Hobbs agrees to send state agency heads to Senate for confirmation

PHOENIX — Gov. Katie Hobbs finally agreed Tuesday to once again start sending nominations for her picks to head state agencies to the Senate for confirmation.

But the chairman of the panel that screens them said they should expect the same kinds of questions that led her to withdraw their names from consideration in the first place a year ago.

The agreement comes as Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney signed a judgment Tuesday making formal his earlier ruling the governor broke the law by failing to submit her choices during the first week of the legislative session in January. Instead, Hobbs used a tactic to avoid seeking the legally required Senate confirmation by having the agencies headed by “executive deputy directors,” something Blaney found illegal.

Strictly speaking, there is nothing in the agreement that spells out how quickly the Senate will act on the nominations. It was the governor’s frustration with what she saw as delay that caused her to withdraw all the names last year of those who had not yet been confirmed and come up with that procedure that Blaney said breaks state law.

Senate President Warren Petersen told Capitol Media Services things will be different when the new year begins.

“We will hold hearings early next session,” More to the point, the Senate president said he does not foresee a repeat of what the governor’s press aide has called a “political circus” of hearings.

“Hearings will be professional and timely,” Petersen said. But he made it clear that does not mean the Senate intends to simply rubber stamp the governor’s choices.

“Good nominations will move forward and bad nominees will be rejected,” Petersen said.

But Sen. Jake Hoffman who chairs the Director Nominations Committee, said there is no commitment to narrow the scope of the hearings — and the questions asked of nominees.

At one hearing last year, Republicans on the panel asked Martin Quezada about issues ranging from transgender athletes to antisemitism, border security and white nationalism. Andrew Gaona, the governor’s attorney, said none of that had anything to do with whether Quezada, a former Democratic senator from Glendale, should head the Registrar of Contractors Office.

The panel voted along party lines to recommend against Quezada’s confirmation; Hobbs withdrew his name from consideration.

She subsequently yanked other 13 pending director nominations from the panel, using that maneuver to name them “executive deputy directors” of the same state agencies — positions that do not require Senate confirmation.

All that, Blaney said, was an illegal effort to get around what state law requires. That led to Tuesday’s order for her to actually send the Senate the names of the people she wants to head state agencies and give the Senate its legal right to advise and consent — or not — to her picks.

Gubernatorial press aide Christian Slater said his boss is counting on a different reception from the committee — and Hoffman — the next time around for her picks.

“We expect that there’s going to be fair hearings and that they’re going to be free ... of the partisan circus that we saw over the last two sessions from extremists in the Legislature,” he said.

Petersen, for his part, was a little less specific about what awaits the nominees.

“I have full faith that the chairman will conduct the committee in a professional manner,” he said.

Hoffman called the comments by Slater “childish personal attacks and baseless partisan hyperbole.” But he also was unapologetic about the scope of some questions asked, questions he said pertain to the “far-left ideologies held by politicians like Katie Hobbs” and how they relate to policy.

Consider the nomination hearings for Jennifer Toth to head the state Department of Transportation.

The Queen Creek Republican has railed against transit solutions he believes are part of social engineering to get people out of their cars, whether by financing things like light rail or “road diets” to narrow roads in a way to make travel slower.

That led to questions to Toth about what she thought about issues ranging from racism to toxic masculinity, issues surrounding where and how roads are built and how driving habits affect traffic accidents.

In that case, however, the Director Nominations Committee did recommend she be confirmed. But others were not so lucky.

Theresa Cullen was the Pima County health director when Hobbs tapped her to head the state Department of Health Services.

The committee grilled her on how she handled the COVID outbreak as the county’s chief health officer, focusing on her recommendations on everything from a mandatory curfew and wearing masks to the closing of some schools and classrooms and her method of urging people to get vaccinated. Hoffman had questions about how she worked with schools to decide whether to close.

“Under your guidance, they suffered innumerable harm in terms of lack of proficiency in school, academic scores falling, socialization being reduced, depression, suicide,” he said. And Hoffman said it turned out children were the least likely to suffer the worst effects of the virus.

Cullen defended her actions, saying the decisions she mad were to “err on the side to protect children” as well as the adults in their families to whom the youngsters could pass on the disease.

Hobbs pulled her nomination as the panel voted to recommend against confirmation.

Then, last year, she withdrew the names of the others who were waiting for confirmation in favor of the executive deputy director idea that Blaney ruled illegal.

Hobbs, faced with the court order, is expected to resubmit the same names in January. In fact, she previously called them “highly qualified for the positions they’ve now held for more than a year and a half, most of them.”

But Hoffman said Hobbs should not expect that anyone she nominates in January — whether the same picks or new ones — will escape what he considers appropriate questions.

“As chairman of the (Director) Nominations Committee, I give my members great latitude to ask questions of nominees that they believe are relevant to the faithful execution of the law of Arizona and requisite duties of the agency or department to which they’ve been nominated,” he told Capitol Media Services.

And that, Hoffman said, goes beyond just their technical qualifications.
“Questions pertaining to the ideologies held by far-left politicians like Katie Hobbs and their nexus to the statutory and policy implementation of nominees is a reasonable and important area of vetting, given the substantial impact our state agencies and departments have on hardworking, everyday Arizonans,” he said.

Hoffman also suggested the governor may want to take another look at the list of those who the committee had not scheduled for confirmation hearings before she withdrew their names.

“I look forward to Hobbs submitting better qualified, less partisan nominees to the committee for an honest, accurate and thorough vetting in the very near future,” he said.