Sanity reigns (briefly) in the Senate as bill to break up Maricopa County bombs

Finally, sanity has reared its rarely seen head at the Arizona Capitol as a bipartisan group of senators smacked down a bonkers plan to carve up Maricopa County.

Sen. Jake Hoffman, like the rest of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus he chairs, is convinced that those demon Maricopa County supervisors – four of the five of them being Republicans – have put the fix in on recent elections.

His answer: split Maricopa County into four counties. Three to be run by Republicans and one by Democrats.

Property taxes in three of the four new counties would rise under Hoffman’s plan, but that’s just the price we must pay for denying Donald Trump and Kari Lake their due.

Or not, as it turns out.

4 Republican senators broke their lockstep

At a time when Republicans are mostly marching in lockstep on their way to the veto pit, four senators split off and joined with Democrats on Tuesday to nix Hoffman’s bill.

It went down to defeat, 18-12.

“I will not vote for something that’s going to increase government fourfold,” said Sen. Steve Kaiser, R-Phoenix. Joining him were GOP Sens. Frank Carroll of Sun City West, John Kavanagh of Fountain Hills and Ken Bennett of Prescott.

And just like that, poof go (some of) our leaders’ dreams of more pliable officials a la Cochise County, where Republican supervisors tried every which way to get out of following the state law that required them to certify the 2022 election.

After illegal hand count:Supervisors seek to change election control

Hoffman is a Queen Creek Republican best known for his role as one of 11 fake electors who tried to hijack Arizona’s vote after the 2020 presidential election.

That, and the internet troll farm he ran in the months during the 2020 campaign, paying teenagers to blanket social media with fake posts on conservative talking points and baseless conspiracy theories aimed at getting Trump reelected.

Hoffman – whose company was paid more than $2 million to help Lake get elected last year – also is the guy grinding up Gov. Katie Hobbs’ appointees in his role as chairman of the newly formed Senate Committee on Director Nominations.

Hoffman claims it's about good governance

This was his second attempt to break up Maricopa County, the nation’s fourth-largest county and home to 65% of the state’s residents.

Then-House Speaker Rusty Bowers killed last year’s bill. But Bowers is gone now, ousted by Republican voters last year for refusing to go along with the 2020 scheme to overturn democracy in Arizona.

With his absence a gusher of unhinged ideas are flowing forth in the Legislature, many of them centered on the far-right’s desperate attempt to hang onto their diminishing grip on the state.

Which brings me to Senate Bill 1137.

Hoffman couches his proposal not as political payback – or planning for future elections – but as a good government measure, arguing that Maricopa County is simply too big and getting bigger.

“We must be able to have counties that accurately reflect the areas that they represent,” he said. “That can advocate for solutions when it comes to water policy, that are closer and more representative of the people they represent.”

This, from a guy who also voted on Tuesday to strip Phoenix and Tucson of their charter city status – those mini-constitutions that allow citizens more say in how their local government is run.

That bill comes courtesy of Sen. Justine Wadsack, R-Tucson, who doesn’t like the way Tucson conducts city elections.

If that was the case, there are cheaper solutions

Government that’s closest to its people is all good – until it angers a state legislator who lives there.

Or a group of state legislators looking to move Maricopa County leaders – the ones who rely on the law and evidence rather than conspiracy theories and the disinformation that has become the lifeblood of the MAGA movement – out of the way.

If Hoffman’s goal really was to make government more representative of the people, why simply cut up supervisory districts into smaller areas and create more of them?

Hoffman’s bill would have grown county government by a factor of four, at a cost of at least $155 million a year.

Still, it wouldn’t have been a bad deal for the residents of Scottsdale and Paradise Valley.

Legislative budget analysts predicted the property taxes in the northeast Valley’s newly formed county would plummet, given the area’s property wealth and smaller population. Taxes in the three other newly formed counties, meanwhile, would likely rise.

But that was acceptable to the 12 Republican senators who on Tuesday supported the plan, seven of whom represent those areas where taxes would go up.

It’s a price they were willing to (have their constituents) pay.

Who voted for SB 1137:

Here is a list of Republican senators who supported splitting Maricopa County into four new counties:

Sonny Borrelli of Lake Havasu City, David Farnsworth of Mesa, David Gowan of Sierra Vista, Jake Hoffman of Queen Creek, Anthony Kern of Glendale, Sine Kerr of Buckeye, J.D. Mesnard of Chandler, Wendy Rogers of Flagstaff, Janae Shamp of Surprise, T.J. Shope of Coolidge, Justine Wadsack of Tucson and Warren Petersen of Gilbert.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Maricopa County remains united, sanity reigns as Senate bill bombs