This week, political junkies may regard the Arizona legislature as their number one dealer. There was enough controversial activity to satisfy even the most avid legislative afficionado.
That activity was created by the introduction of and vote on house bill HB2785. The need for this bill was created by the federal government when they changed reporting deadlines that created a conflict with state election dates. They put Arizona election officials in the unenviable position of either violating state law or violating federal law. This bill remedied that problem.
Under normal circumstances, it would have been a simple matter to pass a bill that would merely change the election dates.
But these are not normal circumstances. We have a very large and vocal Democrat minority which is frequently engaged in obstruction and obfuscation, and we have a Democrat governor hell bent on vetoing any bill that does not meet her Marxist agenda.
The Republican legislature saw an opportunity here to create an omnibus bill that would, in addition to changing election dates, accomplish a few election integrity improvements, and took it.
It took a lot of negotiations and compromise, but the end result is that HB2785 accomplished all that and passed both chambers with only 2 negative votes in each chamber, which made it bipartisan and veto proof. This constitutes quite an accomplishment for the Republican leadership.
The rest of the week was rather busy, but fairly uneventful:
Next week, the capitol is going to be a mad house of activity. That is because that is the last week for bills to be heard in committees of the original chamber. Bills that do not get a hearing next week are pretty much dead for this year. Among the bills we are tracking, over 200 are scheduled for hearings. Very likely, quite a few of them will not make it. Here is the list of the bill we are reacting to next week: