Week Two: Fifty-Fifth Legislature — Second Regular Session
The beginning of the legislative session started with Doug Ducey’s final State of the State address failing to mention teachers or the imminent public school funding crisis. What’s worse, his Executive Budget assumes that voter-approved Prop 208 will be thrown out in the Courts, and the Governor does not want to use this year’s $3.1 billion surplus between ongoing and one-time revenues to make real investments in public education.
But before March 1st, the Legislature must pass an override to the 1980 school spending cap with a two-thirds majority in each chamber, or schools will be forced to close their doors to 1.1 million Arizonan public school students.
Thankfully, public school teacher, Rep. Jennifer Pawlik has introduced a clean override (HCR 2012) to ensure $1.2B stays in our public schools.
Committee meetings began – without remote public testimony – in the House and Senate this week. Republicans heard bills that are covered extensively on Fox News like bans on Critical Race Theory (HB2112), preventing trans athletes participating in school sports (SB1165), and stopping universities from banning student possession of a concealed weapon (SB1123).
Meanwhile, Democrats like Sen. Christine Marsh and Rep. Lorenzo Sierra are fighting for students by introducing bills that would close the achievement gap for low-income kids by providing additional funding for k-12 schools to assist students in districts with high federal free and reduced lunch rates.
In 2020, we turned out to elect leaders that would deliver on the issues that are most important to Arizonans. But instead of doing the job that Arizonans elected them to do, right-wing legislators are attacking our freedom to vote. Already, they have proposed nearly 100 voter suppression bills, 16 of them will be heard in committees this week.
Monday, January 24 at 2:00pm Senate Committee on Government will be meeting to hear 12 bills related to voting. Agenda can be found here.
SB1008 elections; recount margin (Ugenti-Rita)
SB1009 state of emergency; executive powers (Ugenti-Rita)
SB1012 registration database; federal voters; report (Townsend)
SB1013 secretary of state; federal form (Townsend)
SB1028 ballot paper; security measures (Rogers)
SB1054 election equipment; security; legislative review (Townsend)
SB1055 election process; contractors and contracts (Townsend)
SB1056 misplaced ballots; invalidity; misdemeanor; damages (Townsend)
SB1119 electronic ballot images; public record. (Borrelli: Fann, Townsend, et al)
SB1120 ballot fraud countermeasures; paper; ink. (Borrelli: Barto, Fann, et al)
SB1133 schools; cities; all mail prohibited (Rogers)
SCR1005 federal ballot voters; identification (Townsend)
Wednesday, January 26 at 9:00am House Committee on Government & Elections will be meeting to hear four bills related to voting. Agenda can be found here.
HB2243 voter registration; state residency; cancellation (Hoffman: Barton, Biasiucci, et al)
HB2238 ballot drop boxes; prohibition (Hoffman: Barton, Blackman, et al)
HB2237 same day voter registration; prohibition (Hoffman: Barton, Blackman, et al)
HB2170 election mailings; third-party disclosures (Kavanagh)
Arizonans are sick and tired of Republican extremism. While the AZGOP are attempting to sabotage future elections, Democrats are fighting for education funding and voting rights – make a plan to be a recurring donor today.