Opinion: Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs should come clean on how and why six of her staffers rated free tickets to Super Bowl 57 earlier this year.
How perfectly wonderful it is to hear that members of Gov. Katie Hobbs’ staff felt entitled to take free tickets to Super Bowl 57 earlier this year – tickets that would have cost us mere mortals thousands of dollars apiece.
3TV’s Dennis Welch reported this week that six Hobbs staffers, including then-Chief of Staff Allie Bones, scooped up freebies to the big game in Glendale.
The tickets were among 12 sent to Hobbs’ office by the Office of Tourism. The rest were given to education and veterans groups.
Hobbs’ office told Welch it was perfectly legal for staffers to snap up the free tickets though that seems debatable.
Arizona law bars a public employee from accepting an “expenditure for entertainment” from an organization, lobbyist or public body. There is an exception for “entertainment in connection with a special event properly reported pursuant to this article.”
But I’m pretty sure reporter Welch disclosing the gifties seven months after they were doled out isn’t what the law had in mind when it called for proper reporting.
Mark this one as Exhibit D (or maybe E or F?) in the list of reasons that Hobbs was smart to overhaul her staff and bring in a new chief of staff in June.
The Arizona Freedom Caucus, predictably, are howling about “flat out corruption.”
Democrats, predictably, are yawning and rationalizing that Hobbs was new to the office and didn’t understand the optics.
It’s worth noting, however, that then-Gov. Doug Ducey, in his first year as governor, got 20 tickets for the 2015 Super Bowl. Welch reports Ducey paid face value for his ticket (still a fabulous deal for him) and distributed the rest to veterans groups.
It should go without saying that working for the Governor’s Office is not a license to slurp up freebies.
It also should go without saying that Hobbs should not shrug this off.
She should investigate how it happened and come clean about whether she authorized the free tickets to her staffers.
Then she should make a donation to a non-profit equal to the value of those six tickets.
Perhaps, using some of that $1.5 million in dark money donations to her private inauguration slush fund?
Reach Roberts at [email protected]. Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @LaurieRoberts.
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