Week Sixteen: Fifty-Fifth Legislature — Second Regular Session

If you enjoy the updates and analysis we provide each week, we hope you will become a recurring donor to support our work from the legislative session to campaign season – chip in today.

Happy May Day

This May Day, we’re recognizing International Workers’ Day. We thank and commemorate the hard work of our labor partners and union-backed vendors in helping us to elect legislators who will advocate for working-class Arizonans.

Story of the Week: Another Week in Purgatory

Since the Arizona State Legislature continues to kick the can down the road on a budget and creating a plan for a 5 billion dollar surplus that could significantly help Arizonans – news and activity coming out of the Capitol has been quite slow. In the meantime – we’ve dug up some of the Senate Democratic bills that never received a hearing this session.

What Could Have Been With A Democratic Majority in the Senate

These pieces of legislation could have significantly helped Arizona families and communities. Arizona Republicans shelved them to debate on radical bills that do nothing to solve our biggest problems.

Here's a look at some of the Democratic bill proposals from the Senate (we'll do the House next week):

SB1283 – Sen. Stahl-Hamilton sponsored a bill that would regulate the quality of water, ensuring that all Arizonans have access to clean, safe drinking water. In spite of the fact that many Arizonans are concerned about our water, the bill didn’t get a third read.

SB1284 – Sen. Stahl-Hamilton sponsored a bill addressing the housing crisis by appropriating $2.5 million of our $5.6 billion surplus to the housing trust fund.

SB1296 – Sen. Marsh sponsored a bill that would limit class sizes, which would be a huge step in the right direction as Arizona has one of the largest average class sizes in the country.

SB1488 – Sen. Stahl-Hamilton sponsored a bill that would create a study committee on statewide eviction prevention and housing affordability.

SB1511 – Sen. Bowie sponsored a bill that would ban healthcare professionals from providing conversion therapy to children.

SB1560 – Sen. Hatathlie sponsored a bill appropriating $2 million of the $5.6 billion surplus to tribal nations for culturally sensitive domestic violence and sexual assault crisis intervention.

SCR1039 – Sen. Steele sponsored a resolution to ratify the equal rights amendment, which could have made us the 39th state to ratify the ERA (but California got to become number 39 instead).

SB1644 – Sen. Teràn sponsored a bill for paid family leave which would alleviate the burden raising a child has on working-class families.

SB1645 – Sen Teràn sponsored a bill that would increase the maximum unemployment weekly benefit from $240 a week to $320 a week, still no where near the unemployment benefit we saw during lockdown with the federal boost.

SB1646 – Sen. Teràn sponsored a bill that would remove the mandatory waiting period that severely limits access to abortion for those in rural Arizona many of whom have to drive to Phoenix to receive services.

Let’s not forget that Democrats proposed many fixes for the Aggregate Expenditure Limit crisis, both permanent and temporary. Hopefully, those bills will rise from the ashes once we have a majority for January’s session!