Two Republican lawmakers convinced Gov. Katie Hobbs earlier this year to sign legislation to allow some outside oversight of the state's prison system.
Now they want to see if the governor is willing to fund it so it can actually begin operations.
Rep. Walt Blackman of Snowflake and Sen. Shawnna Bolick of Phoenix have introduced proposals to provide $1.5 million to the newly created state Independent Correctional Oversight Office.
The bills, HB 2063 and SB 1032, are identical, allowing them both to advance in parallel, expediting how quickly they can reach the governor's desk.
They believe they already have the support of a majority of their colleagues.
The original plan to create the office — complete with the money to fund it — was approved earlier this year by the Senate on a 23-5 margin. It also unanimously cleared the House Government Committee that Blackman chairs.
But both Blackman and Bolick told Capitol Media Services at the time that the message from the Hobbs was that the idea was DOA with the funding. When the measure came to the House floor, Blackman agreed to strip out the funding, which is how the bill cleared the chamber 46-10 and got the governor's blessing.
But Blackman said the office serves no purpose without any cash. He said he is reaching out to the governor's staff in hopes of convincing her that the funding in the new proposals is a good investment.
Blackman said the state already is spending more than $1.5 billion a year on what is known as the Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry.
There's also the millions of dollars in fines imposed on the state by a federal judge who has previously found that medical care in the prison system was "plainly grossly inadequate.''
And Hobbs?
"We will have those conversations when it comes to the budget negotiations,'' she told Capitol Media Services.
"Any money bill is put in the budget pile,'' the governor said. "And that's when it's appropriate to have that conversation.''
But why did she sign legislation to create an office to provide independent oversight of the prison system if she's not going to fund it?
Hobbs said the bill she finally signed -- establishing the office but with no money -- was the result of "a lot of compromise.''
"I'm certainly willing to continue those conversations to make sure that we can make sure that that office is as effective as possible,'' the governor said.
Longstanding issues in state prisons
Hobbs sidestepped the question of whether the prison system needs outside oversight, instead launching into a defense of Ryan Thornell who she hand-picked to run the system that houses more than 35,000 inmates after taking office in 2023.
"Director Thornell is doing a great job,'' she said.
"He inherited a mess, a system that was on the brink of receivership,'' Hobbs said, referring to efforts by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Prison Law Office and other groups to get U.S. District Court Judge Roslyn Silver to appoint an outsider to actually run the prison's health care system.
And the governor acknowledged that such an order "would cost taxpayers a lot more money than the system is costing now.''
But she also said this is not a problem of her making — or that of Thornell.
"Our prison system has been neglected for a long time,'' the governor said.
Indeed, the current federal court lawsuit goes back to 2012. And Blackman agreed that the problems are not the fault of the current director.
"He was put in a position that was already to hit the iceberg,'' he said. Consider, he said, the Titanic.
"The ship was going, you are already close to hitting the iceberg, and then you change out the captain,'' Blackman said. "Is it the current captain's fault that you've hit an iceberg?''
The oversight office, he said, is designed to provide an outsider's perspective of the problems and find ways to avoid future problems.
But Blackman said it can't do that without money.
If nothing else, the Snowflake Republican said the $1.5 million should be seen as a matter of fiscal responsibility — and not just to avoid the possibility of an appointed receiver dictating to the state the kind of care that must be provided, including the number of doctors, nurses, aides and even equipment.
Consider, he said, the millions of dollars in fines that Silver already has imposed.
In her 200-page order in 2022 — the one when she said the care was "plainly grossly inadequate — Silver laid out facts she said show not only were top prison officials aware of conditions that resulted in serious and unnecessary physical harm and death to inmates, but they actively ignored the problems.
And the judge said state officials were acting "with deliberate indifference'' to the substantial risk of harm to inmates.
None of that was news to prison or state officials -- or to Doug Ducey who was governor at the time.
In 2015, three years after the lawsuit was signed, the state agreed to a settlement promising to do better.
Yet in 2018, the state was fined $1.4 million for failing to live up to the performance measures to which it had agreed. And Silver imposed another $1.1 million penalty in 2021.
Seeking more progress, the judge in 2023 issued a comprehensive injunction laying out what the prison system must do to improve that care.
That injunction required the state to overhaul how it provided care to inmates, vastly increase the number of doctors and nurses to set levels, and provide better access to specialists.
Other parts of the injunction included limits on putting inmates in isolation and requirements to treat opioid addiction and Hepatitis infections among the inmate population.
Yet earlier this year, a court-appointed monitor told the judge the state "remains non-compliant with the vast majority, with slow (or little) progress toward achieving substantial compliance.''
And Sophie Hart, an attorney for the Prison Law Office, told Silver that it was clear the state lacked the capacity or the will to fix the system and the time had come for Silver to appoint a receiver to do the job.
But attorneys for the state went back to Silver three months ago, again arguing for yet more time to fix the problems before Silver appoints a receiver.
Blackman said that lack of progress underlines the need for what he and Bolick are seeking.
"The oversight committee will help our state lawmakers, the governor's office, and those folks that have to manage internally the Department of Corrections on how we can come up with ways to fix that,'' he said.
Blackman said outside oversight and recommendations could even get the issue out of federal court and provide "a chance to move past this.''
"I mean, we can't keep doing the same thing and expecting a better outcome,'' he said.
"It's not working right now and it has to be checked,'' Blackman said, "And it cannot be checked internally, from inside the department, because it's easier, it's better to have a second set of eyes looking at it.''
He acknowledged that it isn't just Hobbs who needs to be convinced to support the funding.
First, he and Bolick need the votes of their colleagues to get the appropriation to the governor's desk. And Blackman said he already is working on it.
