District officials say they believe the letter's allegations "were not accurate."

The Arizona Republic reports:

The district interviewed students and the teacher at Harold W. Smith Elementary School.

"The district believes that the statements made by Mr. Hill in regard to our students and school were not accurate," according to the release. "Students who were interviewed did not recall making or hearing any of the inflammatory statements attributed to them by Mr. Hill, and students also said they stood for the daily recital of the Pledge of Allegiance."

[AZ Republic]

Right now, counties determine their own boundaries for supervisor districts. Seemingly, that's been working so far, but this is the golden age of Arizona Legislature micromanagement, so why not set up another committee? Even better, why not set up committees that likely benefit Republicans well into the future?

State Sen. Lori Klein, late of the controversy over a bigoted letter that she read on the Senate floor, has proposed a strike-everything amendment to HB2289, one that is scheduled for committee consideration at Thursday's meeting of Senate Finance.

It concerns the redistricting of county supervisorial districts.

Her proposed measure would set up an "independent redistricting committee" in counties with five supervisorial districts.

Currently Maricopa, Pima, Cochise, Coconino, and Yuma counties each have five supervisor districts. Because of the population counts of the 2010 Census, Mohave, Pinal, and Yavapai counties will have to go to a five-district plan.

The "independent" committee would be made up of the current supervisors (either five or three, as appropriate) plus *six* members appointed by legislative Republicans and the Governor.

Specifically, the Speaker and majority leader of the House would each get to appoint one person, as would the President and majority leader of the Senate. In addition, the governor would get to appoint two members of each county's "independent" redistricting commission.

Those folks, the legislative leadership and the governor, are all Republicans, who can be reasonably be expected to appoint fellow Republicans. And there is nothing in the proposal to require that the commissions be partisanly balanced or even non-partisan.

Based on this model, the redistricting committee for Pima County would like be made up of eight Republicans and three Democrats. At least we get a little more evidence to prove that from Republican legislators, "limited government" means "limited to us".

[Random Musings]

Thank you to the 1,700 fellow Southern Arizonans who received CPR and first aid training from the Red Cross last Saturday as part of Gabrielle Giffords' Save A Life Saturday. What a wonderful response to a terrible tragedy — because of your commitment, our community is now safer.

We have just passed through a week of highs and lows at the Legislature. Since things have generally been so tough here lately, I will start with the good news.

As you probably heard by now, last Thursday — with seven to ten Republicans alongside all nine Democrats in opposition — all five ineffective, unconstitutional, mean-spirited Russell Pearce driven immigration bills were killed on the floor of the Senate.

The five bills would have required teachers and doctors and nurses to act as immigration enforcement officers, allowed police to impound people's cars if the drivers didn't have the right residency papers, created a second-class citizenship for newborn babies if their mothers didn't have all their residency papers at the hospital at the time of birth, and enacted so many more misguided directives.

What all the bills had in common was that none of them would do a thing to solve the real problems. None would stop the criminal gangs involved in drug, human, and gun smuggling at the border. None would remove the incentive for illegal immigration by improving the local economies of Latin American countries. None would urge enactment of comprehensive reform.

Every one of the bills' provisions would stigmatize legal residents and visitors while continuing to broadcast to the world that Arizona doesn't want tourists, shoppers or businesses to help grow our economy.

That's part of what doomed them, even in a Senate led by Russell Pearce. The Arizona Chamber of Commerce and most of the state's top CEOs worked hard to kill all five bills because they agreed it was time to focus on the economy and jobs instead of chasing business away with empty ideological statements.

Looks like TW isn't the only publication getting the cold shoulder from Sen. Al Melvin:

BTW, Atomic Al's bill to have a nuclear waste dump in Arizona that funds schools passed the Senate today.

From the Arizona Guardian twitter feed:

In his brief resignation letter, Heinz said that he was stepping down “to devote more of my time to the legislative process.”

Heinz added that he would “continue to focus my efforts on developing the best, most effective policy solutions to address the ongoing economic recovery, essential public health programs, education funding at all levels, and public safety priorities including border crime enforcement with a long-term goal of balancing the budget in a sustainable, fiscally responsible manner.”

Rep. Steve Farley of midtown’s Legislative District 28, who serves as assistant minority leader in the House, says that he had heard grumblings from other Democrats that too many of Heinz’s bills were still alive this year, while their legislation had been killed off in committee.

“There were a lot of caucus who were not happy about the way things were going,” says Farley. “Ultimately, it’s probably a better decision for him as a legislator because he has priorities that the whip job would be in the way of.”

Working with Republicans, Heinz managed to pass a bill that banned the marijuana substitute Spice earlier this year. That’s a rare feat for any Democrat, given that they’re outnumbered 2-1 in both chambers.

Heinz has several other bills that have passed the House, including a measure that restores funding for hospice stays for terminally ill patients.

“I regret that it’s necessary for me to resign the position,” Heinz told The Range. “I worked very hard for the caucus and will continue to work very hard for the caucus.”

A few of the highlightslowlights from this week in the Arizona Legislature as collected by Craig McDermott from Random Musings:

- Finance will meet on Thursday at 9 a.m. in SHR1. On the agenda: a striker to HB2289, titled "county supervisorial district redistricting committee" (no text available as yet, but keep an eye out for this one - when the lege starts messing with county operations, somebody, maybe a LOT of somebodys, is about to get screwed over); and HB2636, creating a flat income tax by reducing the tax rate to the lowest rate, removing deductions and exemptions that tend to be used by the poor and middle class, and locking in deductions and exemptions that tend to be used by the wealthy.

- Border Security, Federalism, and States Sovereignty will meet on Thursday at 9 a.m. in SHR109. As far as bill consideration is concerned, it looks quiet thus far. However, there is one presentation on the agenda with the minimalist title of "Border Security." Last week, this same committee was supposed to hear from Glenn Spencer, the leader of the hate group "American Border Patrol." After some public criticism was brought to bear on the idea of the Arizona legislature lending a platform to such a group, Spencer was "uninvited."

I'm not sure, and it will take some phone calls to find out with any certainty, but this may be a move to bring him back in a low-profile way. One thing that I *am* certain of is that such a move wouldn't be surprising.

[...]

- Government will meet on Tuesday at 2 p.m. in HHR4. On the agenda: a striker to SB1157, turning it into a "birther" bill, from Judy "Birther" Burges herself, of course; a same-subject striker to SB1188, giving preference to married couples in adoptions, in such a way that single people will need to jump through serious hoops to adopt and same-sex couples need not apply; SB1286, imposing upon municipalities and counties a 60-day limit to approve/disapprove permit applications, after 60 days, the permit is automatically considered to be approved; SB1322, mandating that Tucson and Phoenix put out to private bid any services provided by them that cost more than $75K; SB1379, limiting the ability of municipalities and counties to regulate the sale and use of fireworks within their jurisdictions; SB1525, restricting municipalities' ability to assess and collect development fees; SB1598, severely limiting municipalities' ability to regulate business or industrial activities within their jurisdictions; SB1282, exempting religious organizations that engage in political activity from having to register as political committees; and SB1610, addressing Arizona's most pressing need, the lack of an official state firearm.

There's plenty to hate in the budget that the Arizona Senate passed last week, with local Sens. Al Melvin and Frank Antenori voting in favor. Sandy Bahr of the Sierra Club runs down the environmental consequences, including the damage to the state parks and to managing Arizona's fragile water supply:

Hello all! Things deteriorated considerably at the Capitol this week with the Senate passing a budget that is just terrible for the future of Arizona. As if they have not taken the wrecking ball to environmental protection enough, they added insult to injury by moving a step closer to eliminating any kind of real state park system in Arizona.

The whole budget package is terrible, much worse than what the Governor had proposed. It permanently reduces funding for the state’s Water Quality Assurance Revolving Fund program from $15 million per year to $7 million per year, which assures that we will see little in the way of real clean-up of contaminated sites, unless it is done under the federal Superfund program. This leaves dollars to do some assessment and perhaps containment, but unfortunately the way the law is written, it leaves the public with a big chunk of the bill for cleaning up these sites. Maybe we can use this opportunity to insist that polluters clean up their own messes? Now that would be a good addition to the bills. The budget also eliminates the state General Fund appropriation of up to $5,000,000 to the Arizona Water Protection Fund, although allows the Central Arizona Project fees to continue to fund it.

There is more, including provisions to make the Arizona Department of Environment Quality and Department of Water Resources totally fee based, so they are merely permit mills, but the worst provisions deal with State Parks. The Legislature once again sweeps funds that keep the Parks open and maintained. SB1612 general appropriations 2011-2012 (Biggs, Klein, Murphy, et al.) sweeps the Enhancement Fund of approximately $2,090 000. This is particularly outrageous as this fund consists of the user fees we all pay to use the parks.

The proposed budget sweeps the State Lake Improvement Fund (SLIF) of $1,491,100 in this current fiscal year. If passed by the House and signed by the Governor, this will create a huge cash flow issue for parks and make it nearly impossible for the agency to pay its rent, meet payroll or pay for operations in the new fiscal year.

Here is a list of 27 anti-immigrant bills making their way through the state Legislature

For more details on each bill, visit Border Action Network's website right here:

1. SB 1309/HB 2561: Arizona Citizenship
2. SB 1308/HB 2562: Interstate Compact; Birth Certificates
3. SB 1406: Interstate Compact; Border Fence
4. SB 1405: Immigration Status; Hospital Admissions
5. SB 1611: Immigration Omnibus
6. SB 1465: Valid Identification; Consular Cards; Prohibition
7. SB 1490: Illegal Alien; Food Service Workers
8. SB 1342: Arizona Rangers; Border Security Activities
9. SB1117/HB 2537: Immigration Legislation Challenges
10. SCR 1006: Border Security Plan
11. SB 1222: Public Benefits; Eligibility; Required Proof
12. HB 2505 — School Pupils; Lawful Status; State Aid
13. SB 1225: Forgery; Human Smuggling; classification
14. HB 2179: Schools; Students; Data Collection
15. SB 1407: Schools; Data; Noncitizen students
16. SB 1368: Human Smuggling Organization; Offense; Penalty
17. SB 1495/HB 2070: Arizona State Guard; Establishment
18. HB 2181: National Guard Mobilization; Border
19. HB 2405: Human Smuggling Organization; Offense; Penalty
20. SB 1046 - Juvenile corrections; discharge; ICE detainers
21. HB 2439 - Driver license requirements; violation; misdemeanor
22. SB 1607/SB 1141: Schools; Residency Requirements
23. SB 1012: Tech Correction; Technical Registration Bd. Striker: Fingerprint Clearance Cards; Citizenship Status
24. HB 2624: Public benefits; reporting fraud
25. HB 2677: International Money Wire Transfer Assessment
26. Striker Amendment - HB 2191: Actions By Illegal Aliens Prohibited
27. HB 2718: Public Safety Equipment Fund

And I suppose if these don't work, then we'll have to take advice from crazies in other states, since it's obvious racism and idiocy doesn't only belong to Arizona:

Arizona hospitals are making a last-ditch effort to save government-subsidized care for about two thirds of the 250,000 childless adults Gov. Jan Brewer proposes to kick out of the state’s Medicaid program.

A plan unveiled Friday would raise $645 million a year, $540 million of that through a new tax on hospitals based on patient days. That computes out to about 4.2 percent of total bill charges.

There also would be an additional $100 million tax on the health care plans that have contracts with the state to provide care for those enrolled in the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System. And nursing homes would kick in $5 million.

But Laurie Liles, president of the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association, said the tax is structured in a way so that it won’t actually result in higher bills.

“That is because it is used to draw down federal funds that are paid back to the hospitals,’’ Liles said.

But it faces tough opposition from GOP lawmakers:

A bigger hurdle is at the Legislature, where many Republicans seek to scale back government-funded health care, no matter who picks up the tab. There even is legislation to abolish AHCCCS entirely.

The Republican opposition comes despite warnings that the GOP plan could cost 30,000 jobs in Arizona: