Week 14 of this legislature finds our governor continuing to do what she does best, namely vetoing good bills. Among them, we find these three that are among the 250 we are tracking:
HB2552 – voting; elections; tally; prohibition
Hobbs favors the kind of manipulation that is enabled by rank choice voting
HB2675 – drug cartels; terrorist organizations
Hobbs opposes getting tough with drug cartels
HB2754 – criminal liability; enterprise
Hobbs is OK with looking the other way when certain enterprises engage in human smuggling
According to the legislature’s website, this is the score as of the time of this writing:
156 Bills sent to the governor
53 Bills signed by the governor (mostly housekeeping, non-controversial bills)
48 Bills vetoed by the governor
Further details may be obtained from the AZLEG website by clicking HERE
We are beginning to see a pattern regarding these vetoes. When the governor vetoes bills that she does not like, but cannot come up with good reasons for those vetoes, she claims that the bills are unnecessary or that they do not go far enough. But those are bogus claims because neither she nor the Democrat legislators are coming up with better ideas for dealing with those issues.
Legislative action this week was totally eclipsed by one single action, the expulsion of Liz Harris from the AZ House of Representatives.
Enough has been written about this issue already. We will not pile any more on top of what is out there, but instead will concentrate on advising our readers about where to find pertinent materials.
The AZ Daily Independent has published no less than three articles on this matter. They may be read by clicking on ARTICLE 1, ARTICLE 2, and ARTICLE 3
The full text of the ethics report may be read by clicking HERE
The full text of the bill expelling Harris may be read by clicking on HR2003
There is a lot of passion on both sides of this issue. Those who think that Harris acted wrongly, agree that she received proper punishment. Those who favored her behavior claim that the punishment was too harsh and something like censure should have been done instead.
However, if one is to look at this objectively, there are two inescapable facts to consider.
First, Harris did violate Rule 1 as reported in the ethics committee report.
Second, the house members had only two viable choices, expelling or ignoring. Doing less than expelling, like censuring or admonishing, would have been tantamount to ignoring. Those lesser measures have been proven time and again to be ineffective and serve only to make people feel that something was done when in reality nothing was.
For next week, no legislative activity is scheduled. Apparently, the legislature is taking a break for two probable reasons. They will probably want to regroup and brace for the upcoming budget battle, and they will be one member short until a replacement for Harris is appointed.