The Bills that Could Help Arizonan Children and Families That Did Not Get a Hearing at the Arizona State Legislature

Yesterday, the Children’s Action Alliance (CAA)  released a statement highlighting the many fine legislative proposals designed to help Arizona’s children and families that did not get a hearing at the Arizona State Legislature this year.

Among those proposals were:

• HB2416 from Legislative District (LD) 17 Representative Jennifer Pawlik to increase funds to the Arizona Child Care Assistance Program so struggling families can receive greater aid in paying for child care.
• HB2291 from LD 13 Representative JoAnne Osborne to provide “comprehensive dental care for eligible pregnant women.”
• HB2273 from LD 28 Representative Kelli Butler would make more children eligible for Kids Care. 
• HB2659 from LD 28 Representative Christine Marsh would organize an annual conference to discuss issues affecting “children and youth” and to formulate possible policy solutions. 
• Various bills to reform the Empowerment Scholarship Program.
• HB2728 from LD19 Representative Lorenzo Sierra would provide extended foster care services for youth up to age 21.
• SCR1017 from LD29 State Senator Martin Quezada would have proclaimed racism as a public health care crisis.

In their statement, the CAA relayed:

“…Even though time has run out this year for those bills, we want to take a moment to highlight a few of those good ideas that merit stronger consideration in the future.”

It is a shame that the fringe reactionary leaders in the Arizona State Legislature thought proposals to suppress the vote, create scams for the rich to get money from the state for their children’s private school tuition, make it harder for women to exercise reproductive choice, give COVID liability protection to businesses, and discriminate against LGBTQ members were worthy to be heard and not legislation for eligible pregnant women to receive free dental care, increase the number of children eligible for KidsCare, and families receiving help to pay or ChildCare.

Talk about misplaced priorities for the people of Arizona.

Hopefully, these proposals will be heard in 2022.