Bill Blitz!

We're sorting the serious from the doomed.

In less than two weeks since starting the session, Arizona’s lawmakers have already filed more than 800 bills. 

And while plenty more will trickle in, most won’t make it through the arduous bill-to-law cycle. 

There are key state issues the bills address, but a Republican majority that decides which bills get a hearing and a Democratic governor with a well-used veto stamp make it unclear what will emerge at the end legislative labyrinth.

Today, we’ll walk you through some of the top bills we’re watching, and our educated guesses on how they’ll fare. 

Sometimes, we just go with the weirdest image our art intern, ChatGPT, can come up with.

Education 

This year, it seems everyone agrees that Arizona should raise teacher pay by extending and modifying former Gov. Doug Ducey’s Prop 123. That was a 2016 ballot measure that took extra money out of the state land trust to boost education funding. Gov. Katie Hobbs has thoughts on how to structure the revamp, but Republicans already have released their own plan (though they haven’t put it in an actual bill yet) and they don’t need the governor’s signature, only the approval of voters. Meanwhile, Republicans pushing school-culture-war bills will probably have no trouble at the Legislature, but will certainly meet vetoes at the Governor’s Office. And Senate Education Committee Chair Ken Bennett says he’s still hoping to do a wholesale review of the state’s education laws, but for now, he’s trying to revamp some funding formulas. 

Bills to watch:

• Republican Rep. Matt Gress is hoping to lift the school spending cap again next year, an annual exercise, with his House Concurrent Resolution 2013.

• Bennett’s SB1075 attempts a significant overhaul of the K-12 funding formula. 

• And  Democratic Sen. Christine Marsh sponsored SB1029 to ensure school blueprints are not considered public records.

Probably not going anywhere:

• Rep. Nancy Gutierrez dropped a pair of ESA-oversight bills, but no one has put up legislation to put back in place a 100-day public school attendance requirement to receive the school vouchers that Hobbs called for in her budget proposal. 

  • HB2563 would make ESA holders agree to use the money for educational goods only and get approval from the state education department to make transactions over $500. 

  • HB2562 requires a programmatic review of the entire ESA program from a legislative committee, but unlike last year’s unfruitful oversight committee, the Auditor General would also have to conduct an audit. 

• The Legislature wouldn’t leave us without some education-related culture war bills. Sen. John Kavanagh’s SB1166 would require public schools to notify students’ parents when someone identifies them by a pronoun differing from their biological sex or a name that’s not on their official records. 

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Elections 

Elections officials are still scared that Arizona’s new recount law and tight election timeline could mean we miss the chance to send our presidential electors to Washington D.C. in time to be counted in the Electoral College. We haven’t seen a bill to fix that timeline yet, but the solution will probably come in a special session anyway, since that’s the easiest way to change the law quickly. 

Hobbs’ veto pen will hold up most of the Republican priorities on elections, but that isn’t stopping them from introducing a host of bills to restrict voting and limit access to early ballots.

Probably won’t get a hearing:

• Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton has a slate of election-related bills she said were crafted with the “idea of making voting accessible.” HB2351 authorizes same-day voter registration and lowers political action committee and partnership contribution limits.

• Stahl Hamilton’s HB2336 decriminalizes “ballot harvesting” or dropping off a ballot for anyone who’s not a family member or member of your household. While prosecutions have been exceedingly rare since Arizona made ballot harvesting a crime, former San Luis Mayor Guillermina Fuente was sentenced to 30 days¹ in jail for collecting four early ballots in 2022. 

Probably will get vetoed:

• Sen. John Kavanagh’s SB1131 would void the results of any local election with less than 25% turnout and would force a do-over on a statewide election day. 

• SB1009 from Sen. Jake Hoffman would ban candidates, activists and nonprofits from registering people on the vote-by-mail lists.

• Hoffman’s SB1008 would require election officials to post a list of all the events they attend on their website, along with the location, title of the event and all organizations affiliated with the event.
  

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Housing  

The legislature’s fight over affordable housing seems to have shifted from the omnibus packages that failed last year to single-issue solutions like allowing cities to build casitas or regulate short-term rentals. There’s also bipartisan support for an inventory of housing needs and repurposing commercial buildings. 

Keep an eye on:

• Both Reps. Matt Gress and Analise Ortiz proposed bills to conduct a “housing needs assessment” every five years that catalogs population growth and available housing.  Gress’ HB2518 also has a provision that would speed up local zoning processes. 

• Rep. Leo Biasiucci’s HB2297 has bipartisan support to make municipalities allow developers to turn commercial buildings into housing without a rezoning application. 

• HB2299 from Rep. Lorena Austin would codify the allowance of accessory dwelling units, or casitas, for all municipalities. (And her HB2301 would ban landlords for kicking renters out for smoking marijuana.) 

• SCR1006 from Sen. Warren Peterson would ask voters to approve a measure allowing property owners to apply for a property tax refund if municipalities don’t abate public nuisances. While the governor would almost certainly veto such a policy, this resolution will bypass her and go straight to voters to decide. 

Not happening: 

• Ortiz’s HB2259 would allow localities to impose rent control on private housing, an idea that Republicans abhor.  

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The border 

Although Hobbs kicked off her State of the State Address with some tough talk about the border, we haven’t seen legislative Democrats proposing any tough border policy. Instead, border-related proposals are all coming from Republicans. And while we don’t expect those measures to earn support from the governor, Democrats’ annual attempt to repeal Arizona’s partially unconstitutional anti-immigrant legislation from 2010, SB1070, probably ain’t going anywhere either. 

Probably not happening:

• Republican Rep. Steve Montenegro has two bills — HB2622 and HB2621 that would declare drug cartels as terrorist organizations and require the state’s homeland security department to “do everything within its authority to address the threat posed by drug cartels.” The latter declares fentanyl trafficking a public health crisis and says it’s the state’s “public policy” to protect from drug cartels. 

Definitely not happening: 

• Democratic Rep. Mariana Sandoval’s HB2365 would repeal SB1070.

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Water 

As the state looks to tighten its belt, few lawmakers seem willing to finish that $1 billion commitment to water infrastructure, and more are instead turning to the possibility of regulating groundwater as a solution to our problems. Spurred by stories of massive foreign farmers sucking rural communities dry, rural Republican lawmakers are increasingly open to the idea that Arizona’s water free-for-all isn’t good for their communities. 

Hobbs has a plan, but she’ll have to get it through Republican Rep. Gail Griffin, the chair of the House’s committee on water issues, who is not a fan. 

Bills to watch

• Republican Rep. Alex Kolodin’s HB2150 would allow farmers to sell their groundwater rights to developers within active water management areas like the Valley, saying the free market will solve Arizona’s water shortage. 

• A host of Democratic lawmakers are backing HB2359 to require developers to prove they have enough water to build more homes, as they have to do in active management areas, and want to apply requirements to report groundwater pumping to rural Arizona with their HB2399.

• One area of agreement might be limiting who can own farmland and use water in Arizona. Democrats have filed legislation to require more disclosure from state land lessees about their use of groundwater with HB2358 and SB1106, while Republicans filed HB2407 to prohibit foreign companies from leasing or owning state land altogether. 

• Sen. Priya Sundareshan has a slate of water bills like SB1106, which would implement a groundwater withdrawal fee, and she plans to introduce legislation to require rural groundwater pumpers to report how much water they take. Sundareshan said her caucus also plans on running a bill to allow the state environmental quality department to adopt more stringent water quality standards than the federal government. 

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But remember, the deadline to introduce bills isn’t until the beginning of February. And just like journalists, lawmakers always blow their deadlines.

As of our latest count, lawmakers have introduced 73 “technical corrections,” bills that don’t do anything except serve as a placeholder for “strike everything amendments” that allow lawmakers to circumvent bill introduction deadlines down the road.

1. CORRECTION: a previous version of this article incorrectly said she received 30 years in prison for ballot harvesting, which would be a really long time.