Get to know your lawmakers’ finances
Once a year, we get to crack open financial disclosure reports and see how Tucson’s lawmakers make a living and generally poke around in their finances.
It’s fun, and a good reminder that lawmakers work for you, even if they’re the ones who pass laws that you and millions of Arizonans have to follow.
The financial disclosures are meant to ferret out conflicts of interest and give voters a sense of where the money that ends up in lawmakers’ pockets comes from.
It’s the best publicly available view into their finances and there’s a lot to glean from them.
But before we get too far into the details, we’d like to point out some glaring flaws in the disclosure system.
Right now, it’s not great. If we wrote a headline that read “Three Tucson lawmakers might be billionaires,” it would technically be true. For all we know from the disclosure forms, they could be billionaires.
One of the many problems we see is that the highest category for investments and income is “$100,001+” and that leaves a lot of uncertainty. Are the investments worth $101,000? $100 million? There’s no way to know whether the person representing your interests is worried about paying their bills like you are, or looking forward to buying their third yacht.
Another issue – and we promise we won’t spend too much time on our rant here – is there aren’t really any consequences for lawmakers who don’t fill out the disclosure reports properly.
In one case, a bunch of your local lawmakers took an expensive trip that was paid for by an outside group and they didn’t disclose it. Several lawmakers also didn’t report their legislative salaries as part of their income, and two lawmakers didn’t provide even the bare minimum information about gifts required by state law.
We’ll bet $100,001+ that they don’t receive any meaningful consequences, other than a bit of public shaming in a local newsletter.
Ok. Now that we’ve gotten that out of our system, let’s dig into what the disclosures can actually tell us about Tucson’s lawmakers.
How do they make a living?
Lawmaking doesn’t always pay the bills. Arizona has a “citizen legislature,” so it’s a part-time position that pays $24,000 a year, along with per diem payments and reimbursements. Here’s how Tucson lawmakers earn money outside of the Legislature:
Rep. Chris Mathis (D) (Legislative District 18): Attorney and law professor at the University of Arizona.
Sen. Vince Leach (R) (LD17): Contractor with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative policy group based in Arlington, Virginia.
Rep. Kevin Volk (D) (LD17): Commercial real estate agent.
Reps. Nancy Gutierrez (D) (LD18) Teacher at Tucson Unified School District and co-owner of Yoga 4 Youth.
Rep. Alma Hernandez (D) (LD20): Teaches at Arizona State University and works at the Hernandi Group1 consulting firm, where her sister, Rep. Consuelo Hernandez (D) (LD21), also works.
Rep. Rachel Keshel (R) (LD17), Sen. Priya Sundareshan (D) (LD18), Sen. Sally Gonzales (D) (20), Sen. Rosanna Gabaldón (D) (LD21), Stephanie Stahl Hamilton (D) (LD21), and Rep. Betty Villegas (D) (LD20) did not report any kind of second job.
How do they offer their time?
Lawmakers often are asked to serve on boards of nonprofits, community organizations, and political groups. These are the non-legislative positions held by Tucson lawmakers:
Sundareshan: Non-voting board member of the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority. She also is on the board of the Arizona Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.
Gonzales: President of both the Guadalupe Community Development Corp and Guadalupe Affordable Housing.
Gabaldón: Board member at Valley Assistance Services in Green Valley.
Volk: Board member of United Way Capital Corporation in Tucson.
Alma Hernandez: Board member of Jewish Family and Children’s Services in Tucson and the Democratic Majority for Israel, based in Washington, D.C.
Villegas: Member of the Mexican American Studies Advisory Board at the University of Arizona, the board of the YWCA of Southern Arizona, and the Southwest Fair Housing Council. She also is on the leadership committee of National Latinos in Heritage Conservation.
Consuelo Hernandez: Governing board member at Sunnyside Unified School District and a board member of Hillel at the University of Arizona, Strauss Manor Senior Affordable Housing Center, and Congregation Chaverim.
Keshel, Mathis, Leach, and Stahl Hamilton didn’t report any positions or offices.
Where do they go?
Serving in the Legislature can require travel other than back and forth to the Capitol. Often the travel is related to the committees they serve on or conferences to meet with lawmakers from other states.
Sundareshan: Trips to Los Angeles, Atlanta and Louisville. She also went to Denmark for the state legislative delegation for Denmark's Energy Transition.
Stahl Hamilton: Conferences and trainings in Albuquerque, Louisville, Phoenix and twice to Atlanta.
Gonzales: Trips to Washington D.C., Louisville, and twice to both Seattle and Las Vegas.
Villegas: Conferences in Atlanta, Las Vegas and Phoenix.
Keshel: A conference in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Gabaldón: A conference in Atlanta.
Gutierrez: Conferences in Santa Monica and Las Vegas.
Consuelo Hernandez: The Justice Action Network Foundation Legislative Convening in “Colorado.” (We looked it up online, but the Justice Action Network didn’t disclose the exact location.)
Alma Hernandez: A conference in Denver.
Leach, Volk, and Mathis reported no travel last year. (Volk just started his first term and Leach lost the 2022 election before winning another term in November, so they weren’t lawmakers last year.)
The Hernandez sisters, as well as Gutierrez and Mathis, all apparently forgot to disclose their trip to Israel in their reports. Some of them did remember to post pictures from the trip on social media, which our sister newsletter the Arizona Agenda can tell you more about.
Biggest landowner: That title belongs to Keshel, although it’s nothing extravagant. She owns about seven acres of land in Hereford. Seven local lawmakers didn’t report owning any land, while Volk, Gutierrez, Villegas (well, actually her husband) and Consuelo Hernandez reported owning what appear to be houses or small parcels of land in Tucson and Phoenix. Volk also reported that businesses he’s associated with own parcels of land in Tucson.
Wealthiest local lawmaker: It’s hard to say. Like we noted above, the financial disclosure forms don’t disclose enough information to make even an educated guess.
Don’t worry, we’ll keep beating the transparency drum as long as it takes until voters get better information. A paid subscription from you would certainly help us get the job done.
Gifts: Lawmakers are required to report gifts worth more than $500, but state law doesn’t require them to approximate the value or describe the gift.
Very few Tucson lawmakers reported receiving gifts last year. Gonzales and Gabaldón each reported a gift from the University of Arizona. Both Gutierrez and Alma Hernandez listed that they received a gift worth more than $500, but we don't know who gave it to them.
There’s one last category that the state’s financial disclosures don’t touch, but could become a big deal soon.
In this new era of cryptocurrency, it could be lawmakers have oodles of wealth tied up in some Dogecoin knockoff. But the Legislature wrote specific laws so politicians don’t have to disclose what’s in their digital wallets.
But that’s a problem for next year, when financial disclosure time rolls around again and cryptocurrencies have run even wilder than they are now.
By then, maybe Arizona lawmakers will have taken a cue from members of Congress, who have to disclose their crypto holdings.
“Hernandi” is a play on how so many of the Hernandez siblings have been lawmakers.