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Arizona Legislature: Tax Cuts R Us

March 6, 2017March 3, 2017 by Pamela Powers

This week in the Arizona Legislature is crossover week, which means bills passed by one house will be heard by the other. The House began hearing Senate bills on Monday and vice versa. In advance of crossover week come two weeks of cramming as many bills into the pipeline as possible.

Last week the House passed the 200-bills-passed threshold and had two late nights– 7 p.m. on Tuesday and 11:30 p.m. on Thursday (the deadline to hear House bills). If you want to hear some late-night speechifying, check out the debate on the Citizens Initiative— which the Republicans and the Chamber of Commerce want to kill and the Democrats defended. (When you go to the video, the agenda of the debate appears below, so you can scroll in to the sections you want to view.)

There have definitely been some themes so far in this session. Besides the push for fingerprinting citizens, the jabs at environmental protection, and the elimination of oversight and transparency by cutting all citizen review boards, the big theme has been giving away tax revenue (AKA, tax cuts, tax credits, tax subtraction, tuition waivers, economic development or trickle down economics).

Ironically, on many of these giveaway bills fiscally conservative Republicans (who don’t like spending money) and the fiscally conservative Progressives (who don’t want to give away tax revenue as long as the schools are underfunded) voted together. In the past two weeks, there have been maybe as many as 10 bills where some combination of Progressives and Conservatives voted against spending money that we don’t have.

Speaking Truth to Power in the #AZLeg (video)

February 2, 2017 by Pamela Powers

This has been an action-packed week in the Arizona Legislature. We returned to work on Monday– just a few days after immigration restrictions and the Muslim travel ban and related protests unfolded at airports (including Sky Harbor).

This week I was proud of the Democrats in the Legislature. I am particularly proud of my Sisters who are also first-time Legislators: Representatives Athena Salman, Isela Blanc, Kelli Butler, Winona Benally, Mitzi Epstein, and Kirsten Engel.

Yes, we’re the minority, but we’re a fiery bunch with a lot to say. Thirteen of the 25 Dems in the House are new, and several of the newbies are unabashedly Progressive (like me) or Progressive-leaning, depending upon the issue.

Often, the people who spoke truth to power this week included some or all of the women listed above. But don’t take my word for it. Watch the videos.

Jan 30: Democrats made statements about the Muslin travel ban.

Jan 31: Democrats spoke out against snake shot and rat shot in the city. (The vote broke along party lines, see below.)

Heads Up: The Con-Con is Coming

January 30, 2017 by Pamela Powers

For years Tea Partiers have been pushing for a Constitutional Convention (AKA Con-Con) for a balanced budget and more.

The Con-Con has passed the Arizona House of Representatives several times, but stalled in the Senate. This year there are four Con-Con bills on the agenda for the Federalism, Property Rights and Public Policy Committee on Tuesday, January 31.

HCR2010 (Townsend) declares that the Arizona Legislature wants a Constitutional Convention. (Concurrent resolution with the Senate.)

HCR2006 (Thorpe) includes a wish list of changes to the Constitution. (Concurrent resolution with the Senate.)

HCR2013 (Mesnard) calls for a Constitutional Convention for a federal balanced budget. (Concurrent resolution with the Senate.)

HB2226 (Mesnard) also calls for a Constitutional Convention for a federal balanced budget and includes details of the balanced budget. (House only bill.)

In previous years, the Con-Con bills were stopped at the door of the Senate by former Senate President Andy Biggs, who resigned the Legislature to run for Congress. Biggs is so opposed to the Con-Con that he wrote a book about it– The Con of the Con-Con.

They can have their own opinions, but not their own facts

January 13, 2017January 10, 2017 by Michael Bryan

Cross-posted from RestoreReason.com. (Note: the links to sources dropped out of this document. You can click on the link above to go to the original document.)

The first session of the 53rd Legislature began yesterday and as we public education advocates “batten down the hatches” and plan our “assaults”, I thought it a good time to provide what I believe are some of the most salient facts about the state of education in Arizona today.

Educational Achievement. The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count 2016 report ranks us 44th in the nation, Education Week’s Quality Counts 2016 ranks us 45th, and WalletHub 48th. Might there be a nexus to our other rankings provided below?

Per Pupil Funding. Our K–12 state formula spending (inflation-adjusted), was cut 14.9% from 2008 to 2016 leaving us 48th in the nation.

Propositions. The $3.5 billion Prop. 123 provides over 10 years (only 70% of what voters approved and the courts adjudicated) disappears in 2026. Prop. 301, which includes a 0.6% state sales tax, raises about $600 million per year for schools and self-destructs in 2021. There is now talk of increasing the tax to a full cent which would bring in around $400 million more per year or, adding an additional penny which would up it $1 billion.

Legislative Whirlwind Begins: Tours & Meetings, Oh, My! (Part 1)

January 6, 2017January 3, 2017 by Pamela Powers

Since Dec. 1, newly elected members of the Arizona House have received a whirlwind of invitations for meetings, trainings, luncheons, dinners, tours, coffees, workshops, receptions, BBQs, caucus meetings, briefings, orientations– and more. For half of December, I was out of Tucson — with multiple trips to Phoenix and a field trip to Yuma. On the street, supporters ask me when I start working. Even though the inauguration isn’t until next week, I have been working for weeks as your “representative-elect”.

Instead of publishing a lengthy article on “how I spent my Christmas vacation”, I’m breaking up my December tales into five parts: meetings (not as boring as it sounds), the ADEQ field trip to a defunct gas station, and three segments about the Yuma agricultural tour (92,000 cows, lettuce and birds, and migrant farm workers).

Here is the first installment in the five-part series.

New House Member Orientation

Most of the 23 new Republican and Democratic members of the Arizona House attended an orientation at the Capitol in the beginning of December. We comprise one of the largest (if not the largest) Freshmen classes, since several of us beat incumbents. (Maybe… just maybe… we could break the gridlock mold because we are such a big group.)