The Daily Agenda: Stay safe, kids

Help or other solutions wanted ... Mohave County is a drag ... And what ever happened to government at the speed of business?

Arizona lawmakers face two major hurdles to their goal of passing legislation to improve school safety next year.

First, there’s no money in the budget for it.

And second, the state has struggled to fill open positions for school resource officers and counselors, even when there is money.

But without being able to offer more money, police officers or school counselors, the number of options available to lawmakers is pretty limited. So they’re getting creative and swinging for the fences. 

Someday we’re going to upload all the rejected drafts that our art intern, ChatGPT, has made for us.

This morning, the Joint Legislative Audit Committee will consider a plan to have the auditor general inspect schools’ emergency response plans and physical infrastructure to see if they comply with the law and best practices. The committee will also ask the auditor general to audit school safety grant money lawmakers already spent.

Tomorrow, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne’s School Safety Taskforce will hold its final meeting and deliver recommendations to lawmakers on how to make schools safer. 

Republican Rep. Matt Gress, a member of Horne’s task force, said he’s looking at legislation that would allow some of that grant money to be spent on one-time safety infrastructure projects, like fences, since schools can’t seem to find enough cops and counselors. 

“If they can't hire personnel, they should have flexibility to use those grant monies for other related purposes around school safety,” he told us yesterday. “So we're trying to provide flexibility so that these millions of dollars can be spent to benefit kids instead of sitting in an account.”

Lawmakers have spent a lot of time arguing in recent years over whether they should fund school resource officers, essentially campus cops, or whether they should fund school counselors. 

It all started when former Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman allowed school safety grants to pay for counselors during her tenure, letting schools request which one they prefer. They mostly asked for counselors — and Arizona still has among the worst student-to-counselor ratios in the nation.

Then, new Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne warned schools that his administration would prioritize having armed police officers in schools and that any school that applied for a counselor grant that didn’t already have an SRO would be “encouraged” to apply for an officer instead. 

Schools requested and received almost twice as many counselors as SROs from the grants again this year.

But the state can’t find enough of either, Horne says. Police departments are short-staffed, Horne said at his task force’s first meeting, and they’re increasingly hesitant to offer up officers to patrol schools, even with state grants. Counselors are hesitant to take grant-funded gigs with no promise for the future. 

So Horne has turned to more creative solutions, including off-duty police staffing companies that could offer campus cops, but in rotating shifts that wouldn’t allow them to get to know the students. He said he hopes his task force can utilize Career and Technical Education to encourage more students to consider law enforcement as a profession. But that’s a pretty long-term fix. In the meantime, he wants to expand the definition of an SRO so that more people qualify. 

Gress said that even though the state doesn’t have money to spend and can’t seem to find enough cops or counselors to fill the positions it already funded, a few creative ideas can go a long way. For example, he’s considering legislation to utilize telehealth options for students who don’t have access to school counselors. 

“I'm optimistic about getting something done here without needing to add any increased funding,” he said. “Some of this is just giving schools flexibility, and that doesn't cost anything.”

“Drag” them to jail: Mohave County supervisors want to pass a resolution supporting their Cochise County colleagues who face criminal charges for interfering with the 2022 election, and Mohave County Supervisor Ron Gould is threatening a lawsuit against Attorney General Kris Mayes, Today’s News-Herald’s Brandon Messick reports. Republic columnist E.J. Montini celebrated Mayes’ decision to charge the supervisors but laments that the state’s two slates of fake electors still haven’t faced the same fate. Elsewhere in Mohave County, the drag shows will continue, Messick reports, after last year’s event got picked up by right-wing radio and ​​Lake Havasu City Mayor Cal Sheehy received death threats. This year’s event, however, will be a 21-and-older show.

Pray for the asteroid: U.S. Senate presumptive GOP nominee Kari Lake is still trying to win back all those Republicans she talked trash about last year, the Washington Post’s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez reports.

“She’s going to be the nominee unless an asteroid hits Arizona,” Republican strategist Daniel Scarpinato told the Post.

Mo’ money, fewer problems: Outgoing Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone looked back on his tenure in an interview with KTAR’s Mike Broomhead, saying the federal court oversight that his office has been under since the Joe Arpaio days made him reconsider how effective he could be. Also, the pay sucks, he said.

Home sweet home: The building that houses the Republic and 12News has once again been sold, this time to an accounting firm for just under $15 million. The news organizations still have more than two years on their leases, the Phoenix Business Journal’s Audrey Jensen writes, and the new owners are hopeful they’ll stay beyond that. The Republic sold the building and its parking garage in 2018 for almost $40 million. 

"Their operations are pretty entrenched into it, so we feel pretty good that when their lease comes up for renewal that we're going to be able to strike a deal with them that makes sense for everyone,"  Eric Stenson, the CEO of the company that bought the building, said.

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Just scream it louder: Arizona universities’ propensity for issuing social statements has landed them in trouble amid the Israel-Gaza conflict, where there’s not an easy liberal answer, Alex Morey, director of campus rights advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights (FIRE), told Lauren Gilger on KJZZ’s “The Show.”  The conflict has highlighted the already tense climate around free speech on campus, Morey says.

“Usually in these kinds of situations, the crisis happens then it goes away. But now it is building, where students feel like they can’t say what they want, faculty are getting in trouble for saying the wrong thing,” she said. 

Dominoes?: Gov. Katie Hobbs says she’s worried that as border crossings continue to climb, the Lukeville Port of Entry not be Arizona’s last to close, per Capitol scribe Howie Fischer.

Wash your hands!: Banner hospitals are introducing visitor restrictions as flu and RSV cases continue to rise heading into the holiday season, and it’s also shutting down its hospice services and handing patients over to Hospice of the Valley, Phoenix Business Journal’s Angela Gonzales reports.

More than two years after someone stole the Carl Hayden bust at the Capitol and likely smelted it down for copper, and more than six months after the bust was replaced with a new bust sculpted by artist/former House Speaker Rusty Bowers, the Department of Public Safety finally responded to a public records request about the theft from our former colleague Rachel Leingang. 

They want $136.98 for a grainy surveillance video that may or may not show the theft. 

Thanks, DPS! Super helpful!