Thursday, January 12, 2012

818

818.

After one (1!) full week of the legislative session, that is how many bills, resolutions, and memorials have been introduced.

After *one* week.

Guess whoever took the "over" in this year's pool is smiling right now.

Anyway, most of the bills fall into one of four categories.

...Gems of good governance, like Sen. David Schapira's SB1071, banning racial profiling (easily the smallest category, and don't expect any of these to pass)

...Sneaky bad, like Rep. David Stevens' HCR2044, proposing to amend the AZ Constitution so that ballot questions referred there by the legislature would be voted on in primary elections, not general elections (guess they're sick and tired of those pesky independent voters turning aside some of the lege's nuggets of stinkiness, so they're looking to cut the independent voters out of the process

...Ugly bad, like Rep. Carl Seel's HB2582, mandating that anybody receiving any kind of welfare benefits carry a bright orange card with "Government Assistance Card" or "Government Food Stamp Card" printed in big black letters on it (this one was floated last year, and passed committee, but was amended to remove the petty clauses intended to arbitrarily humiliate poor people)

...Crazy bad, like (this is the biggest category, but I've got to pick one, so let's go with...) Sen. Sylvia Allen's SB1081, declaring an "emergency" and giving county boards of supervisors the authority to hire out the logging of federal forest lands under the guise of "thinning" the growth there

While most observers seem to think that this legislative session will be a short one because it's an election year, it's going to feel absolutely interminable.

4 comments:

rsisu said...

SB1064 is another piece-o-crap. Reminds me of last year's SB1322, where it forces privatization of services on cities and will cause a load of public servants and union members to be laid off. There's some other insidious things that can come of the wording in this bill, but we'll see how it is revised as it moves along.

rsisu said...

Hmm, for some reason my comment didn't post. I was saying that SB1064 is another horrible attempt to privatize municipal services. If passed, city workers and union workers would be in the unemployment line and the citizens would be left with unaccountable low bid service. I'd rather my drinking water be handled by the current folks, thank you very much!

Craig said...

Not sure what happened either. Do you want me to post your original comment?

Craig said...

SB1064 contains all sorts of ugly, the mandated privatization of municipal services is just one of the more rancid parts of it.