Friday is the deadline for bills to receive a committee hearing in their originating chamber* so there are some very long committee agendas this week and there's a very rare Friday committee hearing on the schedule.
* = Except for the Appropriations Committees of the respective chambers and for a couple of other exceptions, but those necessitate some serious hoop jumping by the sponsor.
In other words, there are many bad bills on agendas this week - I can't even begin to cover them all here, I suggest reading all agendas, or at least those covering an area of interest.
Because there are so many committee agendas at the lege this week, this post will be done in two parts. Part one (this one) will cover Monday and Tuesday while part two will cover Wednesday and Thursday (and Friday).
Note: HHR refers to a hearing room in the House building; SHR refers to one in the Senate building.
Note2: Generally, I'll only specify bills that look to spread propaganda. Other bills may be more conventionally bad (think: corrupt or other misuses of public monies and/or authority). My recommendation is that if an agenda covers an area of interest to you, read the entire agenda.
Note3: Each chamber's respective Rules Committee meets on Monday, the House's in HHR4 at 1 p.m. and the Senate's in Senate Caucus Room 1, also at 1 p.m. Both committees serve as rubber stamps for bills leadership wants to be advanced and gatekeepers for measures that leadership wants stopped.
Note4: Meeting start times may be listed, but are flexible. Before journeying to the Capitol or viewing the meeting online, verify the start time.
Note5: Watch for strikers, or strike everything amendments. Those involve inserting language that replaces the entirety of a bill. Those can be introduced at any time and can make a previously harmless bill into a very bad one.
On Monday, 2/12
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Joint Legislative Audit Committee meets at 9 a.m. in HHR1. No bills on the agenda. Some presentations.
House Health & Human Services meets at 2 p.m. in HHR4. On the agenda: 15 bills. There are a couple of "We hate poor people" bills - HB2502, from Rep. Leo Biasiucci, would institute a work requirement for SNAP recipients while HB2503, from the same source, would specifically instruct DES to not "seek, apply for, accept or renew" waivers of work requirements unless such is federally required or legislatively authorized.
House Land, Agriculture & Rural Affairs meets at 2 p.m. in HHR3. On the agenda: 19 bills, including some in the "even feds need to laugh sometimes" genre. HB2376 seeks to bar the transfer of any private real property in AZ to the federal government or any of its arms without the specific approval of both chambers of the legislature and the governor, HB2377 would require the state's auditor general to determine the cost of managing all federally-controlled land in AZ, except for land that is controlled by the DOD or the Bureau of Reclamation. And to assume that all such land, with the heretofore-mentioned exceptions, is transferred to AZ control. Both schemes are from Rep. Lupe Diaz. Also on the agenda are some love letters to the feds: HCM2004, asking the feds to give equivalent land to the state or relevant county when it acquires state or county land; HCM2005, asking that the feds transfer 30% of all federally-controlled land in western states to those states; HCM2006, asking that Congress declare that the feds cannot make "any new national monument, national park, wildlife refuge, conservation area, area of critical environmental concern, wild and scenic river, wilderness, wilderness characteristic area or any other federal reservation or special use designation within Arizona's border and from withdrawing or reserving any additional federal mineral, land, water or other national resource rights within Arizona's border" without the specific permission of Congress, the AZ legislature, and the board of supervisors of any affected counties; HCM2007, asking that the President void the creation of the Grand Canyon National Monument area; and HCM2008, asking that the Antiquities Act be repealed. Under that act, the Grand Canyon National Monument area was created.
House Military Affairs & Public Safety meets at 2 p.m. in HHR1. On the agenda: nine bills, including HB2748, Rep. Joe Chaplik's proposal to criminalize immigration and to indemnify municipal officials and/or employees from civil liability under state and federal law for enforcing Republican anti-immigrant measures.
House Military Affairs & Public Safety meets again at 2 p.m. or upon the adjournment of the first committee meeting in HHR1. On the agenda: five bills, including a proposed striker for HB2329.
Senate Elections meets at 2 p.m. in SHR1. On the agenda: 20 bills, mostly propaganda. My personal (least) favorite is SB1158,.changing AZ law so that a candidate for president cannot be removed from a general election ballot for violating the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. One bill that seems to be directed at a specific person is SB1662, from Sen. David Gowan, a proposal to make someone who owes more than $1,000 ineligible to be a candidate for or to hold elected office. I don't know if this is targeted at a potential general election opponent for Gowan, a primary opponent, or if he's carrying the water for someone else.
Senate Finance and Commerce meets at 2 p.m. in SHR109. On the agenda: 30 bills, some of which are pure propaganda. Also includes a proposed striker for SB1034 and a proposed striker for SB1689.
Senate Transportation, Technology and Missing Children meets at 2 p.m. in SHR2. On the agenda: 28 bills. Lots of propaganda bills and/or bills that are simply bad.
On Tuesday, 2/13
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Senate Health and Human Services meets at 1:30 p.m. in SHR1. On the agenda: 27 bills, including three with proposed strikers. Lots of propaganda here - some anti-vaxxer, some anti-LGBTQ (mostly T).
House Commerce meets at 2 p.m. in HHR3. On the agenda: 14 bills, including HB2282, another expression of Republican hatred for unemployed, aka poor, people. The bill proposes to expand requirements for collecting unemployment insurance payments in Arizona while also expanding the factors for disqualifying people from doing just that. The current maximum benefit is $320/week.
House Education meets at 2 p.m. in HHR4, On the agenda: eight bills. Most seem OK.
House Natural Resources, Energy &Water meets at 2 p.m. in HHR1. On the agenda: 22 bills, with most reading as if they were written by an industry lobbyist. One that may have been written by an industry lobbyist but is also pure propaganda is HCR2050. It proposes to amend the state's constitution to bar municipalities, counties, and other political subdivisions from banning the manufacture or use of a particular device based on its energy source.
Senate Appropriations meets at 2 p.m. in SHR109. On the agenda: two bills. SB1188 is one of them. It's Sen. Sonny Borrelli's attack on the state's Department of Gaming. He's got a history of antipathy toward the department - he thinks its a tool of tribal nations in AZ.
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