Proposition 400, a statewide sales tax set aside for local infrastructure projects, will expire in 2025 unless either lawmakers opposed to it and Gov. Katie Hobbs can agree on an extension or local leaders go around them and ask voters to approve it.
The Republican-led Legislature sent Hobbs a version of the sales tax originally approved in 1985 that restricts ways the tax dollars can be spent, including money going toward expanding the valley's polarizing light rail line.
"We took out the holes," Senate President Warren Peterson, R-Gilbert, said in a floor debate Tuesday. "This is actually very close to what has been put out there, but there were these loopholes in there that we cleaned up."
Hobbs told reporters on Tuesday that she would likely veto the measure.
While a half-cent may seem insignificant, the Maricopa Association of Governments said Prop. 400 cost taxpayers $664.8 million in fiscal year 2022. That's an increase of more than $107 million from the prior year when the economy was still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.
