If Gov. Katie Hobbs refuses to disclose her donors, lawmakers should do it for her

The Arizona Legislature is working on a bill that would force Gov. Katie Hobbs to come clean on how much money she’s raising — and where the money is coming from — to try to flip control of the Legislature to Democrats.

I don’t often say this when referring to our esteemed leaders in the House and Senate ... but good for them.

Hobbs is the only state elected official who can’t seem to manage to disclose her 2023 campaign fundraising.It’s a bad look for a governor, especially one who previously, as secretary of state, was in charge of campaign finance reporting.

Especially one who, on her first day as governor pledged transparency, even as she was declining to disclose who was kicking in up to $250,000 apiece to pay for her inauguration celebration.

She eventually broke down and provided an accounting after several weeks of being dogged by state Capitol reporters.

A year later, here we are again.

Hobbs doesn't have to disclose until 2026

Earlier this month, The Arizona Republic’s Stacey Barchenger reported that Hobbs is the only statewide officeholder who didn’t disclose the source and amounts of money she raised during 2023.Turns out the GOP-run Legislature passed a law in 2016 that allowed state officeholders to keep state officers’ fundraising under wraps until the year they come up for reelection.

For Hobbs, that means she can prevent the public from finding out which special interests are shoveling cash into her campaign account until 2026.

Despite that 2016 law, every other state official filed a campaign finance report in late January, detailing their 2023 haul.

Hobbs makes like a pirate: To cover school pay raises

Hobbs told Barchenger that her campaign could not file a report because she’d already updated her campaign account in the SOS campaign finance software to the 2026 election cycle.

“There’s not even a mechanism to file even if I wanted to,” Hobbs told Barchenger in early February. “I did want to.”

Legislature may make her donors public

And yet, she hasn’t.

Barchenger helpfully offered to make the information public if Hobbs would provide it, but curiously, that hasn’t happened.

Thus comes House Bill 2403, which cleared the House last week on a bipartisan 49-9 vote. The bill would require candidates who hold office four years — like Hobbs — to report their campaign finances four times a year, every year.

“People in these very powerful statewide roles owe it to voters to let them know who is contributing to their campaign throughout the year, and each year that they are in office,” the bill's sponsor, Rep. Matt Gress, R-Phoenix, told Barchenger. “We need more disclosure, not less.”

We do.

It shouldn’t take a change in law for Hobbs to tell us what who donated to a sitting governor last year, especially given her plans to use some of that money this year to try to flip the Legislature to Democratic control.

Apparently, Hobbs agrees because she has signaled that she will sign the bill, should it pass the Senate and reach her desk.

"She supports the changes for more disclosure and transparency," her spokesperson Christian Slater told Barchenger.

Funny thing is, Hobbs doesn’t actually need a change in state law to come clean with the public.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @LaurieRoberts or on Threads at laurierobertsaz.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Gov. Katie Hobbs won't disclose her donors, so Legislature must do it