Republicans at the Arizona Legislature have done their best in recent years to obscure their own communication records from the public and prying journalists.
But this session, they’ve become warriors for transparency — filing a handful of bills that would make it easier for citizens to obtain and pay for public records, as well as create a more efficient process for complaints about open meetings violations.
As journalists, we’re well aware of the headaches that anyone seeking public records is bound to face. And it’s rare that we have the opportunity to praise Republicans at the Legislature, especially when it comes to public records.
Still, it's clear that many of these bills are self-serving: As their grip on state government has slipped in recent years, Republicans now want to investigate schools, county officials and Democratic statewide officeholders (or in some cases, moderate Republican officials) and they’re running into the same problems accessing public records that we journalists hit.
But these bills are actually capable of improving transparency in government — and many are likely to notch bipartisan support.
One of them already has. Yesterday, the Senate Government Committee voted 7-0 to pass Senate Bill 1437, which was sponsored by Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman and would require government entities to provide copies of records “in the least expensive manner possible.”
“This has been an issue that has long plagued citizen watchdogs, transparency advocates and everyday citizens trying to get access to public records,” Hoffman told us after the vote. “School boards, cities, counties have — for as long as I’ve been involved in politics — have long used fees and excessive fees as a deterrent for transparency.”
The Goldwater Institute’s Chris Thomas testified before the committee that his libertarian think tank has been frustrated by school districts doing unnecessary work when it comes to producing records. While some charge per page fees for physical copies of documents, he said, electronic copies are readily available and shouldn’t cost so much to produce.
Hoffman added he expects to get bipartisan support from both chambers of the Legislature, and “can’t imagine that (Democratic Gov.) Katie Hobbs would veto a sensible measure like this.”
(We can’t know that for sure — last year she started vetoing all of Hoffman's bills that made it to her desk as a matter of course, swatting down 10 and signing none after Hoffman blocked her nominations for top executive roles.)
Republican Rep. Michael Way filed House Bill 2139, which would require government bodies to respond to records requests within 15 business days. As it stands, Arizona’s vague public records law requires agencies to respond “promptly” to requests — which results in disagreement about what constitutes “prompt.”
Senate Bill 1340, sponsored by GOP Sen. T.J. Shope, would effectively encourage more public records to be kept electronically, moving government agencies further into the digital age and making records easier to find. It would also allow government agencies to destroy physical copies of records if they save them digitally.
Republican Sen. John Kavanagh filed Senate Bill 1078, which would mandate courts considering denials of records requests to use “de novo judicial review,” meaning judges can’t give deference to previous conclusions. He said the Goldwater Institute asked him to run the bill.
“It is difficult for them to appeal denial of public records from government bodies when the appeal only allows a limited discussion of the issue of the appeal and not a full review of what happened,” Kavanagh said.
Interestingly, Kavanagh also filed Senate Bill 1022, which would block the public from accessing a specific type of record — mugshots. While the Arizona Media Association has opposed the bill, some social justice advocates argue that publicly available mugshots are a bad idea since the subjects of them may be innocent.
Kavanagh’s reason for sponsoring the bill struck us as rather hilarious.
“I remember a long time ago they released an embarrassing booking photo of (country music singer and actor) Glen Campbell and always wondered, ‘What public service does exposing those photos to the public serve?’” he said. “It is not the job of government to facilitate humiliating people for no good reason.”
Republicans’ push for better public records laws is particularly ironic given that in 2023, they made it harder for the public (including us) to see their communications records.
Under then-Speaker of the House Ben Toma, Republicans limited retention of emails to 90 days, meaning all their emails get deleted every three months. Text messages and other records, like calendar appointments, can be deleted immediately.
That makes it impossible to file requests for long-term trails of messages that show who lawmakers have been talking to, and about what.
American Oversight noted that if those rules were in place in 2021, the audit of the 2020 election would not have been exposed as partisan and fueled by bonkers conspiracies.
This session, the rules of the House and the Senate remain the same and communication records vanish into thin air after three months or less.
While we applaud Republicans’ efforts to make records across the state more accessible, this appears to be a classic case of transparency for thee, but not for me.
At least one of the bills is aimed specifically at meddling in the operations of a statewide office that’s currently held by a Democrat.
Attorney General Kris Mayes’ office is in charge of reviewing open meetings law violations, but last year, she quietly closed almost 100 complaints without investigating them.
Republican Rep. Lisa Fink sponsored House Bill 2073, which would create an open meetings enforcement team within the AG’s office that has to meet at least monthly and create quarterly reports about its activities.
Fink didn’t respond to our inquiry about why she sponsored the legislation, but it's clear she doesn’t think the attorney general is doing a good enough job investigating these complaints. (Mayes said closing the complaints without investigating was part of an effort to focus on the most important cases.)
Richie Taylor, a spokesperson for Mayes, told us that Mayes has done quite a bit to clear the backlog she was left with when she took office in 2023. He said there were about 702 unresolved complaints at the time, but when Mayes took office, her team started using a new case management software to consolidate cases and cut down on duplicate work. Now, Taylor said, the office has 124 ongoing open meetings law investigations and the office closed out 120 in 2025.
However, none of that information is available on the attorney general’s website.
Just saying, maybe someone should file a bill that makes open meetings law investigations and their conclusions easily accessible online?
Freedom isn’t free: When Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly finally got his day in court, a federal judge did not take kindly to arguments from Trump officials who are trying to demote Kelly for urging service members not to follow illegal orders, Alysa Horton (our former intern!) reports for Cronkite News. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon, who was appointed by George W. Bush, cast the Pentagon’s effort to punish Kelly for his comments as an attack on Kelly’s First Amendment rights. And under Leon’s questioning, DOJ lawyers couldn’t come up with a single example of a military retiree facing punishment for expressing political views.
Sen. Mark Kelly: "Right now they need to get out of Minneapolis & really reevaluate what this agency agency should be. Kristi Noem needs to be fired, by the way. That's a good starting point here. And the senior leadership there, the ones who have implemented these policies, these people need to go"
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-02-04T13:07:07.956Z
NIMBY: The planned expansion of ICE’s detention network to Surprise brought out hundreds of residents who oppose turning a warehouse into a 1,500-bed detention center, Lillian Donahue reports for ABC15. Public comment at Tuesday’s meeting of the Surprise City Council took hours as dozens of speakers urged the council to take action, even though the council members say there’s nothing they can do to stop the federal government.
“I just cannot stand for this. And then they're going to house people in a warehouse. We do not warehouse people in our country. This isn't the United States I grew up in,” one woman said.
You have the right to remain silent: While governors of states like Massachusetts sign executive orders to block ICE agents from operating in their states, Gov. Katie Hobbs says having a GOP-controlled Legislature makes it harder for her to do the same in Arizona, David Veenstra reports for KTAR. Yesterday she announced her office would host a “know your rights” website, saying she shares the “fear and anger of many Arizonans.” Meanwhile, Coconino County Supervisor Lena Fowler is trying to manage the “sharp increase in requests for birth certificates” from her fellow Navajo Nation members who need to prove their citizenship when ICE agents hassle them, she wrote in an op-ed in the Navajo-Hopi Observer.
The First Amendment is one of the many constitutional rights under attack. But you can fight back by clicking this button.
What a nuisance: Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes says the creation of an active management area in La Paz County is a “welcome step,” but it won’t be enough to stop a “specific, alleged wrongdoer” like Fondomonte. Mayes sued the megafarm last year, claiming Fondomonte’s pumping of groundwater for alfalfa was a public nuisance.
A bipartisan battle: The Arizona House signaled to the other Colorado River Basin states that Arizona is ready for a legal fight by passing HB2116 — by unanimous vote — which would add $1 million to a litigation fund, the Arizona Mirror’s Caitlin Sievers reports.
The fact that Turning Point USA is putting on a halftime show to compete with the Super Bowl, just to spite NFL fans who’d rather watch Bad Bunny, is funny enough on its own.
But “The Daily Show” took it to a whole new level when it made fun of the performers recruited by Turning Point for the “All-American Halftime Show.”
Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, AKA Bad Bunny, is a U.S. citizen, but apparently he’s nowhere near as American as red-blooded patriotic performers Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice and Gabby Barrett.
If you say those names out loud (they’re basically just jumbled up anagrams made out of the same 12 letters), you’ll see where “The Daily Show” host Michael Kosta is headed.