Shuffling the Deck

It’s only a problem if Republican bills die … How much is a town manager worth? … And she’ll be back.

In January, Republican Rep. Alex Kolodin voted against a single bill sponsored by Republican Rep. Gail Griffin in the House Natural Resources, Energy and Water Committee. 

Griffin chairs that committee, which means she decides which bills get hearings and which don’t. It’s an incredibly powerful position¹ that gives her a veto over any proposed environmental law in Arizona — and Griffin frequently uses that power. 

But Griffin didn’t take kindly to Kolodin voting against one of her bills — by the end of the month, he was kicked off her committee. Many of the bills that he had killed or held up during his brief stay on Griffin’s committee were put back on the agenda and passed easily. 

“We get along fine,” Griffin said yesterday when asked why she had Kolodin booted from the committee.² She clammed up and gave us some “no comments” after we asked if his votes influenced the move.

Legislative committees exist for one main reason: to vet bills to ensure only the best ideas survive. The committees are already stacked with more Republicans than Democrats to ensure that as long as Republicans all agree on a bill, it can always pass a committee.

But if Republican lawmakers start killing bills in committee — or even threatening to kill bills — the powers that be simply restack the committees. 

Griffin isn’t the only committee chair who is already miffed at Kolodin this year. 

While Kolodin hasn’t voted to kill any of Republican Rep. Quang Nguyen’s bills in the House Judiciary Committee, which Nguyen chairs, he has voted “present” on an awful lot of bills, allowing them to pass without his support. And several bills were yanked off the first committee agenda, presumably to avoid an embarrassing failed vote. 

So once again, Republicans simply restacked the deck. 

Our art intern, ChatGPT, tells us this picture depicts a ranch owner shuffling a deck of cards “signifying the strategic planning and maneuvering in politics.” Good enough, intern!

By the committee’s second meeting of the year, Republicans had added one additional member — meaning Republicans now hold a two-seat majority in the House Judiciary Committee, despite holding only a narrow one-seat majority in the full House. Now, if Kolodin votes with Democrats against a bill, it’s still not enough to kill it. 

Nguyen told us that the decision to restack the committee with a new member was up to House leadership. That’s technically true, but the House speaker or Senate president typically won’t restack a committee mid-year without a good reason.³ Kolodin didn’t return calls or texts for comment, but Nguyen noted that Kolodin was appointed to the Rules Committee around the same time.

Consider it a consolation prize for being swept off the environmental committee and having his voting power watered down on the judicial committee.

The committee shufflings haven’t gone unnoticed at the Capitol. We’ve heard from Democrats who were upset because Kolodin was stopping bills they disliked. And we’ve heard from Republicans who couldn’t believe the gall of the freshman stymying the will of committee chairs.

Legislative committees are the first line of defense for keeping bad bills from the governor’s desk, and they play an important role in the bill-to-law process by vastly limiting the number of bills that the full House or Senate has to hear. 

But it’s a mistake to think that the committee members are the ones who actually vet the bills through an up or down vote in a truly democratic process. The real power of the legislative committee lies with the committee chairmen who set the agendas, and the legislative leaders who stack the committees. 

Look them up: The Republic released its fifth edition of a salary database for more than 100,000 government employees and found city and town managers are raking in the cash, especially Gilbert Town Manager Patrick Banger, who topped the list of employees across 13 Arizona cities with a $330,000 annual salary, Sahana Jayaraman writes. Arizona State University’s former head football coach Herm Edwards, who left the university amid an NCAA investigation into alleged recruiting violations, had the highest salary of all the employees documented at nearly $4 million. Meanwhile, the highest-paid state employees were employed with the state retirement system and as psychiatrists in the health department. 

Darn good kids: Democratic Congressional District 1 hopeful Conor O’Callaghan accepted the legal maximum of $3,300 from each of his three elementary school children, the Republic’s Laura Gersony reports. Minors can give political donations with money they control themselves, and O’Callaghan says his kids donated from their savings accounts. Those donations totaled 10% of the candidate’s individual contributions for the last fundraising quarter of 2023. 

“From a very young age, we’ve taught our children about personal finances. They have savings accounts that were set up for them when they were infants,” O’Callaghan said.

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FAFSA fiasco: This year’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, process has been plagued with problems for applicants with undocumented parents. They can’t submit their guardians’ income information, placing their eligibility for financial assistance in limbo. A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education told the Arizona Mirror’s Gloria Gomez it’s working on “the glitch,” and Arizona’s universities have to push their FAFSA submission deadlines to May because of the issue. 

Cindy who?: Cindy Biggs, the wife of U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, endorsed fellow longtime East Valley resident Kathleen Winn over Biggs’ Republican colleague, U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani, in the primary for Southern Arizona’s 6th Congressional District, the Republic’s Gersony writes. The far-right Winn came in third place in the 2022 GOP primary to Ciscomani, and Biggs (the congressman) has long been rumored to be behind Winn’s candidacy. In other Biggs news, the Republic’s Morgan Fischer writes that Biggs introduced 590 bills this year, more than any other member of Congress, in order to make 590 statements. He did the same thing last year, per Roll Call, to little effect. In his nearly eight years in Congress, Biggs has only had five bills signed into law, per our Googling. 

Throwing shade: Republican Rep. David Cook’s House Bill 2164 would ensure that landlords at mobile home properties can’t prevent people from installing air conditioning units or other heat-mitigating devices, like awnings, per the University of Arizona’s Don Bolles Fellow, Leah Britton, who notes that about 40% of all heat deaths in Maricopa County happened in trailer homes, though they only make up about 5% of the housing supply. And speaking of Bolles, the Republic’s E.J. Montini pulled from some old interviews with Bolles’ surviving family while attempting to shame Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman into giving the bill a hearing when it arrives to his committee this year.  

Mines look different from above: Eastern Arizona desperately needs jobs, but the area’s re-budding mining industry could leave huge ecological scars, like the kind KJZZ’s Aliza Resnik saw as she flew over the pit of the San Manuel Mine, which was closed in 1999. 

Biden’s boom town: President Joe Biden has helped turn Phoenix into a “boom town,” per the Washington Post, after his CHIPS Act helped bring the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s giant chip factory to the Valley and prompted the Intel factory’s expansion in the East Valley. That’s good news for Arizona, but it may not translate to good news for Biden himself.

“Whether the investments will benefit Biden’s presidential campaign in this vital swing county is unclear,” the Post writes. 

We told you last week about the Satanists showing up to the Capitol to protest a bill that would ban satanic images from public property. 

But AZFamily’s Dennis Welch went way deeper in this week’s “Politics Unplugged Podcast,” where he and Democratic Sen. Juan Mendez spent 20 minutes gabbing about all things Satan. It’s worth a listen just to hear Mendez diss his fellow lawmakers.

“It may not look like it, but they’re smarter than we give them credit for,” he says of his Republican colleagues. 

Also, check out Mike Broomhead’s interview with Christine Jones, the former Godaddy executive vice president and gubernatorial and congressional candidate, on the “Amazing Arizonans” podcast on KTAR. 

And for you center-right budget nerds, Danny Seiden, the Arizona Chamber of Commerce’s CEO and president, spent a half-hour talking about the state’s budget crunch (none of it was Gov. Doug Ducey’s fault!) with Common Sense Institute’s Glenn Farley. But fair warning: You gotta be really nerdy to get through this one.

Guess who showed up to the Legislative District 22 Democrats’ meeting to replace former Rep. Leezah Sun?

Leezah Sun, of course!

No, she (somewhat surprisingly) didn’t nominate herself for the seat.

But given this ominous tweet she posted Saturday, it wouldn’t be completely surprising if she did. She must be hinting at her ill-advised campaign against fellow Democrat Eva Diaz for the district’s Senate seat.

Anyway, the district’s democratic precinct committeemen nominated Dr. Elda Luna-Najera, a member of the Tolleson Union High School District board, Natacha Chavez, a candidate for the office, and Martin Quezada⁴, former lawmaker, to fill her seat. 

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors will make the final decision on who to appoint.

1. The House speaker and Senate president choose the chair of each committee. Lawmakers often pledge their votes to elect speakers or presidents in exchange for being made chair of their preferred committee.

2. Technically, committee membership is up to the House speaker or Senate president. If a chair wants a member booted from their committee, they need permission. 

3. For example, all the new lawmakers being appointed to vacant seats will need committee assignments, which will force some restacking of committee members. 

4. While the district’s PCs only chose Quezada as their last option of the three, our money is on him for the appointment, considering he was close with now Maricopa County Supervisor Steve Gallardo back when they represented the area together in the Legislature.