AZ Legislature Week In Review – Week Ending February 21, 2020

Arizona capitol

It is very unfortunate that the most remarkable state legislative events over the last two weeks were the reprehensible behavior of members of a Latino group, La Lucha, aided and abetted by Democrat legislators, most notably Rep. Salman.

The first event happened Feb 13 during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing of bill SCR1007. All committee hearings are videotaped, and this is the video of that hearing. The bad behavior begins at 0:35:50. Here is the link.

SCR1007 – restrictions prohibited, immigration laws, enforcement: ALLEN, S. This bill simply prohibits the state and all its subdivisions from ignoring federal laws regarding immigration. In other words, it prohibits sanctuary state, counties, and cities. We already have laws on the books about this, but SCR1007, if passed by the legislature and approved by the voters, would have made those anti sanctuary laws voter protected. It cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee 4-3-0, but this is irrelevant because both the governor and the legislative leadership have expressed their opposition. This bill will go nowhere fast this session.

The second reprehensible event happened Feb 18 during the House Elections Committee hearing on bill HB2304. The behavior begins toward the end of the hearing, at 4:28:15 on the video

During the explanation of her vote, Rep. Salman joined the melee by expressing her outrage about this portion of HB2304, “…be accompanied and assisted by a person of the voter’s own choice IF THE VOTER REQUIRES ASSISTANCE DUE TO A DISABILITY…” Her objection is that Hispanics would no longer be able to take to the voting booth a translator, but that is a bogus argument. The ballot and the instructions are printed in Spanish. What possible role could a “translator” have?

HB2304 – federal only ballots, paper, tabulation: TOWNSEND – This bill no longer deals with ballots because a strike everything amendment has been attached. Now the bill mostly modifies the verification of voter registration records. It has a lot of other provisions in it, one of which is the limitation that Rep. Salman objected to. HB2304 passed 5-3-1, but given the vitriol expressed by the opposition and the leadership’s propensity for caving, its future is uncertain.

HCR2036 – sanctuary jurisdiction, prohibition, law enforcement: SHOPE. This bill is the house version of the senate anti sanctuary city bill. It was held in the House Judiciary Committee, and it is dead for this session. It is just as well, because it contains a proposed strike all amendment with the same language as last year’s bill SB1217, that provided discounted university tuition rates for illegal aliens.

SCR1014 – lieutenant governor, joint ticket: MESNARD – If passed, this bill will bring to the voters a constitutional amendment to create the office of lieutenant governor, to be elected on the same ticket as the governor. This makes sense because the first person in the line of succession should have the same political affiliation, agenda, and platform as the governor. It passed 5-2-0 in the Senate Government Committee.

HB2120 – schools, graduation ceremonies, cultural regalia: COOK – This bill will make it illegal for school districts to prohibit the wearing of cultural regalia at graduation ceremonies. This bill encourages division and separatism along cultural lines. It cleared the House Education Committee 11-0-0. Do all 11 representatives in this committee really think that this is a good thing? Apparently yes.

HB2829 – schools, total compensation statements: GRANTHAM – This is a transparency bill. One should not look solely at salaries to determine compensation. Benefits have monetary value, which can be very high and should be taken into account. HB2829 goes a long way toward accomplishing that. It cleared the House Education Committee 8-3-0

Next week we can expect light activity because of two reasons.

First, it will be chamber crossover week. This means that the bills that passed the house will move to the senate to repeat the process there, and the same will happen to the surviving senate bills.

Second, it appears that the legislature will be concentrating on hammering out a budget now, rather than following tradition and doing it at the end of the session. This apparently was caused, at least partially, by last year’s reprehensible behavior by senators Boyer (LD20) and Carter (LD15)

For information on all the bills we are tracking, check out our weekly calls to action and legislative report, found on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/AZRRT/

Folks who do not use Facebook can receive those alerts via e-mail by subscribing to our distribution list at joseb85@hotmail.com

For general information on the workings of our state legislature, go to our website at https://azpeopleslobbyist.com/

As usual, all the information found herein may be verified by going to the legislature website, found at https://www.azleg.gov/

 

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