Arizona Rep. Selina Bliss [R-District 1] stopped by the Republicans of the Red Rocks at the Sedona Elks Lodge on Friday, Sept. 19, to update about 25 constituents on the 2025 legislative season and discussed what voters can anticipate for the 2026 midterms.
All seats in the Arizona State Legislature are up for election every two years.
“We ended up passing a $17.6 billion budget,” Bliss said. “So that puts it in perspective, kind of what your government has actually grown to. We’re trying to limit the growth of government, but … it’s creeping up. That’s why the House version of that budget was very conservative. It would have actually dropped that number.”
Bliss said the legislature had about a $900 million excess for one-time spending.
“That’s interesting, because last year, we were in a $2 billion deficit, so that’s a wide swing.”
Some of that $17.6 billion making its way to Yavapai County includes $1 million for a public safety building in the southwest corner of the county in Peeples Valley to serve Congress and Yarnell, and another $1 million for the Downtown Cottonwood Improvement Project.
“We got some funding to clean up the Iron King Mine on the Dewey-Humboldt area that’s going to be a Superfund site …. We got monies for the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office, Prescott Valley Police [and] wildfire suppression. We got funding for the Prescott Regional Airport, for the larger air tankers to widen their aircraft ramp. … And further funding for border security. The good news about border security is because the feds have taken back over as their responsibility, we were able to shift money out of the sheriff’s office to fund other projects such as raises for law enforcement.”
According to Bliss, Republicans appear likely to continue their trend of sending ballot measures directly to voters in 2026 to bypass Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ veto power. In 2024, the ballot included 13 measures, most of which were referred to by Republicans seeking to circumvent Hobbs. The governor has consistently set a record number of vetos, with 143 in 2023 and 73 last year.
“We did have another veto record broken. We had 174 vetoes [by Hobbs] this year,” Bliss said. “That’s something that takes a lot of time and effort and a lot of money per bill.”
Bliss also said her seat mate in the House, Arizona Rep. Quang Nguyen [R-District 1], who also serves as the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, will similarly kill legislation contrary to Republican Party goals by not hearing gun control bills in his capacity as chair.
“We tease Quang that he must burn up or shredder every session, because he kills those anti-Second [Amendment bills] right there at his desk, and that’s the power of a chair,” Bliss said.
Three legislatively referred ballot measures will likely make the 2026 ballot, Bliss said. One is a constitutional amendment prohibiting taxation of miles traveled in a motor vehicle, known as the “Freedom to Move Act,” which was brought forward by the Arizona Free Enterprise Club. Another is a statute prohibiting municipalities from imposing a sales tax on food without voter approval. The third is a statute declaring foreign drug cartels as terrorist organizations.
“2026, so first of all, it’s a midterm election,” Bliss said. “Our majority on the House and Senate side are slim [and] if we lose that majority, we could lose everything we have fought for over the years overnight.”
Nguyen did not attend, but Bliss said he “sends his regards,” noting he returned earlier in the day from “50 States One Israel” held Sept. 14 to Sept. 18 in Jerusalem in which 250 state legislators including Nguyen and Arizona Reps. Frank Carroll [R-District 28] and Justin Wilmeth [R-District 2].
Bliss cited among her recent successes three hard-rock mining safety bills passed this session; House Bill 2179, which prohibits marijuana businesses from marketing products to children; and voters approving Proposition 313 in November 2024, which requires a life sentence for anyone convicted of child sex trafficking be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
For the next session Bliss said she is working to sponsor a bill to tighten laws around title and deed transfers in an effort to combat title fraud. Sedona Realtors, in recent years, said they have noticed an uptick in fraudsters attempting to sell property that they do not own.
Bliss said state legislators are becoming more organized to regulate short-term rentals ahead of the next legislative session.
“We can’t just focus on the number [of STRS] or the place,” Bliss said. “We need to make the online marketplace more accountable. The Airbnb, the VRBO, what they’re doing is advertising some properties that are not insured and they’re not licensed to do this. So I think we can stop half the bad actors if we put the accountability on the online marketplace.”
“[But] you’ve got to call out the Realtors, your friends and family, and say, ‘please, let us just bring this to committee,’” Bliss said. At several points, she said the Real Estate Association, in part, has been “stifling us from having these bills heard in committee.”
Bliss said she was monitoring the implementation of the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program created to offset the losses to rural area hospitals from the cuts to Medicaid and SNAP from the legislation commonly referred to as the Big Beautiful Bill Act.
