AZ GQP Legislators Find New Way To Bilk Taxpayers – Get Paid To Do Nothing

The Arizona legislature is supposed to bee in session for 100 days. I cannot recall a time it has ever finished in 100 days.

Normally once the budget has been agreed to, leadership schedules the major pending legislation it wants to pass for a vote-a-rama session, which frequently runs into the wee hour of the morning when no one is watching what they do, then declares sine die. “We’re done! Let’s go home.”

The normal procedure has not happened this year. Arizona legislators – who haven’t received a pay raise from voters in many years – have figured out that they can abuse their per diem pay to get paid to do nothing by never declaring sine die and pocket a nice sum of money.

Here’s the catch. The laws they pass, and which are signed by the governor, do not become effective until 90 days after the Legislature closes business for the Regular Session (sine die). So if they never sine die …

Axios Phoenix reports, Legislative session expected to continue until August:

GQP lawmakers will finish voting on legislation Tuesday but will push the long-running session until around the first week of August to continue exercising vetting authority over Gov. Katie Hobbs’ executive nominees.

That will make this year’s regular session the longest in state history.

Arizona has no set time frame for its legislative sessions, which begin in January and typically conclude sometime between April and the end of June. [The Regular Session starts on the second Monday in January, and is scheduled to last for 100 days, however the House and Senate can mutually vote to extend the Regular Session beyond the 100 days. This happens regularly.]

The only definitive deadline lawmakers face each session is July 1, the start of the fiscal year, and they must pass a budget before then.

Once the budget is completed, lawmakers usually don’t [want to] stick around much longer before they adjourn sine die.

Gov. Hobbs signed the fiscal year 2024 budget last month.

So why are we still here?

Lawmakers returned to the Capitol on Monday after a nearly month-long breakand and heard more bills on Tuesday before recessing until the first week of August, Speaker Ben Toma told Axios Phoenix.

Toma says they won’t hear any bills after Tuesday, making it the deadline for Republican legislative leaders and the Democratic governor to reach a deal on Proposition 400, the half-cent transportation sales tax for Maricopa County that will expire after next year.

So how did that go?

The Arizona Agenda reports, The Daily Agenda: The wheels are coming off:

The Legislature’s long-awaited return yesterday was eventful — but mostly for what lawmakers failed to do.

The state House shot down 40% of the bills it considered yesterday, not counting all the bills on the calendar that were pulled at the last minute.

The hard-brokered deal on housing fell apart. Negotiations on an extension of Prop 400 broke down, and the bill Republicans are pushing is dead on arrival to the Governor’s Office. Even a pair of tax cuts failed.

After more than a year of tense negotiations on ambitious housing augmentation plans, Republican Sen. Steve Kaiser and the Arizona League of Cities and Towns announced they had reached an agreement on a watered-down compromise package last week. But that fell through.

Kaiser said yesterday he didn’t have enough votes to pass the senate bills, and a House bill attempting to solve the Housing shortage that didn’t have the League’s backing failed in the Senate with little support.

And after failing, Kaiser announced that he is leaving the legislature to become a full time grifter at the end of the week, further complicating the GQP’s ability to pass any legislation until his replacement is seated.

Kaiser tells @dennis_welch that he’s stepping down to focus on focus on his nonprofit that’s dedicated to increasing the GOP legislative majorities, supporting conservative school board candidates and promoting center-right policies. https://t.co/TbaQsg66iq https://t.co/hHBRde0PnV

— Jeremy Duda (@jeremyduda) June 14, 2023

But lawmakers did approve a bill requiring cities to break up homeless encampments or else provide toilets, showers and 24/7 security. So if you can’t afford rent, you’ll still have a toilet. [Gov. Hobbs has already vetoed a previous attempt to criminalize the homeless.]

Meanwhile, Republicans are pushing ahead with their own plans for a Prop 400 extension — plans that Gov. Katie Hobbs is sure to veto. 

Hobbs had acquiesced to a plan to ask Maricopa County voters to approve an extension of the sales tax for transportation with some tweaks to the formula to kill off light rail expansion funding. Republican lawmakers now want two separate questions: one for extending the tax and another solely about funding the light rail. But as Capitol scribe Howie Fischer notes, it’s not even clear if Republican leaders have enough votes to pass their own plan. They delayed a vote yesterday and plan to bring the proposal back today.

However, Republicans had no trouble lining up support to send voters another pair of questions: HRC2033 would ask voters to ban open primaries and/or ranked-choice voting, while SCR1015 would ask voters to require any new voter-proposed laws to receive signatures from all 30 legislative districts to qualify for the ballot.  [You should vote NO on both measures.]

But even bills to cut taxes and unemployment benefits couldn’t gain enough traction in the legislative epilogue session. Republicans shot down legislation to reduce the number of weeks that people can receive unemployment benefits, to hand out automatic tax cuts if the Arizona budget has a “structural surplus,” and to exempt new businesses from fees and taxes.

Arizona has a “systemic revenue deficit” due to annual GQP tax cuts for their wealthy friends.

Big whoa or little whoa?: AZ Leg budget watchdogs at JLBC warn of "significant" revenue decline due to income tax cuts & sales tax slide. https://t.co/PdXNptZwIU pic.twitter.com/06QqG1jcz6

— Brahm Resnik (@brahmresnik) June 10, 2023

Lawmakers could have ended on a high note after this year’s historic bipartisan budget. They should take yesterday’s proceedings as a sign that it’s time to wrap it up.

Axios continues:

[Coup Plotter and fake GQP Elector under investigation by Special Counsel Jack Smith] Sen. Jake Hoffman, the Queen Creek Republican who chairs the Senate Committee on Director Nominations, said extending the session will give GOP senators more time to vet Hobbs’ appointees.

“Obviously we’d still like to continue doing that, and so I think that the timeline matches with our desire to continue vetting Governor Hobbs’ nominees,” Hoffman told us.

Yes, but: The Senate and its committees have had months to consider Hobbs’ nominees, and many still haven’t received committee hearings.

Executive nominees can serve for a year without Senate confirmation.

Hoffman declined to comment on why he didn’t hold committee hearings for the governor’s agency nominees earlier in the session.

“My personal preference would be to get it over with sooner than that,” Toma says, but the Senate wants more time to oversee gubernatorial nominations.

Why it matters: Most new laws don’t go into effect until 90 days after sine die.

While they’re in session, lawmakers receive per diem payments whether they’re working or not, so even if they don’t come back to the Capitol once between now and Aug. 2, they’ll still be getting paid.

Lawmakers get per diem every day during session, regardless of whether they're at the Capitol. $10/day for Maricopa County lawmakers, $119/day for those whose residence is outside the county. They can opt out if they want. https://t.co/JaEXk9zvu1

— Jeremy Duda (@jeremyduda) June 13, 2023

12 News reports, Two days of work for $400,000. Arizona lawmakers pocketing allowance paid by taxpayers:

Arizona lawmakers are on track to collect more than $400,000 for doing virtually nothing at the Capitol – and taxpayers are footing the bill.

A typical legislative session ends with marathon votes in May or June to pass a state budget, and then everyone goes home.

Not this year.

The final days of the current Legislature have turned into months.

The schedule, apparently set by Senate Republicans, calls for the Legislature to adjourn for the year in August, after a brief two-day session this week. The schedule is subject to change as soon as Tuesday.

All lawmakers get a daily allowance to cover work expenses while the Legislature is in session. The allowance is formally known as “legislative subsistence” but is commonly referred to as a “per diem.”

“The fact that they’re continuing to take vacations in the middle of the session means that they’re getting per diems every day for not doing any work,” Gov. Katie Hobbs told reporters.

• • • Lawmakers get the allowance for weekends, and whether they’re at the Capitol or not.
    • After next year’s state budget was passed in mid-May, lawmakers took a month-long break. After this week’s two-day session, another break is planned, for the rest of June, all of July and into a brief session in August. The Legislature would then close up shop for the year.
    • From May 16 through Aug. 7 (taking a guess at lawmakers’ next Capitol sojourn), the Legislature will have been in session for 83 days, with lawmakers doing work at the Capitol for just two days.
    • Based on current per-diem rates for lawmakers, from mid-May to August they could pocket an estimated $409,000 among them, according to subsistence rates set by the Legislature.

Lawmakers can opt out of receiving subsistence. It’s not known whether any of them have.

To the contrary, Sen. Wendy Rogers, who lives in Maricopa County, is padding her per diem pay by claiming a vacation residence in Flagstaff. Sen. Wendy Rogers Is Padding Her Per Diem Pay By Falsely Claiming She Lives In Her District (She Does Not).

The real winners are lawmakers from outside Maricopa County. Their subsistence rate is $119 per day, according to the Legislature’s guidelines.

They could receive almost $10,000 apiece during the Legislature’s long goodbye.

Maricopa County lawmakers get just $10 a day.

The regular payments stop when the legislative session ends.

To be fair, Arizona lawmakers are paid just $24,000 a year.

Two years ago, legislators raised their per diems with supermajority votes in the House and the Senate. Then-Gov. Doug Ducey allowed the raise to become law without his signature on the bill.

The raise applied only to lawmakers from outside Maricopa County, who remain majority Republican.

Should the Legislature adjourn in early August, its 200-days-plus length would smash previous records, according to Arizona Capitol Times record-keeping.

There are rumors that the legislature may never sine die. The Arizona Capitol Times reports, Rumor of late legislative session floats through capitol:

Could the legislature stay in session into the fall, or until the end of the year? The rumor that lawmakers won’t adjourn sine die anytime soon has been spreading through the state capitol for weeks, even if nobody is ready to publicly endorse the idea.

“There’s whispers all over the Capitol crowd about that,” said Stan Barnes, a former lawmaker and longtime Republican consultant.

“I think … they just want to have authority over whatever she’s (Gov. Katie Hobbs) going to do,” said Chuck Coughlin, another GOP strategist. “Some of them want to have the ability to hang the legislative authority over her head.”

“I think Petersen and his folks on this probably want to prevent recess appointments from the governor,” said Gaelle Esposito, a progressive consultant, referring to Senate President Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert.

Petersen and Rep. Ben Toma, R-Peoria, the top lawmakers in the Senate and House, respectively, didn’t respond to questions about the possibility of keeping the legislature in session well past the new fiscal year, which begins on July 1. But there’s no denying that the idea is in the air in Phoenix, where this year’s legislative session has already taken several unexpected turns.

Staying in session through or beyond the summer would mark another dramatic break from precedent. The official schedule of the legislature contemplates wrapping things up for the year in April and, although lawmakers have usually stayed past April in recent years, sine die has never come later than July 1 going back to at least the 1960s, according to records kept by the Arizona Capitol Times.

“The concept of it … just blows my mind,” Barnes said. “It’s really interesting times we’re living in.”

Rep. Andrés Cano, D-Tucson, the House minority leader, said he’s heard the rumor and doesn’t like the idea.

“The budget is done. If the MAGA majority can’t fathom working with Democrats on the few priorities left, it’s time to sine die,” he said in a text message.

Sen. Mitzi Epstein, D-Phoenix, the top Democrat in the Senate, said she wants the legislature to address Proposition 400 and do something about the ballooning cost of the universal Empowerment Scholarship Account program – and then wrap things up.

“My greatest concern, if we continue to go that long, is that the bills cannot go into effect until 90 days after sine die, so why delay like that?” Epstein said.

Coughlin said he thinks the idea to prolong the legislative session is mainly circulating among members of the Freedom Caucus, the far-right group of GOP legislators that’s frequently taken aim at Hobbs this year. For some lawmakers, he said, taking issue with executive power even dates back to former Gov. Doug Ducey’s moves during the Covid pandemic.

Petersen is widely viewed as friendly with the Freedom Caucus crowd, and Esposito said that she’s heard that the Senate President supports the idea, but Toma, the Speaker of the House, doesn’t.

Skeptics have at least a few questions about the idea.

One is Epstein’s concern: what would happen to the bills that lawmakers passed this session? New laws that aren’t part of the operating budget and aren’t passed with an emergency clause go into effect 90 days after the end of the legislative session.

Mike Braun, executive director of the Legislative Council, said there’s really nothing lawmakers can do to get around that timeframe, which is set by the state constitution.

Some observers think that preventing new laws from taking effect wouldn’t be such a big deal. Barrett Marson, a GOP consultant, said lawmakers haven’t passed much big-ticket legislation this year, anyway – Republicans blocked major Democratic policy proposals and Hobbs vetoed strident GOP bills that reached her desk.

Coughlin, on the other hand, emailed a list of bills he called “critical,” including supporting budget bills that give detail on how money will be spent, laws continuing state agencies and a measure to provide mental health counseling for 911 dispatchers.

“I just don’t think they can afford not to let all the laws take effect,” he said in a phone call.

Another issue is ongoing payments to state lawmakers, who collect per diem while the legislature is in session, but not once the session has ended.

“I think at some point, the publicity of continuing to collect a per diem, when they’re not actually [actively] in session, is going to make that idea die,” said Democratic consultant Stacy Pearson. “You can’t continue to collect taxpayer funding to do nothing.”

To which MAGA Republicans responded, “Hold my beer. Just watch me.”