The Daily Agenda: Hotlines aren't hot ideas
The Daily Agenda: Hotlines aren't hot ideas
Pity the staffers ... This is why we can't have nice restaurants ... And his bracket busted briskly.
Thousands of calls and emails have poured into Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne’s “empower hotline,” which aims to give parents a channel to vent if they think critical race theory are being taught in class, in the week or so since it launched.
Most of those, though, are pranks, Horne told media outlets last week. The department called some of the calls “simply profane,” according to 12News. A handful were legitimate complaints, and one of those that involved allegations of sexual misconduct was forwarded to police, he said.
When he launched the hotline, Horne cast it as a way for parents to report educators who were teaching about topics like critical race theory, saying he knows that Arizona teachers are leading lessons that “rob students of precious minutes of instruction time in core academic subjects such as reading, math, science, history and the arts.”
Educators have pushed back on the hotline, protesting at the Capitol last week to call on Horne to shut the hotline down and saying it creates suspicion about teachers during an ongoing teacher shortage, the Arizona Mirror reported.
By trying to wade more into the school culture wars, Horne is putting his staff on the front lines. Whenever a new hotline or email address around a controversial idea pops up, it’s bound to lead to pranks and vitriol. The people answering the phones and checking the inbox are usually the ones dealing with the brunt of it, not the politician who started it.
And with an influx of calls and emails, it takes more people — and money — to respond. Already, people with complaints about specific lessons or teachers have places they can reach out to: their local school boards, the State Board of Education, law enforcement. Adding another phone line for an agency that likely can’t do much about these complaints, depending on what they are, does little to help those who could actually need it.
The prank calls will probably taper off. Or, if people take the advice of Republic columnist EJ Montini, instead of hostile messages, prank callers could start leaving positive messages about their local teachers.
If the hotline doesn’t live up to Horne’s expectations of finding some kind of massive CRT conspiracy in K-12 schools, we’ll probably stop hearing about it altogether.
In Virginia, for instance, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced an email inbox shortly after he was inaugurated in January 2022, set up for parents to complain about practices in their kids’ schools. News organizations had to sue to get access to the complaints filed to the inbox. One complained that a school had an “equity month,” Axios reported last year. Another complained that a teacher called depictions of women in “Beowulf” sexist.
By September of last year, the email inbox in Virginia was shut down. It wasn’t clear how or if the emailed complaints resulted in anything. Complaints had tapered off, Youngkin’s office said at the time.
If Virginia’s experience is any indication, the initial wave of interest in the hotline will die out, leaving behind an inbox and call log of random complaints and a whole lot of pranks. Public records will show a hodge-podge of accusations against teachers for concepts that some parents don’t like, but which don’t amount to critical race theory. (We’ll file records requests, as we’re sure other media will, to see exactly what’s coming in.)
And taxpayers will be left with the bill for the staff time it took to serve Horne’s political ambitions.
But we like those sandwiches: The owners of Old Station Subs, the beloved Capitol-area sandwich shop, are considering packing it in after 37 years of business because of the constant deluge of chaos and sadness that spills onto their property from the homeless encampment nearby, the New York Times’ Eli Saslow writes in a profile of the business owners, who were among the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the City of Phoenix about “The Zone.”
Subscribe today for just $12 per month so we can stay in business and we’ll go get lunch at Old Station to help keep them in business, too.
Telling voters will only confuse them: Americans for Prosperity filed a federal lawsuit challenging Prop 211, the Voters’ Right To Know Act, which attempts to force disclosure of dark money campaign spending, arguing that it’ll lead to donors being doxxed and mislead voters “by directly tying donors to candidates and issues those donors may support only glancingly, or not at all,” Capitol scribe Howie Fischer writes. It’s the second lawsuit challenging the law that voters overwhelmingly approved, after the Free Enterprise Club filed suit in Maricopa County Superior Court in December.
Execution fallout continues: In legal filings, the state claims it can’t do an execution, despite the Arizona Supreme Court setting a date for one next month, the Republic’s Jimmy Jenkins reports. In the filings, the state corrections director said the Ducey administration left no records that indicate “where the state’s death penalty drugs came from, how they were procured or who prepared them.” Meanwhile, Republican legislative leadership filed an amicus brief in the court docket siding with the family of Aaron Gunches’ victim, saying that Gov. Katie Hobbs not following the execution warrant would set a “dangerous precedent.”
The new main event: If you want to catch up on everything that’s happened in Cochise County during and after the 2022 election, Rachel has an in-depth story for The Guardian that takes a broad view at the county’s election shenanigans and the way they could affect elections there — and elsewhere — in 2024.
The pre-grilling before the grilling: In advance of a likely grilling by the Arizona Senate committee tasked with director nominations, Sen. Jake Hoffman sent three pages of questions that delve into political topics, like her views on climate change, to Arizona Department of Environmental Quality Director Karen Peters, the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger reports. Peters has been on the committee’s agenda twice for a hearing, but was canceled on both times, and Hoffman said no other nominee received a list of questions. He also “declined to share his own views on climate change, saying it was Peters' perspective and not his own that was relevant,” Barchenger writes.
Apply, or reapply, now: After canceling contracts that former Gov. Doug Ducey entered into before leaving office, Hobbs will open applications for groups that want a slice of nearly $200 million in COVID-19 relief funds, the Arizona Capitol Times’ Nick Phillips reports. The programs will seek to fund things like teacher retention and summer camps, as well as the lingering effects of the pandemic.
Preempting the ballot: In advance of an expected ballot measure that would create ranked-choice voting in Arizona, Republican lawmakers in the state’s freedom caucus said last week that they want to pass laws that would prohibit the concept from taking hold here, Cronkite News’ Piper Hansen reports. They’re running mirror bills — Senate Bill 1265 and House Bill 2552 — that would make it so ranked-choice voting would not only be outlawed in state elections, but at any other level in Arizona.
It’s at least possible: Vox’s Christian Paz writes that the newly independent U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema could very well win reelection as a third-party candidate, especially if the GOP candidate swings far-right. Republicans here haven’t been courting the state’s large independent bloc, leaving an opening for a center or center-right candidate to pick off moderate Republicans and the middle, though winning as an independent would still be a “Herculean effort” for Sinema.
Politics is political: Before Hobbs vetoed a critical race theory ban bill, she fundraised on the fact she would veto it, providing an example of how her stance on legislation dovetails with her political ambitions, Barchenger writes for the Republic. It’s not yet clear how that fundraising tactic is working, given the lag in campaign finance reports, but it’s angering some of the Republicans who are sending her bills almost certain to be vetoed.
They always turn on you: Once a school voucher advocate, the new director of the voucher program, Christine Accurso, is now taking hits from parents whose students use Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, who say she’s prioritizing private schools over students with disabilities, the Arizona Capitol Times’ Kiera Riley reports.
Bank failure bad: In the aftermath of the Silicon Valley Bank failure, local politicians are criticizing each other and asking questions about how the whole debacle happened. Sinema sent the Federal Reserve Bank a “stern letter” asking how warning signs of problems went unnoticed, the Republic’s Ronald J. Hansen reports. U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva said it made sense for Biden to ensure customers get their money back but that it could set a bad precedent, and he still wants more information on the failure, the Republic’s Tara Kavaler reports. And after U.S. Rep. and Senate hopeful Ruben Gallego repeatedly blamed Sinema for the failure, conservative Substacker Robert Robb wrote Gallego’s line of attack has “a few huge flaws.”
It gets worse every year: Advocacy groups called on House Speaker Ben Toma to address Republican lawmakers’ behavior during committee meetings, which the left-leaning groups say amounts to bullying and intimidation, the Arizona Mirror’s Caitlin Sievers reports. In one incident on March 9, the letter cites Rep. Alexander Kolodin “shouting down” lobbyist Ben Scheel, resulting in Scheel being told by Rep. Jacqueline Parker that he wouldn’t be allowed to speak to the House Elections and Municipal Oversight Committee anymore. The House GOP defended the committee’s response to Scheel, saying he “made repeated inflammatory remarks.”
When there’s no extended paid parental leave: The Town of Gilbert is following state agencies in allowing employees to bring their babies to work, which parents say helps them spend time with their babies while transitioning back to the office, KTAR’s Griselda Zetino reports. The program has been in place since December 2018 and allows babies up to six months to come to the office.
Back and better: A strike-everything amendment revived Maricopa County’s hopes of a Proposition 400 extension election, Axios Phoenix’s Jeremy Duda reports. The striker on SB1246 would allow for a county election on the half-cent sales tax for transportation projects, though the bill would limit expansions to the light rail system. A previous effort to allow an election, but with limits on funding for light rail and bus services, failed in committee after opposition from advocates for the transportation tax.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Arizona Agenda to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.