Walking Dead Week at the AZLeg: April 4-9th

We survived another week of the #AZGOP legislative terrorists’ domination of our #AZLeg, much to our State’s detriment. All the bills that have not passed their assigned committees in both the House and Senate are now officially dead; but we know that often the dead will rise to stalk the living once again until Sine Die.

CEBV’s weekly legislative update summed up the week in AZ legislative assaults on Arizona’s citizens pretty well with this editorial cartoon by the inimitable Fitz. Ducey signed into law a number of cruel, pointless, and very likely unconstitutional attacks on citizens the AZGOP wants you to know they hate and denigrate, including half the population (women), a vulnerable and nigh defenseless minority (trans kids and their families), and anyone who votes (including, ironically, a likely majority of those affected who are statistically inclined to be their own supporters).

Says AZ’s Uplift Strategies Sam Almy (who recently appeared at a TheDGT.org Salon):

“Sam Almy, a Democratic strategist, sought to estimate a partisan breakdown of who would be affected by the new law by comparing those who had not updated their voter registration in Arizona since 2004 with a Democratic voter file. According to Mr. Almy, 45 percent of potentially affected voters were Republicans, compared with 36 percent who were Democrats. Nearly 90 percent of the voters were over the age of 50.”

Whoops. “Oh well… Probably unconstitutional anyway, so no harm, no foul, maybe the courts will kill it and we’ll still get credit from our conspiracy theory addled base,” I imagine the ‘strategists’ of the AZGOP saying.

The AZGOP assault on public education also continues apace, as chronicled by SOS Arizona’s Education Report.

Still looming is the ill-considered ‘overhaul’ of our State’s public education funding formulas, SB1269, which got a grand total of 12 minutes of public testimony before pulling a multi-billion dollar trigger that could deeply cut the funding of rural districts (again, ironically harming likely Republican constituents disproportionately, but the AZGOP seems to no longer care about harming their own, let alone everyone else), and adversely affecting teacher compensation of our most experienced educators (to the tune of $124m) in a state that already treats teachers like lepers and is dead last in teacher pay.

Radical voucher program expansion for private and religious schools to almost all Arizona students remains on the table (SB1657, HB2278) as do further attacks and burdens on our teachers and public schools (SB1211, SB1412, HB 2161, HB2439) to give a bigoted and vocal minority veto powers over our democratically determined school curriculums, instructional materials, and libraries. Call you legislators and let them know where you stand.

Let’s hope we survive the coming weeks without zombie bills eating our faces.