Journalists’ Roundtable: 06-30-23: Governor Hobbs’ executive orders

It’s Friday, and that means it’s time for another edition of the Journalists’ Roundtable. Joining us for a look at the week’s top stories: Laurie Roberts of The Arizona Republic and AZCentral.com, Camyrn Sanchez of Arizona Capitol Times and Jim Small of Arizona Mirror.

Top stories this week included:

• More executive orders from Governor Hobbs
• GOP lawmakers stop nomination hearings
• Petersen requests meeting with the Governor
• Romley calls for Cyber Ninja investigation
• Pinal County Elections Director resigns
• Replacement for Kaiser’s seat

Executive orders from Governor Hobbs

Laurie Roberts: “The governor signed two executive orders, one to add surgery for transgender state employees to the state health care plan, and the other to withdraw any state support for conversion therapy for the LGBTQ+ community.”

This is reversing an order from Ducey made several years ago.

Laurie Roberts: “The state doesn’t have a count of how many transgender employees there are, but I can’t imagine just based on the population as a whole that there are just great hordes of people waiting to storm the surgical centers with their state health insurance to get these changes. It’s probably a very small number of people. It’s a very personal kind of thing.”

Camryn Sanchez: “The executive order affects the funds that are used to pay for these things for state employees or state people, as opposed to passing a law through the legislature or something like that. It’s not clear how much this all amounts to in terms of funding.”

GOP lawmakers are not happy with Hobbs, saying she is abusing her power.

Jim Small: “I think definitely the abortion one is the one that really triggered the most intense response from Republicans at the legislature.”

The legality of the abortion executive order has not really been tested in court yet, Small said. Some county attorneys have already come out and expressed that their job cannot be superseded.