The Senate passed a $17.6B state budget after midnight last Thursday which includes some of Hobbs’ priorities and some priorities on both Senate Dems and Republicans. The 10 or so budget bills still need to be passed by the House before the end of the month.
That’s easier said than done as the more conservative House leadership (R) is unwilling to bring the Senate bills to the House floor even though sources say there are enough votes in the House to pass the Senate budget bills.
Political chaos erupts as Arizona Senate passes budget and ends session unilaterally
The Senate budget has modest resources for new and improved school facilities, added authority for state universities to bond for infrastructure, resources for school lunches, and it allows schools to spend the money above the aggregate expenditure limit for the next two fiscal years.
The Senate budget distributes ongoing funding for state agencies. Here’s a list of some of the new funding & services like:
• Speech therapy & cochlear implants for adult AHCCCS members
• Traditional healing services through AHCCCS
• Caseworkers and services at the Department of Child Safety
The budget also includes some one-time funding:
- $45M for childcare assistance
- $12M more for critical access hospitals (now a total of $28M)
- $5M for ibogaine clinical research grants
- $5M for secure residential behavioral health facilities
- $4M for graduate medical education
- $2M for the Produce Incentive Program
- $1.5M for nursing education at community colleges
- $750K for a dementia awareness campaign
- $500K for AEDs for public high school athletics
- $160K for isolation valves, $695K for anti-ligature renovations, and $83K for perimeter detection systems at the Arizona State Hospital.
There was good news about the development of secure residential behavioral health facilities. After several years of constant work, AHCCCS was finally appropriated $5M for secure behavioral health residential facilities.
Microsoft Word – 1735FloorKAVANAGH.docx
One caveat is that someone added passive aggressive session law to the feed bill and some of that language looks like it’s designed to tee up excuses for AHCCCS not to issue the RFP for the facilities.
The Senate budget also requires AHCCCS to offer one-year AHCCCS complete care contract extensions to all managed care entities and RBHAs through September 30, 2028.
