Steve Montenegro

Define “broke”: The Republic keeps digging up dirt on Sunshine Residential Homes, most recently with Stacey Barchenger shining a light on the group home operator’s dealings with state officials. Sunshine Residential executives claimed they were in the red and needed more money from the state. Officials ended up raising payments to Sunshine Residential by $4 million a year, or 30% higher than what the state had been paying. But records obtained by the Republic cast doubt on whether the company was actually in the red, particularly in light of seven-figure payouts to shareholders. In response to the Republic’s reporting, House Speaker Steve Montenegro launched an advisory team on Thursday to investigate what he calls a “pay-to-play scandal at DCS.” (November 14, 2025)

Great power, great responsibility: Two of the top GOP officials in Arizona are trying to block a court order that would require the state to fix an unconstitutional funding system that doesn’t provide schools with enough money to repair buildings, per Capitol scribe Howie Fischer. Senate President Warren Petersen and House Speaker Steve Montenegro argue the Legislature is the only body with the authority to set education policy. Public school advocates pointed out the Legislature set the standards for funding schools, but then violated those standards by not providing enough money. (June 2, 2026)

The post-session rebrand: The Capitol Times dropped a series of Q&As recapping the 2025 session with Arizona’s legislative leaders, and some lawmakers are taking an interesting approach to reframing this year’s chaos. House Speaker Steve Montenegro said the “relationship between the House and the Senate is fine” after this year’s budget feud, while Senate President Warren Petersen said “unnecessary division within the party made the process more difficult than it needed to be.” Democratic leaders Rep. Oscar De Los Santos and Sen. Priya Sundareshan highlighted their party’s budget wins and called for a clean renewal of Prop. 123 next year. (July 22, 2025)

Awkward: Republican Sen. Vince Leach posted a meme on Facebook decrying the fact that there are 32 foreign-born members of Congress, the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy notes, including Republican U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani, who represents Leach in Congress. Not to mention that six of his colleagues in the state Legislature were born in another country, including House Speaker Steve Montenegro. (July 23, 2025)

Is the budget coming?: Arizona’s House of Representatives is reconvening earlier than expected — at 1:15 p.m. tomorrow, House Speaker Steve Montenegro announced in an email to lawmakers. He wrote he expects “committee meetings and floor work on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.” The Senate is still on break, but has Education and Transportation and Director Nominations committees scheduled today. (June 10, 2025)

Your tax dollars at work: House Speaker Steve Montenegro authorized building a new $630,000 recording studio in the House basement and spending another $115,000 a year for a video producer, the Republic’s Mary Jo Pitzl discovered through public records. Montenegro said the money came out of last year’s budget, and he spent it to provide lawmakers "a reliable, professional space to communicate directly with the people they represent.” It opened in late June and has an 18-foot-by-eight-foot LED screen where lawmakers can choose from a pre-approved folder of pictures for video backgrounds, like a spiffy flag display you can see in Republican Reps. Selina Bliss and Quang Nguyen’s legislative wrap-up video. (July 14, 2025)

Great power, great responsibility: Two of the top GOP officials in Arizona are trying to block a court order that would require the state to fix an unconstitutional funding system that doesn’t provide schools with enough money to repair buildings, per Capitol scribe Howie Fischer. Senate President Warren Petersen and House Speaker Steve Montenegro argue the Legislature is the only body with the authority to set education policy. Public school advocates pointed out the Legislature set the standards for funding schools, but then violated those standards by not providing enough money. (June 2, 2026)

Not your Senate: The social justice organizing group Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA) is suing Republican Senate President Warren Petersen and Speaker Steve Montenegro for banning several of its members from the Arizona Senate for the rest of the legislative session, the Phoenix New Times’ Zach Buchanan reports. As we noted in our coverage of the incident in February, Senate security officials handed several people generic slips of paper — which don’t list the names of those who were trespassed, don’t have any letterhead and don’t look terribly legit. There is no indication that the building’s security has a list of people they trespassed for a chanting outburst during a committee hearing the day before, and LUCHA is claiming violations of the First and 14th Amendments. (April 9, 2026)

Announcing the announcement: Arizona House Speaker Steve Montenegro and Senate President Warren Petersen announced they’re planning to release their budget proposal on Tuesday morning. They sent out a press release and filmed a video of themselves talking for nearly two minutes without giving any concrete details about their proposal. But they do say it “does not rely on gimmicks,” delivers “one of the largest tax cuts in state history,” and has enough votes to pass both the House and Senate (which isn’t exactly hard because the GOP controls both chambers). It’s a lot of puffery for a starting point in negotiations that Hobbs is sure to veto. But with that opening salvo, Hobbs says she’s ready to lift the moratorium she put on signing bills into law, per Capitol scribe Howie Fischer. Still, Hobbs says just because she is no longer going to veto every bill that comes across her desk, that doesn’t mean she’s going to stop vetoing bills altogether. “They're making it real easy to do that,” Hobbs said, by sending her bills they know she won't sign. (April 28, 2026)

Welcome back to budget season: Arizona’s Democratic governor and GOP legislative leaders struck an amicable tone as they started negotiating the state budget. Just kidding. It’s the same slugfest as last year. Gov. Katie Hobbs is fed up and said she won’t negotiate on the budget until GOP leaders like Senate President Warren Petersen publicly release their own budget plan, Caitlin Sievers reports for the Arizona Mirror. Petersen and House Speaker Steve Montenegro accused Hobbs of throwing a “temper tantrum,” while Hobbs said Republicans were “unserious.” A big sticking point is Prop 123, a decade-old, voter-approved measure that helps fund public schools. Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman said if Republicans support Hobbs’ plan for Prop 123, they’d essentially be “underwriting the Hobbs’ re-election campaign.” (March 23, 2026)

Taking it to court: Arizona’s political scene has turned into its own legal drama. Joseph Chaplik, a former Republican state lawmaker who’s running in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District, filed a defamation lawsuit against the Conservatives for Effective Government super PAC for a political sign that used an AI-generated image of him and an advertisement he says misrepresented his role in a child pornography bill, Morgan Fischer reports for the New Times. Also, backers of the Protect Education Act are suing over the Republican-approved language that will appear on the ballot, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer reports. The description of the act “misrepresents the initiative’s provisions” and casts the measure “in the worst possible light,” a lawyer for the groups backing the measure said. And a judge said Republican lawmakers can defend a voter-approved border security law if Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes won’t. Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen and House Speaker Steve Montenegro said they’ll defend Prop 314, which goes into effect this week, from an ACLU lawsuit claiming the law would lead to rampant racial profiling. (July 17, 2026)