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Archive for the 'Arizona Legislature' Tag

It’s March 9, where is your Legislature?

March 9th, 2009, 3:44 pm by Le Templar


ARIZONA’S COPPER DOME (original photo on Arizona Capitol Museum’s Web site)

Today is supposed to mark the halfway point of the regular session of the Arizona Legislature. Senate and House committees have finished their work on the original bills assigned to them and have moved on to measures that started in the other chamber. Lawmakers are engaged in high-minded debate related to hot button issues such as abortion, climate change, protecting gun ownership, right-sizing government and complying with constitutional principles … Huh? What? Oh, sorry. I must have dozed off for a moment and was having the most interesting dream.

Today is supposed to mark the halfway point of the regular session of the Arizona Legislature, and not much is happening at the state Capitol — except lawmakers from all sides continue to heap criticism on Gov. Jan Brewer’s still undefined plan to resolve the state’s budget crisis. Bills are going nowhere, and gambling types are taking odds that lawmakers will be at their desks in August. Things are so quiet that one of the Legislature’s more prominent and active Democrats is taking the week off to travel to the Middle East.

Personally, I’m tempted to declare Brewer’s budget agenda all but dead. Senate President Bob Burns, R-Peoria, said today he can’t support a special election this spring on either a $1 billion temporary tax increase or on repealing portions of the 1998 Voter Protection Act so that lawmakers would have more flexibility to adjust spending formulas for K-12 and early childhood education and health care for the poor. The main hesitation I have is Burns and the rest of Republican leadership have yet to publicly present a budget proposal that eliminates a projected $3 billion deficit without either of those alternative tools. So Brewer’s GOP colleagues possibly still could come around, maybe.

However, Burns has stayed firm to his committment not to allow any bills to be heard in the Senate until the budget problems are solved. So it seems Brewer and anyone who thinks like her (is there anyone at this point?) will have to somehow work around him. That means a budget deal is still weeks or months away. How much can I bet that the session will last until Sept. 1?

Posted in: Arizona government • Governor • • • | 2 Comments »

New House minority leader pledged to force lawmakers to follow the law

November 10th, 2008, 12:06 pm by Le Templar


    REP. DAVID LUJAN

Last summer, a small group of Valley journalists and people from other careers met at the Tempe Public Library to discuss possible ways to make government more transparent to the public, with an emphasis on freedom of information and open records law.s The meeting was organized by the 21st Century Right-to-Know Project as part of a national listening tour for the purpose of developing proposed policy changes for the incoming new president (whether it turned out to be John McCain or Barack Obama).

While most of the discussion focused on federal agencies, state Rep. David Lujan, D-Ariz., spoke to the group about how Arizona law works and where potential gaps might be. The back-and-forth led to the point that while Arizona has a robust open records’ law that most lawmakers support, the Legislature always has been exempt from obeying it. Lujan noted the irony that the Legislature expects other government agencies to follow a statute that lawmakers won’t impose on themselves.

Lujan pledged before the group to draft and introduce a bill next year that would generally include the Legislature under the open records statute. Now, I wouldn’t expect such a bill to get anywhere. Individual lawmakers and legislative agencies actually are quite good about releasing records and other data from their offices, if only to avoid the appearance of trying to hide something from the public. But a number of lawmakers I’ve talked to don’t believe the open records law should apply to the Legislature, to protect those rare instances in which they choose not to share anything. They see such a law as intruding on the constitutional authority of individual lawmakers as elected officeholders (even though the same law already applies to county board of supervisors and city councils).

What’s interesting here is House Democrats decided last week to name Lujan as their new leader, replacing Phil Lopes of Tucson. So if Lujan keeps his pledge, he could give more visibility to a bill that requires the Arizona Legislature to release its records, instead of simply trusting lawmakers to do so.

Posted in: Arizona Legislature • Arizona government • Freedom of Information • • • | Post a Comment »

East Valley lawmakers also seeking to be House speaker

September 12th, 2008, 4:40 pm by Le Templar


                KIRK ADAMS                         STEVE YARBROUGH

I recently wrote about two state senators from the East Valley entering the competition to be the next president of the Arizona Senate. Well, two House members from the Mesa-Chandler area apparently are preparing to challenge House Speaker Jim Weiers, R-Phoenix, for his post, assuming all three are re-elected Nov. 4.

Reps. Steve Yarbrough, R-Chandler, and Kirk Adams, R-Mesa, are both committee chairmen and effective at getting their issues through the legislative process. A spokesman for Weiers tried to pass off the two challengers as “friendly competition.” But Adams, at least, seems pretty serious to me, given he’s put together this rather nifty 16-page booklet on how Republicans could stop losing so many budget battles to Gov. Janet Napolitano and Democratic lawmakers. (Hat tip to espressopundit.com for reporting this first).

 Adams wants to take advantage of the widespread anger that Napolitano drove the legislative budget process two years in a row, despite Republicans holding more legislative seats. Weiers was among those outraged in July when a handful of Republicans again worked with Democrat lawmakers to pass out the governor’s budget proposal. But Adams is implying that Weiers’ leadership (or lack thereof) contributed significantly to Napolitano’s victories.

“You have to ask yourself what’s the purpose of being in the majority,” Adams told me Thursday. “You can’t keep blaming what happens on a few wayward Republicans.”

Adams’ little white paper specifically calls for the House speaker to be far less than aloof from fellow Republicans, to attend all or most of that party’s caucus meetings throughout the session and to take direct charge of the major issues. Adams also wants the chairman of the House Appropriation Committee to lead any negotiations with the outside parties (Napolitano’s office and Democrat lawmakers). Of course, that’s easy to say with Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, leaving the House next year because of term limits. A new appropriations chairman appointed by Adams would have to be more willing to bend to the wishes of House leadership than Pearce ever was as appropriations chairman.

I haven’t been able to reach Yarbrough to hear his thoughts about running for speaker. Adams said the two haven’t discussed the possibility of uniting behind one candidate to improve a challenger’s chances of upsetting Weiers. But Adams was rather deferential.

“I think Steve would make a very good speaker who would serve our caucus and the state of Arizona very well,” Adams said.

Posted in: Arizona Legislature • Arizona government • • • • • | Post a Comment »
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