Today was a learning experience...

I was going to title this post "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly," but it turns out that someone stole that one right out from under me. :))

Went to the lege today, and sat in on a meeting of the House Appropriations Committee. [Note: I stayed for more than 4 1/2 hours and the meeting wasn't even close to over.]

First, the good stuff (a.k.a. - The Good) -

...Rep. David Schapira's HB2206, Teacher Student Loan Program, passed the committee by a 14 -1 - 2 vote after a minor amendment to the bill. The bill is now called the "Teacher Student Loan Program" and is extended to cover students who are willing to be math, science, and special ed teachers.

The bill may not pass the whole House, or make it through the Senate, but getting past Russell Pearce is always a good thing.

...Before the meeting, I sat in the gallery of the House; unfortunately, there wasn't any debate going on at that time. However, while there, I met Andrea Dalessandro, a Santa Rita Democrat who is heavily involved with emergeArizona. We spoke for a while, and found out that we know a lot of the same people.

It was also nice to see a friendly face. :)

And it looks like LD30 won't be as easy for the Reps come the next election.

Now, the not-so-good stuff (a.k.a. - The Bad) -

...These guys will never win awards for punctuality; the House was supposed to gavel back into session at 1:00 p.m., but I was there until 1:25, and it hadn't done so at that point. Also, the Appropriations Committee meeting was scheduled to start at 1:30, but that didn't happen until 2.

...During the consideration of HB2203, Rep. Trish Groe (R-LD3) proved that she's as clueless about real life as they come.

The bill concerns the creation of a mandatory summer school reading program for 3rd-graders who aren't reading at grade level. They would have to complete the program before being promoted to the 4th grade.

The bill passed the committee after a number of the Republicans commented that they would like to see the parents pay for the program, though some others noted that it's unclear whether or not they *could* charge for a mandatory program.

During this period, Rep. Groe commented that she would like parents to pay so that they don't view the time their child would have to spend in summer school as "time to do housework."

That's just wrong on so many levels, I don't know where to begin.

...In something that isn't breaking news to anybody, Russell Pearce (R-LD18) hates immigrants.

Make that HATES immigrants.

In addition to the anti-immigrant and anti-immigration bills on the agenda, he found a way during consideration of HB2202 to start spouting off on illegal immigrants and Prop 300.

The bill in question concerns adult education fees.

Now for the ugly -

...Not all of AZ's loons are in the Republican caucus of the lege.

During the discussion of HB2770, a bill to appropriate $6 million to fund non-embryonic stem cell research, Dr. Joseph Rogers of the Sun Health Research Institute, spoke about how non-embryonic stem cell research was better than embryonic stem cell research.

OK, it was more of a rant; so much so, that even Russell Pearce, no slouch in the ranting department himself, had to rein in the doctor.

Did I mention that the doctor's bio at SHRI says that he has a bachelor's degree in literature and that he worked as a journalist before receiving a PhD in neurobiology from the University of California at San Diego?

That's an interesting and unusual progression.

Unfortunately, his name makes for a lousy search term.

His science degree seems legit, but most of the references that I can find for him cite him in his association with SHRI. More research needed here.

...The ugliest phenomenon that I observed was the financial hypocrisy of the Republicans.

- - - With any bill that helped public education, the Republicans spoke about financial responsibility, tight budgets, "structural deficits", etc., before voting against it;

Bills that appropriated money to give to charter schools were lauded. (HB2658)

- - - With bills that would have aided poor and working families, they want to impose fees and restrictions; (HB2202)

Bills that accelerate or make permanent tax cuts for big business and others, while undercutting school district revenues for education, were passed without a peep from the Reps. (HB2401, HB2400)

- - - With a bill that appropriated $200,000 to provide education regarding the benefits of pre-natal doses of folic acid in preventing birth defects, they argued that the money should come directly out of the Department of Health Services budget [note: the bill passed because the pro-lifers on the committee thought that it might reduce abortions, not because they thought that preventing birth defects is a generally good thing]; (HB2156)

However, the bills that appropriated $63 million for different anti-immigrant measures passed without a peep about fiscal responsibility or of dinging the budget of any particular agency. [HB2473 - $25 mill, related: HCR2021, a ballot measure doing the same thing as HB2473, no appropriation; HB2751 - $25 million; HB2766, $10 million; HB2779, $3 million, related: HCR2051, ballot proposition, no appropriation.]

There may have been others, but as noted above, I gave up after more than 4 1/2 hours; next time, I'll pay attention to the length of the agenda before heading downtown.


And my biggest disappointment with the day? The fact that the Democrats on the committee mostly just voted; there was very little actual discussion of the various bills by the committee.

Yes, they had 35 bills to get through, and yes, with the makeup of the committee, the outcome of most of the votes was pre-ordained, but that's no excuse for silence.

Today's railroad session was conducted with very little vocal opposition, and it was embarrassing to me as a Democrat.


Anyway, I'll try to find another day to attend a hearing, perhaps over in the Senate. Maybe I'll get to write about the antics of Jack Harper or Ron Gould. :))

Good night!