Journalists’ Roundtable: State of the State, Hobbs releases budget, Lake loses in court

It’s Friday, and that means it’s time for another edition of Journalists’ Roundtable. To discuss this weeks’ top stories, we were joined by Mark Brodie of KJZZ radio, Jeremy Duda of Axios Phoenix, and Bob Christie of Capitol Media Services.

The stories this week included:

• Governor’s State of the State
• Governor releases budget
• Lake loses in court again
• Commerce Authority fight
• Leezah Sun ethics probe

Governor releases budget

Mark Brodie: “We’re trying to figure out what the actual shortfall is, not only for the rest of this fiscal year, but for the last six months or so as well.”

Jeremy Duda: “That leads to a disparity in how much needs to be cut and what the legislature is looking at and what the governor is looking at. The governor is looking at 850 million or so, cumulative this fiscal year and next fiscal year. The legislature is looking at 1.7 billion between the two years, that’s a lot. We have 1.7 billion in cuts but that is also going to be offset by a lot of new spending. There’s a lot for these two sides to hash out.”

Bob Christie: “In her state of the state address, she did say she wanted to reform the voucher program. She wants to reinstate the 100 day rule that used to be backed up until two or three years ago which said in order to qualify for a voucher, you would have to go to a public school for at least 100 days.”

Lake loses in court again

Jeremy Duda: “This is probably going to be a killer for Lake, the allegations that she is making is that Stephen Richer intentionally sabotaged these ballot tabulation machines to deliberately hurt her chances of getting elected.”

Mark Brodie: “She had very specific claims about what she thinks he did, and if there’s no evidence to suggest that he did any of those things or even some of those things, it’s really hard to show that in court.”

Bob Christie: “You can’t muzzle First Amendment speech because somebody is offended by it, except if she appears to have gone over the line, that could be a real wake-up call for some politicians who have gone over the line in what their hyperbole is.”