Bill blitz

The purge ahead … Violence is in the eye of the deporter … And everything is a conspiracy when you don’t know how anything works.

Lawmakers have already introduced more than 1,600 bills, memorials and resolutions for consideration this year, an avalanche of legislation that can quickly bury the casual onlooker.

But the season of constantly refreshing the new bills page is coming to an end.

Yesterday marked the deadline for lawmakers to introduce new bills for the year.¹ Now, it’s all about getting those bills moving to stay ahead of the legislative deadlines and push them up to the Governor’s Office.

Bills are like sharks — if they stop moving, they die.² They rarely fall victim to hostile votes against them. Instead, it’s the deadlines that are the real killer.

Our art intern, ChatGPT, explains that this shark is “moving forward with purpose, embodying the power of a legislative bill.”

• Next Friday, Feb. 21: The final day for House committees to hear House bills (and Senate committees to hear Senate votes). That deadline will wipe out most of the year’s 1,600 bills.

• Friday, Feb. 28: Marks the end of “crossover week” by which all bills must be voted out of their chamber of origin and be entered in the opposing chamber.

• Friday, March 28: The deadline for House bills to pass through Senate committees (and vice versa).

• And Tuesday, April 22: The 100th day of the legislative session, by which time lawmakers are supposed to wrap up their work (though they rarely make that deadline).

Of the 1,600 pieces of legislation filed this year, only a lucky 200-300 bills will become law. The rest will die.

Many were dead on arrival, having committed the sin of proposing progressive values. Others will be snuffed out by committee chairmen who stuff them in a drawer to suffocate. Some will be so battered and bruised by rough-and-tumble committee debate that they cannot continue on in the process. Still others will be slashed to pieces by amendments.

And a select few will run the gamut, dodging all the traps and clearing all the hurdles of the Legislature, only to have the life veto-stamped out of them by Gov. Katie Hobbs.

It’s a tough life for a bill.

So today, let’s sample some of the bills introduced so far this year — while we can.

Dead on arrival

Every year, Democrats introduce bills that they know are dead on arrival.

It’s not about realistically shepherding the bills through the Legislature and into law — it’s about sending a message about what Democrats stand for.

Bills that fall into this category include Democratic Rep. Stacey Travers’ HB2071, which would automatically register people to vote when they apply for or renew a drivers license, and her HB2072, which would allow people to register and vote on the same day. Or Democratic Sen. Analise Ortiz’s SB1426, which would create a free, single-payer health insurance program for all Arizona residents. Or Democratic Sen. Priya Sundareshan’s SCR1038, which would insert a specific “right to privacy” into the Arizona Constitution as a way to protect personal freedoms, including bodily autonomy.

Bills to repeal old laws are usually dead on arrival. For almost 15 years, Democrats have been attempting to repeal Arizona’s infamous, unenforced and mostly unconstitutional immigration law, SB1070. This year is no different, with Democratic Rep. Mariana Sandoval running point with her HB2505.

Also on the repeal wish list: Democratic Rep. Betty Villegas’ HB2444, which would repeal laws protecting Arizona’s short-term rental industry; Democratic Rep. Nancy Gutierrez's HB2690, which would repeal a recent law barring trans children from playing on the school sport team that aligns with their gender; and Democratic Rep. Lauren Kuby’s SCR1023, which would ask voters to repeal the provision in Arizona’s Constitution that declares marriage is only between a man and a woman. That provision violates the U.S. Constitution and is therefore unenforceable.

You can tell if Republican leaders really hate a bill by the number of committees they assign it to.

Each committee assignment is a hurdle, and the House speaker and Senate president can give a very public kiss of death to a bill by assigning a bill to three or more committees, as House Speaker Steve Montenegro did to Democratic Rep. Chris Mathis’ HB2246, which would appropriate $50 million to buy back water rights from farmers.³

On the move

There are two types of bills on the move — those creeping toward a possible signature, and those that are speeding toward a veto.

It’s usually pretty easy to distinguish between the two.

The veto pipeline:

Just as liberal Democratic priorities are sure to never gain traction at the Capitol, radical conservative legislation is sure to meet Hobbs’ veto stamp.

But lawmakers are always excited to send it to her anyway.

These MAGA statement bills are often some of the first measures filed each legislative session and they’re some of the fastest moving bills at the Capitol — until they hit that veto stamp.

Republican Sen. John Kavanagh’s SB1002 and SB1003 are fitting examples. The bills would prohibit teachers from using pronouns different from a student’s birth pronouns without parental permission, and attempt to limit trans students’ right to use the bathroom that aligns with their gender, respectively. They were the second and third bills filed in the Senate this year, both have already cleared their assigned committees and are heading to the Senate floor. Hobbs has already vetoed variations of both ideas.

And while lawmakers are fast-tracking other MAGA bills — like Republican Rep. Rachel Keshel’s HB2440, which would protect county supervisors who refuse to certify the results of their elections, or Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers’ SB1020, which attempts to allow concealed weapons permit holders to carry in schools — those bills are just on the fast track to a veto.

Finally, there’s everything else:

These are the serious, hard-fought bills that don’t neatly align with party ideology — the must-dos and the compromises.

They may not actually make it into law, but they stand a chance.

Some are simply noncontroversial feel-good bills, like Kavanagh’s SB1031, which prohibits cosmetic manufacturers from selling makeup in Arizona that was tested on animals. Others are do-little bills that show lawmakers are paying attention, like Republican Rep. Matt Gress’ HB2020, which would require an annual report on Arizona’s teacher shortage. Both of those bills are easily clearing their legislative hurdles so far.

But the most important issues are often left to the very last minute.

It’s not unusual for lawmakers to seemingly do nothing with big, consequential bills for months, then address them in a flurry of strike-everything amendments wrapped into the budget process.

Because while the legislative process contains lots of bill-killing deadlines, the only real deadline to cut a deal is the annual close of the session.

And nothing motivates lawmakers like a deadline.

Promised prosecutions: Most of the immigration cases going through the federal court in Phoenix are for people only accused of entering the country illegally, even though Trump officials said the initial focus of deportation efforts would be on violent offenders, the Republic’s Richard Ruelas reports. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Arizona charged 565 people with “immigration-related crimes” within the two weeks after Trump’s inauguration, while ICE’s Phoenix office has a 75 arrests-a-day quota.

“They’re taking someone that is a grandfather, a father, a husband,” said the wife of a handyman arrested near his home in Buckeye. “He just loves being around his family.”

Flipping the script: The judge in Arizona’s fake electors case is allowing Republican defendants to use an anti-SLAPP motion, which is a defense used to prevent politically-motivated prosecutions, but hasn’t ruled on whether the entire case should be dismissed, KJZZ’s Wayne Schutsky reports. Attorney General Kris Mayes now has to argue the charges are justified.

Hands off our lab money: Mayes joined 21 other states in suing the Trump administration for cutting indirect cost reimbursements at universities and research institutions, which pay for lab, infrastructure and utility costs, the Daily Star’s Prerana Sannappanavar reports. The attorneys argue the money was “memorialized in an executed agreement.” The National Institutes of Health is cutting 15% of its indirect cost rates, and the University of Arizona received $170 million in NIH funding last fiscal year.

The payout: Tolleson Union High School District Superintendent Jeremy Calles got a $450,000 settlement from the district’s governing board after he filed a Title IX complaint alleging former governing board president and current state lawmaker Democrat Rep. Elda Luna-Nájera sexually harassed him, per the Republic’s Madeleine Parrish. The board didn’t disclose the final findings of the sexual harassment investigation report because of the “sensitive nature of the materials involved” but found Nájera pulled her weight as the board’s swing vote to table Calles’ contract renewal. Last time we checked, nobody in the Legislature had filed an ethics complaint against her.

A pot pipe dream: Republican Sen. Kevin Payne is running a bill to make the Department of Health Services fund research on the effects of marijuana, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer writes. A lobbyist for the health department said the bill’s ask of $5 million a year over five years isn’t feasible. Payne successfully got $5 million into the 2023 state budget to study psilocybin mushrooms.

We could do a lot of weed “studies” with $5 million, but $12 a month to keep this operation running will suffice.

The farms are scrambling: Hickman’s Family Farms has euthanized more than a million chickens amid the avian flu outbreak that’s driving up egg prices across the country, per KJZZ’s Schutsky. Former Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman previously told us about his plans to focus on his family’s egg farm after he departed from politics, and he seems to have a lot on his plate as the farm has had two outbreaks of the virus.

Conservative talk show host Garret Lewis gave us a special shout-out during one of the dumber diatribes we’ve heard lately about how USAID is paying for “leftist news to try to stay open.”

He was ranting about a tweet from former Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer explaining that government entities sometimes pay for political journalism.

“...and the Arizona Agenda, which I believe — I don't even know who runs that. I don’t think it's a Soros one, but anyway,” Lewis said.

First of all, thanks for dragging us into this, Richer.

Secondly, if we were getting that Soros money, we could stop begging you to smash this button to support independent, local reader-supported news.

1. Like all legislative rules and deadlines, the bill introduction deadline is slightly fungible. Lawmakers can still introduce bills late with permission of the Senate president and House speaker (and the chamber’s rules committee), and new or previously rejected ideas can be introduced as strike-everything amendments at any time.

2. Our sharks intern, ChatGPT, reminds us that this analogy is an oversimplification and not entirely accurate. But some sharks like Great Whites would suffocate if they didn’t keep oxygen moving through their gills, so we’re sticking with it.

3. It’s not just Democrats who get the multi-committee treatment. When a Republican introduced a bill that would have allowed lawmakers to overturn an election, then-House Speaker Rusty Bowers assigned it to every committee in the House, just to make a point.