The Daily Agenda: Smile for the cameras
The Daily Agenda: Smile for the cameras
The campaign trail runs through the Capitol ... Don't scuff the Jordans ... And finally, newspapers with a purpose.
As Democrats in the Senate attempted to force a vote on doomed legislation to close loopholes in gun background check laws, legislative Republicans spent the day complaining about the 2020 election and watching clips from a mockumentary.
Nobody worked on the state budget. At the end of the day, lawmakers abruptly adjourned, cutting their already shortened three-day workweek down to just a two days.1
It’s campaign season at the Arizona Legislature. Unfortunately, it’s also budget season.
As the two seasons overlap, lawmakers are essentially hitting the campaign trail from the Arizona Capitol, spending their time trying to attract the attention of the TV cameras rather than hunkering down for grueling negotiations over how to spend the state’s $5.3 billion budget surplus.
Legislative Republicans used their one day at work this week to hold an unofficial hearing at the Senate and watch a presentation by True the Vote, which produced the purported documentary “2,000 Mules” about alleged ballot harvesting. The thoroughly debunked film is the latest Kraken in the neverending war against the 2020 election results. The hearing attracted an all-star cast of election deniers — from alleged election-fixer and AZGOP chair Kelli Ward, to airplane chaser and congressional candidate Josh Barnett to alleged domestic abuser and fake news reporter Jordan Conradson.
Senate Democrats were able to briefly stall that presentation with a drawn-out battle to force a vote on Democratic legislation to require background checks for personal gun sales. The move had no chance of success, but it made for good campaign videos of how Democrats are fighting the gun lobby.
Meanwhile, frustrated educators took to the Capitol, delivering their own budget proposal: a $1.2 billion investment in teacher retention, full-day kindergarten, special education and career and technical training, and school buildings. Teachers told lawmakers that they’re leaving the profession altogether after struggling for years to make ends meet, but the attempts to urge lawmakers to do their one job and pass a budget were completely overshadowed by the gun control and election fraud debates.
Once again, the multi-part circus at the statehouse was a distraction from all the crucial work that isn’t getting done.
In this toxic political environment, it’s easy to campaign on division and against the other side. But if lawmakers could actually find compromise on a budget to achieve something for the citizens of Arizona, that would be a campaign message worth hearing.
Sure, it’s the shoes: Policies at Scottsdale nightclubs prohibiting basketball sneakers like the iconic Air Jordans are inconsistently applied and raise questions about whether they’re designed to keep Black people out of Old Town clubs. Owners of the Scottsdale clubs wouldn’t talk to Cronkite News’ Kevin Redfern about their policies, which are ostensibly to prevent fights from scuffed kicks, but bouncers and patrons did.
“From my experience and, you know, what I’ve seen and from both sides, just, you know, from partying and working, is it’s really more to keep a certain crowd out. Because you know, if you had 10 people in line with (Jordans) on, eight of the 10 people probably are going to be Black,” Jordan Baines, a Black bouncer at Hifi and Casa Amigos, told Redfern.
All the money in the world doesn’t help if you can’t spend it: If lawmakers are going to take on Republican Sen. Paul Boyer’s “grand bargain” to increase education funding by nearly $1 billion, lawmakers will also have to address the aggregate education spending cap, the Republic’s Mary Jo Pitzl and Yana Kunichoff write. The education spending cap nearly caused massive cuts to school budgets this year until lawmakers temporarily suspended it at the 11th hour.
The good news is we can spend our whole budget without legislative approval. The bad news is we don’t have enough money in our budget. Subscribe now for $80 before we raise our price to $120. Think of it as a huge discount on our future price!
Three for the price of one!: As the teacher shortage is exacerbated by anti-teacher politics, teachers are pulling double duty leading multiple classrooms in Tucson Unified School District, even though the district has stopped paying teachers more money for doing so, Genesis Lara writes for the Arizona Daily Star.
“You don’t realize how much trauma there was for the last two years until you simply talk to these kids,” sixth grade teacher Anna Timney said. “This is the year where they’ve been processing it, getting to know their teachers and starting to trust people again.”
Dive right in: KTAR News’ reporters served up a five-part series last week on Arizona’s water problems, explaining the big picture of growth in the desert, a local water battle, the trouble with pollution in groundwater, how the lack of water hurts farmers and the future of Arizona water. Meanwhile, the Republic’s Joanna Allhands argues we’re Googling the wrong questions about water. Along the U.S. Mexico border, researchers are studying trash that piles up along the Santa Cruz River to the point that it can change the course of the water’s flow, hoping to understand where it comes from and how to stop it. And, like Gov. Doug Ducey, the governor of Sonora, Mexico, also likes the idea of a desalination plant in Mexico.
Greedy landlords everywhere: An Arizona couple is going to court to try to overturn Arizona’s condominium termination law, which forces people to sell their condos if enough of their neighbors do, after being kicked out and arrested at a condo they bought for their son, the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy writes. Republican Rep. Jeff Weninger is also trying to repeal the law after it was used to force a 91-year-old woman out of her home last year.
The only thing worse than a water line break: After a water line burst and closed U.S. Route 60, the next big plumbing problems Tempe officials may face is the city’s crumbling sewer infrastructure, as nine out of 10 homes have critically deteriorated sewage pipes, 12News’ Hunter Bassler explains.
Today in shady politicians: Supervisors in Santa Cruz County are considering an audit of the county’s property assessments “to determine the extent of the damage” that former county Assessor Felipe Fuentes may have caused. Fuentes pleaded guilty to a long-running bribery scheme, and the supervisors want to make sure the FBI is cool with that in case they’re still investigating Fuentes or anyone else, the Nogales International’s Angela Gervasi writes.
No more yellow school bus: Amid an ongoing shortage of school bus drivers, a bill moving through the Arizona Legislature would reduce regulations to allow schools to use smaller vans instead of school buses that don’t require drivers to have commercial licenses, though opponents of the bill worry it could hinder students’ safety, Arizona Public Media’s Andrew Oxford reports.
Home, home on the range: Conservationists worked out a deal to protect 5,000 acres of grasslands to ensure that animals like antelope and deer can continue to cross from the Santa Rita Mountains and Las Cienegas National Conservation Area near Sonoita and keep up genetic diversity, the Arizona Daily Star’s Henry Brean notes.
You can take the wolf out of the cage…: Biologists are slipping captive-born gray wolf pups into dens to boost the wild wolf’s numbers and diversify the gene pool, but after seven years of trying this, those captive-born wolves still aren’t breeding at high rates, KJZZ’s Ron Dungan reports.
To make your morning better: Listen to this KJZZ interview Amy Silverman conducted with kindergartener Jude, who gave perhaps the most adorable interview ever.
Today’s bill is not a bill, but a judicial policy change attempting to get ahead of a bill.
The Judicial Conference of the United States is going to make docket searches on PACER, the federal court record system, free for the public, Reuters reports. Currently, court documents cost 10 cents per page, and that can quickly add up. (We’ve worked at newspapers that have had their PACER account closed for nonpayment in the past, which is a pain and an indictment of both newspapers and PACER.)
The move comes as Congress is increasingly considering forcing the courts to make all documents free through the Open Courts Act. Although the bill hasn’t gained much traction on Capitol Hill, it has apparently spooked courts enough to make some of the documents free.
Elgin’s Ken Marshall is building a home out of bricks made with nearly 6,000 pounds of newspapers, proving, once and for all, that newspapers are good for something.
His home will include 500 pounds of his local paper, the Herald/Review, which wrote up a story about Marshall’s plans for an eco-conscious place to live.
Correction: A previous version of this post wrongly stated that lawmakers adjourned Tuesday after a one-day workweek. They also worked Wednesday, making it a two-day workweek.