Gov. Doug Ducey and Secretary of State Katie Holmes display legislation Ducey signed for Arizona”s Drought Contingency Plan. /Photo by Katie Campbell/Arizona Capitol Times
By Julia Shumway | Arizona Capitol Times
In a move not seen in the last four decades, senators voted to override Gov. Doug Ducey’s veto of a bill he rejected late in May to force the Legislature to send him a budget.
Senators said the override is intended purely to send a message to Ducey that the Legislature is a co-equal branch of government that couldn’t be cowed by the executive branch. Earlier in the day, the Senate passed new versions of all 22 bills vetoed by the governor before the House and Senate took a two-week vacation.
Sen. Tyler Pace, R-Mesa, said it is important to send a message to the governor and the people of Arizona. And, following a suggestion from Sen. Martín Quezada, D-Glendale, Pace chose to make his override motion on the least controversial of the 22 bills – one that, in fact, contained no policy at all.
The first veto override vote in 40 years – and only the third in state history – was for a bill that merely contained technical corrections to state statutes, fixing grammatical errors, updating citations and writing numbers numerically.
