbs is open to calling a special session of the Legislature this year to address the state’s groundwater issues if Democrats and Republicans can come to an agreement on legislation, an administration official announced at the Governor’s Water Policy Council meeting June 18.
Patrick Adams, the governor’s water policy adviser, said during the meeting that negotiations between Hobbs’ office, state lawmakers and stakeholders have been going well enough that a compromise on legislation could be reached this year. However, that sentiment wasn’t shared by other members of the council.
Several members of the council, including Democratic Rep. Stacey Travers of Phoenix, expressed frustration at being excluded from negotiations. What bothered her, Travers said, was that discussions the council had last year did not reflect the legislation introduced during the Legislature’s session this year.
“The fact that this is just like, ‘Well we’re gonna introduce our own bills, which were already written, and then have these closed door meetings to try to get it across the finish line,’ quite honestly is kind of bulls..t,” Travers said at the meeting.
The meeting was the council’s first since Nov. 29, 2023. The focus was on two groundwater omnibus bills that were introduced in the Legislature this session: one from Rep. Chris Mathis, D-Tucson, and another from Sen. Sine Kerr, R-Buckeye.
Sandy Fabritz, the current director of water strategy at Freeport McMoRan and former Arizona Department of Water Resources director, also expressed frustration at not being included in meetings about the bills in the Legislature this session.
“I would like to know who was at the table,” Fabritz said during the meeting. “Most of us were not.”
Ed Curry, a local farmer and president of Curry Seed and Chile Company, disagreed with Adams’ assessment that a consensus on water legislation could come this year.
“It seems to me that this group is not ready for a special session,” Curry said.
Adams acknowledged the group’s concerns and said the Governor’s Office is “slowing things down” to get feedback from the council and “did not support the rushing of legislation that we saw at the end of this legislative session.”
Kerr’s bill failed in the House on June 15 shortly before the Legislature adjourned for the year. Another omnibus groundwater bill introduced by Sen. T.J. Shope, R-Coolidge, was sent to Hobbs’ desk on June 15, but several members of the council urged the governor to veto it.
Adams said the Governor’s Office and lawmakers “have been making significant progress on bipartisan compromise” in negotiations on the water bills during the session, but that Kerr’s bill did not meet the “guiding principles” discussed by the council in 2023.
A spokesperson for Hobbs’ office declined to comment further on the potential of a special session this year.
During the meeting, Department of Water Resources staff gave presentations on two major issues the Governor’s Office hopes to address: rural basin groundwater management and ag-to-urban conversion. The latter would convert agricultural land to urban land used for housing in hopes of reducing water usage in certain areas.
Other members of the council thanked the Governor’s Office and ADWR for their work on groundwater issues and said they looked forward to finding solutions sooner rather than later.
Several members of the Legislature were present at the meeting, including Democratic Sen. Priya Sundareshan and Republican Rep. Gail Griffin, who are members of the council. Mathis and Kerr also attended to hear discussion of their bills and Republican Rep. Alex Kolodin sat in the audience.
It’s unclear whether members of the Legislature would be open to a special session, after adjourning for the year just last week. Most lawmakers are running for re-election this year and will likely be focused on campaigning for the latter half of 2024.
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