Voter suppression: GOP end run around the voters starts Thursday morning

Remember when the AZ Legislature committee schedule was posted on Sunday, both stating that there was nothing listed on the House Judiciary Committee and that things were subject to change?

There's a good reason for that boilerplate caveat.

Thursday (tomorrow, as of this writing), the House Judiciary Committee will consider HB2196.

That bill would repeal the provisions of 2013's HB2305, a kind of "catch-all" of voter suppression measures.

After that bill was passed and signed into law, there was a drive to force it to go before the voters.  The drive gathered more than 140K signatures, approximately 75% more than required to place the question on the November 2014 ballot..

Faced with almost certain defeat at the hands of the voters that they wish to disenfranchise, the GOPers in the AZlege have hatched a "plan B" (subscription required).

Now, the plan seems to be:

1. Repeal HB2305, hoping it obviates the ballot question.

2. Pass the provisions piecemeal, making things far more difficult for opponents looking to stop the voter suppression tactics - any opponents would have to organize *many* costly petition drives, not just one.


Oh, and lest you think that HB2196 is the only bit of ugly on the agenda for tomorrow, the committee is also scheduled to consider:

- HB2153, the House version of the "religion is a defense to discrimination charges, or anything else, for that matter" bill

- HB2103 - expanding eligibility for a concealed weapons permit from "nearly everyone over the age of 21" to "nearly everyone over the age of 21 and nearly every member of the military and veterans over the age of 19"


The meeting is scheduled to begin (as of this writing) at 9:30 a.m. in House Hearing Room 4.

If you are able to attend and let the members of the committee hear your voice on these measures, please do so.  Keep it civil, but direct and pointed.

Forum on Citizens United

Forum on Citizens United and its Impact on Arizona

 

The Central Arizona National Lawyers Guild is sponsoring a community forum on the impact of Citizens United and what actions can be taken.  The forum will be held on Thursday, January 23, 2014, from 6-8 p.m. at Burton Barr Library, 1221 N Central Ave, Phoenix, 4^th floor.

 

Speakers will be attorney Paul Eckstein from Perkins Coie who specializes in commercial, constitutional and election law; State Representative Debbie McCune Davis who has introduced legislation regarding Citizens United; Rivko Knox from the League of Women Voters to discuss their concerns; and Jon Alanis from the Arizona Advocacy Network to discuss the Clean Election Commission v. Brain case in Arizona.  Q&A from the audience will be facilitated after the presentations.

 

Arizona legislature: The coming week

Time for the first 2014 post previewing committee activity in the Arizona legislature.

Notes:

All committees meetings and agendas are subject to change without notice, and frequently do.  If you plan to travel to the Capitol to observe or weigh in on the consideration of a particular measure, check with the lege ahead of time to confirm that the meeting that you are interesting in is still on schedule and your item(s) of interest is still on the agenda for that meeting.

Meeting rooms designated "HHR" are in the House of Representatives building.

Meeting rooms designated "SHR" are in the Senate building.

Some agendas are summarized as "looks harmless", but if they cover an area of interest to you, examine the agenda and the bills on it.  If I missed something significant, leave a comment letting me know.

All House committee agendas can be found here.

All Senate committee agendas can be found here.


On to the meeting schedule, which is relatively sparse this week.

On the House side of the Capitol -

- Joint Appropriations, HHR1, Tuesday, 9 a.m.   Hearing a presentation on the governor's budget proposal.

- Insurance and Retirement, HHR3, Tuesday, 2 p.m.  A number of bills relating to the state's retirement systems.  While these all probably fall into the "quietly really bad" category, the one that stands out is HB2203.  It seeks to "refine" the qualifications required for membership on the board of directors of the state's retirement systems.  It also has an amendment that would add charter school employees to the list of those eligible to serve in the slot on the board reserved for educators.

- Government, HHR4, Tuesday, 2 p.m.  One bill on the agenda.  Looks harmless, so far.

- Federalism and Fiscal Responsibility, HHR1, Tuesday, 2 p.m.  One bill on the agenda, but not so harmless.  HB2014 seeks to undermine voter initiatives by mandating that in any advertisement for the measure and in any publicity pamphlets that include a given measure, and Proposition 105 notice be included, that states that, if approved, can "never" be changed, except under specific conditions.  The sponsor, Rep. Michelle Ugenti, made sure to put "never" in there, even though it isn't true.

- Agriculture and Water, HHR5, Tuesday, 2 p.m.  Presentation only, no bills.  Looks harmless so far.

- Health, HHR4, Wednesday, 9:30 a.m.  Two bills (look harmless) and a presentation by TGen.

- Appropriations, HHR1, Wednesday, 2 p.m.  Budget presentation by JLBC.

- Transportation, HHR3, Thursday, 9 a.m.  One bill so far - HB2027, relating to the use of golf carts and other "neighborhood electric vehicles" (NEVs) in retirement communities in unincorporated parts of Maricopa County.  Looks relatively harmless.

- Technology and Infrastructure, HHR5, Thursday, 9 a.m.  Nothing on the agenda so far.

- Reform and Human Services, HHR1, Thursday, 10 a.m.  Nothing on the agenda so far.

- Judiciary, HHR4, Thursday, 10 a.m.  Nothing on the agenda so far.


On the Senate side of the Capitol -

- Joint Appropriations, HHR1, Tuesday, 9 a.m.  Hearing a presentation on the governor's budget proposal.

- Appropriations, SHR109, Tuesday, 2 p.m.  Budget hearing for the Department of Corrections.  No bills so far.

- Natural Resource and Rural Affairs, SHR109, Wednesday, 9 a.m.  One executive nomination and one presentation; no bills.

- Health and Human Services, SHR1, Wednesday, 2 p.m.  Looks relatively harmless, but SB1039, allowing the chiropractor members of the Board of Chiropractic Examiners to have attended the same chiropractic school, is too specific and technical a change. *Somebody* has called in a favor (or something similar) from the sponsor, Sen. Nancy Barto (R).

- Finance, SHR3, Wednesday, 2 p.m.  A bunch of Steve Yarbrough-sponsored bills relating to finance, insurance and the state retirement system.  Some of their provisions are too technical for me to understand in the time I have available for this post, but given Yarbrough's involvement, I can't believe that these are good for the average Arizonan.

- Government and Environment, SHR3, Thursday, upon adjournment of the Senate floor session.  Highlight of the agenda and (perhaps) the week: SB1060.  This one would bar the practice of lobbyists giving tickets to sports events to legislators.  Probably the most contentious item on any agenda this week, and the division won't break along party lines - there are a few Ds who accept the tickets, and a few Rs who are opposed to the practice.  Best guess:  will pass committee, but fail on the floor.

The lege's calendar of events for the week is here.
AZ Department of Administration meeting public notices are here.

Arizona lege 2014: Puttin' the "AZ" in "crazy". Again.

Maybe it's time to move the Arizona State Hospital six (or so) miles to the west, and a little south...

Still sticking by the prediction that this year's session of the Arizona legislature will be a short one, but I now expect them to pack a lot of punch line-worthy material into the session.

We've already had one sitting state senator, Don Shooter, baldly announce that he intends to keep taking bribes "gifts" of tickets to sporting events from lobbyists until he receives a pay raise.

Another one is fast-tracking a bill to make discrimination that can be rationalized by citing a religious justification a protected civil right...for the bigots.


And that's just the beginning.

Some of the other "colorful" measures that fall into the "making comedy writers' lives easier" category (some are new, some are rehashes of schemes proposed in earlier sessions of the lege):

- HB2466, mandating that every session of the legislature adjourn by May 1st every year, regardless of whether they have actually completed their work (ya know, pass a budget).

- HB2433, making it a class 2 misdemeanor (up to four months in jail, $750 fine) if a delegate to a Constitutional convention even considers an "unapproved" amendment.

- HB2412, creating a "school safety designee program" - simply put, "guns on campus" by another name.

- HB2366, appropriating funds to pay current and former legislators (read: Russell Pearce) involved in lawsuits stemming from the infamous anti-immigrant measure known as SB1070.

- HB2344, creating a new way for candidates for US Senate to get their names on the general election ballot - have the legislature nominate them.

- HB2339, allowing firearms nearly *everywhere*.

- HB2284, allowing license "inspections" of abortion providers at any time for any reason, even if (especially if?) such inspections disrupt operations.

- HB2196, repealing 2013's HB2305 and its host of voter suppression provisions.  Not because the Rs in the AZ lege have suddenly been struck by a fit of conscience.  Nope, because HB2305 was successfully referred to the ballot by a petition drive and they figure that repealing it will invalidate the ballot referral.  Once that happens, they will just pass the measure again.

- HB2192, Rep. Carl Seel's latest "Breathing While Brown" law, making it a Class 1 misdemeanor (first offense) or Class 6 felony (subsequent offense) for an undocumented immigrant to use any "public resource".  And under Seel's definition, using a public resource specifically and literally "includes driving on a public road or highway, accepting any public benefit, attending a public school or using the services of any public entity in this state."

This particular proposal is the frontrunner in the "Most Likely To Earn AZ A Prime Spot On The Daily Show.  Again." derby.

- HB2186, turning Arizona's college campuses into armed encampments (allowing school faculty members to carry concealed weapons).

- HB2030, mandating that applicants for and recipients of unemployment compensation pass a drug test as a condition for receiving benefits.

- SB1120, barring hospitals from requiring physicians to treat Medicare and Medicaid patients as a condition for granting staff privileges to those physicians.

- SB1096, a "gold and precious metals as money" bill.


The above bills were submitted by the end of the first week of the session of the lege; they still have 2 - 3 weeks (depending on the chamber) to submit more, and "strike-everything" amendments (aka "strikers") can be submitted at nearly any time.


How about we slap a fence around the state capitol and rename it "The Ev Mecham Memorial Insane Asylum"?

Arizona Legislature 2014: not much new under the sun

A couple of early updates from the new session of the legislative session:

While some of the names have changed, some things haven't changed at the Capitol.  Like the arrogance and culture of entitlement among the majority caucus.

Exhibit 1:  They're proposing to pay any legislators, current and past, who claim to have incurred legal costs from lawsuits against their infamous anti-immigrant measure, SB1070. (Arizona Capitol Times, subscription required)

Something similar to this has been proposed before this week; after former senator Russell Pearce was recalled.  There was a move to reimburse him for the costs of his campaign in (unsuccessful) defense of him.  That move didn't go far, not least because he didn't actually pay for his defense - contributors did.

Pearce's acolytes in the lege may have failed the first time, but they haven't stopped looking for ways to funnel taxpayer money to him.

Exhibit 2: One state legislator, Sen. Don Shooter (R-Yuma), in response to proposals to end the practice of legislators accepting tickets to sporting events from lobbyists, proclaimed that unless legislators get a pay raise he's going to keep accepting bribes tickets.

For the record: I actually agree with Shooter on one thing - legislative pay should be raised.  Most would-be public servants are honest and honorable people.  However, they also have families to support and cannot do that on the current legislative salary of $24K per year.

So, instead of people who want to work for the best interests of their constituents and the state, Arizona ends up with the majority of the legislature is made up of whackjobs and grifters.

I'll leave it to readers to determine for themselves which category (or both, they're not mutually exclusive) that Shooter fits in.

In any event, he knew what the pay level for legislators was *before* he took his oath of office.  While I think that legislative pay is too low, that doesn't justify corruption.  He gets absolutely no sympathy on this.

Exhibit 3:  Another state legislator, Sen. Steve Yarbrough, was the subject of a recent investigative report by a local news station chronicling Yarbrough's self-dealing, pushing school tuition tax credit measures that benefit the school tuition tax credit organization that he operates.

Probably not the best publicity for a sitting legislator entering an election year.  However, Yarbrough has been doing this for years and has reaped hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars from the scheme.

So, instead of maintaining a low profile, he's running a bill to expand eligibility for taking school tuition tax credits (SB1048).

Oh, and he's running a proposal to make religion-based bigotry a constitutionally-protected civil right (SB1062).

Note: the STO bill is being fast-tracked; it has already received consideration from and has been passed by the Senate Finance Committee.  Which is, perhaps not coincidentally, chaired by Yarbrough himself.


Another thing that hasn't changed: the push to privatize public services.

Just two days ago, Governor Jan Brewer made a big splash in her State of the State speech to the new session of the legislature when she announced that she was "abolishing" Child Protective Services (CPS), removing the agency from the Department of Economic Security and making it a separate, cabinet-level agency.

One day later, rumors were swirling that the "privatization" vultures were already circling the carcass of the agency, looking to pick off any pieces that could be turned into profit centers.

One day after that (today), the Senate Health and Human Services Committee held a hearing on, you guessed it, privatizing CPS' functions.  Channel 12 news video/story on the hearing here.

Prediction: Given the rush to rationalize privatizing CPS and the presence of a new director, Charles Flanagan, whose background is in warehousing prisoners, and not protecting children, a system will be created where children who are removed from possibly abusive home situations will be housed by private foster care providers.

The providers will have contracts that guarantee minimum population levels in their private "foster care" systems, leading to a new CPS culture where removing children from their homes is "incentivized" while actually resolving dysfunctional family situations is most assuredly not.

...More to come...unfortunately.

NJ Governor Chris Christie: A "Not Ready For Prime Time" Politician?

Chris Christie, picture courtesy ABCNews.com

By now, everyone has heard of the political scandal in New Jersey -

Gubernatorial appointees there ordered the closure of two of the three lanes leading to the George Washington bridge. heading into Manhattan from New Jersey, creating a traffic jam that crippled Fort Lee, NJ for four days in September 2013.

When questions first arose, asked by, and spurred by, reports in the local newspaper, the Bergen County Record, the initial story was that it was part of a "traffic study".

That story didn't have a lot of credibility when no one involved could or would present actual verifiable evidence of the existence of such a study.

Then speculation grew, positing that the closure was not about a "study" but instead about a simple political vendetta.  The speculation was that the real object of the closure was to hurt the mayor of Fort Lee, Mark Sokolich.

Sokolich, a Democrat, has refused to endorse Christie, a Republican, during Christie's recent reelection campaign (which Christie handily won, despite not having Sokolich's endorsement).

That seemed to be too petty, even for someone with the bullying reputation of Christie, so speculation continued, focusing on the possibility that the retribution was directed at some legislative Democrats representing northern NJ.  They blocked a judicial appointment of Christie in response to Christie's removal of another judge based on partisan considerations, not merit.

Either way, while the Christie administration's vendetta (if, indeed, that's what it was) was aimed at specific political rivals, the impact of the vendetta fell upon the tens of thousands of people living in and around, and traveling near, Fort Lee.

This scandal has been growing, to the point that there are legislative hearings looking into it (with at least one former Christie appointee availing himself of his Constitutional protections against self-incrimination and refusing to answer questions) and talk of a federal investigation (using public resources for personal political gain is a crime).

On Thursday, Christie held a marathon press conference where he:

• Apologized.
• Claimed he knew nothing of the events until the newspapers reported on them.
• Blamed his staff, some of whom are/were long-term allies, saying that they had lied to him.  For years.
• Announced the firing of a couple of scapegoats.
• Claimed ignorance of the events until they became public knowledge.
• Apologized some more.
• Claimed some more ignorance.

It seems obvious that more evidence will come to light in this matter, so some of this may change in the coming weeks, but there are a couple of main likelihoods here.

Neither of which bode well for Christie's future.

One, Christie could be telling the truth (or something that's close to it), in which case he has no oversight of the activities of his closest staffers.  Meaning that as a president, he would be most like a blustery version of George W. Bush.

Two, Christie could have approved the lane closures.  Whether or not that approval was "direct" or of the "wink and a nod" variety, whether or not the intended target was the mayor of Fort Lee, legislative Democrats, or some as-yet unknown object of Christie's ire, impact of the lane closures fell upon thousands of people who had no part in New Jersey's political knife fights.

Now, I'm not an insider with the investigation, so this is little more than speculation on my part, but given the months of stonewalling while hoping this would go away followed by the disavowal and scapegoating when it didn't, this seems most like a political vendetta run by the modern equivalent of The Three Stooges.


Vendettas and "payback" (both positive and negative) are as much a part of politics as meetings and speechifying.

That's not limited to American-style politics, or even to governmental organizations, and human nature being what it is, it probably isn't going to change any time soon.

However as much a part of the fabric of politics vendettas may be, and however much people have accepted them as an inevitable part of that reality, there's a limit to that acceptance.

And harming thousands of people because one or few others may have ticked you off is well outside of that limit.


No matter how this situation ultimately works out, it shows that Christie is not ready for higher office.

Either he is a completely "hands-off" executive with an out-of-control staff, or he is the supremely petty bully that his reputation says he is.

Either way, he's not suited for the highest office in the country.

Having said all of the above, his presidential candidacy isn't toast.

Primary and caucus ballots won't be cast for another two years.

Two years is an eternity in modern politics.  He'll have time to clean up his image, plus most or all of the other candidates will have their own travails that will impact their viability as candidates.

I don't think he'll be able to fix this, spite and arrogance are too much a part of his persona, but I've been wrong about such things before.

Grab your popcorn and settle in; this mess is only the opening act in the 2016 stage show.