Now that Arizona voters have approved the use of medical marijuana, employers need new ways to deal with employees who are impaired for any reason, a state lawmaker said Tuesday, Feb. 15.

“Employers were left with their hands tied because they didn’t know what to do when it came to dealing with impaired workers who came to the workplace,” Rep. Kimberly Yee, R-Phoenix, told the House Committee on Employment and Regulatory Affairs.

Yee authored a bill, HB 2541, that would give employers the right to reassign or put on leave someone who works in a “safety-sensitive” position if they have a “good-faith belief” that person has used or intends to use a legal or illegal drug that causes impairment.

This judgment could be based on a drug test, though the bill’s definitions of good faith include observed conduct, lawful video surveillance or “information reported by a person believed to be reliable.”

Businesses would have immunity from litigation when taking any of the actions covered by the measure.

The committee endorsed the bill on 6-2 vote despite concerns raised by dissenters and even some who voted in favor that the bill could grant employers too much power at the expense of employees’ rights.

• Photo Courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
• Federal officials began reintroducing the Mexican gray wolf to Arizona in 1998.

A group GOP lawmakers wants to send a postcard of sorts urging Congress to remove the endangered species designation for the gray wolf, including a subspecies reintroduced in Arizona in 1998.

Pointing to complaints that gray wolves in Montana and other states have decimated moose and elk herds, a memorial authored by Rep. Jerry Weiers, R-Glendale, says Arizona would benefit from having complete oversight of recovery efforts for the Mexican gray wolf.

The House Committee on Energy and Natural Resources endorsed the measure Monday on a 7-2 vote, with Rep. Daniel Patterson, D-Tucson, and Rep. Bruce Wheeler, D-Tucson, dissenting.

Facing extinction, the gray wolf became protected under the Endangered Species Act in the 1970s. It was reintroduced to the northern Rockies and parts of the Southwest, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had great success restoring wolves in the Rockies, with a population of 1,700 at last count well beyond the goal of 300.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife has proposed de-listing the northern Rockies population of wolves, but that’s been blocked by court rulings. A candidate for U.S. Senate in Montana has proposed having Congress de-list all gray wolves, including the subspecies in Arizona.

Weiers’ memorial, which has more than 40 GOP primary and co-sponsors, calls the reintroduction of Mexican gray wolves in Arizona a failure because litigation by wildlife advocates has blocked federal officials from removing wolves that prey on livestock.

-A lot of very bad bills gained committee approval this week. A very brief list:

SB1467 (barring educational institutions from enacting or enforcing a policy that bars possession of concealed weapons on campus);

SB1216 (imposing a copayment on obstetric services for AHCCCS patients; illegal under federal law, and the committee knows that, but seven Republicans voted for it anyway);

SCR1032 (a proposed amendment to the Arizona Constitution to require 60% of the voters in an election to support a tax hike for said hike to pass);

SB1390 (placing geographic restrictions on abortion services - a doctor performing an abortion must have clinical privileges at a hospital that offers ob/gyn services and is within 30 miles of the location of the abortion services. Would all but eliminate the availability of abortions in rural Arizona);

SB1548 (tying school funding in Arizona to the establishment of a nuclear waste dump here)

SB1433 (creating a "nullification" commission to oversee state legislative nullification of federal laws and regulations that state legislators don't like)

HB2077 (mandating the federal agencies report to a county's sheriff and pay a fee before engaging in activities in that county; also ordering that all money collected as a result of fines, fees, or penalties collected by the federal agency be transferred to the state's General Fund)

HB2675 (as introduced, would have defined "unlawful use of food stamps" as use of a food stamp care after the unlawful transfer of a food stamp card and would have mandated that the cards be bright orange and state in large black print "Government Food Stamp Card." The version that passed committee didn't contain the part about the design of the cards.)

HB2313 (saying that the state can seize federal property under eminent domain)

Lots more, including a preview of next week, here.

The two birthright citizenship bills (SB1308 and SB1309) and the hospitals/immigration checkpoints bill (SB1405) may have failed to gain committee approval the last two weeks (getting pulled from each agenda they were on before the committees voted on them), however, Russell Pearce, Ron Gould, and the rest of the nativists in the lege haven't given up.

Not by a long shot.

While most Senate committees have completed their work on Senate bills for the session and aren't meeting next week (once the House passes some bills and sends them over to the Senate, committee meetings will start up again), Appropriations will meet on Tuesday at 2 p.m. in SHR109 to consider those three bills, as well as SB1519, a measure from Sens. Andy Biggs and Ron Gould that would end Medicaid (AHCCCS) in Arizona.

Yes, there's a proposal to end Medicaid in Arizona altogether—and say goodbye to all those federal matching funds that keep the health-care system afloat for everyone in the state.

The “jobs bill” Gov. Jan Brewer and Republican legislators hustled through a hastily called special session this week is grossly irresponsible.

The only truly indispensible duty the Arizona Legislature has is to enact an honestly balanced budget each year. The last time the Legislature did that was 2007. Since then, the Legislature has employed constitutionally suspect borrowing and fundamentally dishonest accounting to get from year to year.

There is not any proposed or even plausible scenario in which it gets back to an honestly balanced budget at any time in the future. Not in one year, not in three years, not in five years, not in ten years.

The state currently has a structural deficit — the difference between ongoing revenues and spending — of $3 billion. Yet the “jobs bill” would cost the state more than $500 million annually when fully implemented.

The argument is made that this is necessary to get the state’s economy going. In some cases, cutting taxes even when government revenues are hurting is responsible and appropriate. This is not one of those cases.

There's more:

Moreover, in this environment, the “jobs bill” won’t work.

Uncertainty is the enemy of investment. No one is going to be enticed by the promise of future tax cuts when state finances are in such disarray. There are other shoes inevitably to be dropped, in terms of other tax increases or program cuts. Until those shoes drop, the investment climate in Arizona is fraught with uncertainty.

The state’s economy would perform better with the lower corporate income tax rate and lower business property taxes the “jobs bill” phase in. But the existing state tax structure is already compatible with robust economic growth. That’s been the case. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the Phoenix metro area ranked fourth in the nation for job creation in 2010. So, it appears to still be the case.

There is nothing in Arizona’s competitive position, properly analyzed, that justifies, in these extreme circumstances, making stabilizing state finances tougher rather than easier.

And there is plenty in the “jobs bill” to worry about beyond its effect on state finances.

Brewer and GOP leaders had made a big deal about asking the Obama administration for a waiver so they could go forward with plans to kick somewhere in the neighborhood of 280,000 people off the AHCCCS rolls.

It was a smart play, because if the White House denied the waiver, it would allow Republicans to say they had no choice to cut K-12 education, universities, and everything else—and blame it all on Obamacare.

But it appears the Obama administration has been even smarter: Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius found a loophole that allows the state to get out of providing health insurance to most of the population that Brewer wants to dump.

But whether Republicans can go forward with their plan remains to be seen because the current eligibility guidelines were put in place by voters, which means lawmakers are supposed to go back the ballot if they want to make changes.

Brewer and the GOP caucus are counting on a pretty narrow interpretation of the law to say they don’t need to provide the coverage: They essentially argue that the law calls for the state to use “available funds” to provide the insurance and they say there aren’t funds available. Does that argument hold up in court when you’ve just found enough funds available for a ginormous tax break? Guess we’ll find out.

BTW: While we recognize that Arizona is more generous than most states, we'd point out that there are plenty of reasons not to dump the current eligibility requirements, including the likelihood that doing so will—according to studies—cost the state lots of federal matching funds that help support the health-care system along tens of thousands of jobs in the health-care sector. As the Arizona Chamber of Commerce has argued in the past, it’s also likely to force private insurance companies to raise their rates because they'll be losing out on what amounts to an enormous government subsidy. (And that’s not even considering the impact on people who get sick and find themselves without health insurance.)

Melvin tells reporter Dennis Welch that he's in talks with several out-of-state companies who would like to dispose of their nuclear waste in Arizona. Jobs are No. 1, indeed.

We've got a suggestion for Atomic Al: Why not use Oracle State Park right in your district? The park closed on your watch. Perhaps a few dollars could be diverted from the education fund and used to reopen the park to people who enjoy the outdoors!

Birther bills SB 1526 and HB 2544 have stalled out this week at the Arizona Legislature. But it's easy to see why Republicans don't see any harm in signing on in support of the bills. TNR's Jonathan Chait flags a poll showing just how powerful the birther movement is among GOP primary voters:

Birthers make a majority among those voters who say they're likely to participate in a Republican primary next year. 51% say they don't think Barack Obama was born in the United States to just 28% who firmly believe that he was and 21% who are unsure. The GOP birther majority is a new development. The last time PPP tested this question nationally, in August of 2009, only 44% of Republicans said they thought Obama was born outside the country while 36% said that he definitely was born in the United States. If anything birtherism is on the rise.

Give Secretary of State Ken Bennett credit for standing up against this nonsense. As Slate's William Saletan notes, it's more than GOP leaders in D.C. are doing:

That's four straight interviews in which the country's three top Republicans—the speaker of the House and the GOP leaders in each chamber—have refused to condemn the spreading of lies about Obama's faith and citizenship. These three men are confident enough in the personhood of fetuses to support banning abortion. They're confident enough in the efficacy and justice of the U.S. health care system to block funding of the Affordable Care Act. They're confident enough in Wall Street, despite the recklessness and bailouts of the last three years, to press for repeal of the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law. But ask them whether Obama is a Muslim or was born in the United States, and suddenly they're too humble to impose their beliefs on others. They can only describe "the facts as I understand them." They can only speak "for me." They can only "listen to the American people," not "tell them what to think."

• State Sen. Al Melvin's SB 1548, which would create a Nuclear Recycling Public School Fund, passed out of the Commerce and Energy Committee on a 5-1 vote. The legislation calls for the the federal government to pay to build a nuclear-recycling facility, which would be run by the feds, the state and a private entity. The feds would pay the state to recycle the nuclear fuel, with the proceeds going to a fund that would pay for schools, reducing the need for education dollars in the state's general fund. So all you folks who want a dedicated funding source for education: Melvin, a Republican who represents Oro Valley and Catalina Foothills, wants to give you one that glows in the dark.

• SB 1545, which is Melvin’s effort to claim nuclear fuel mined and used in Arizona is not subject to federal regulation, was taken off agenda in Commerce and Energy.

• HB 2077, which would require federal regulators to register and pay fees to county sheriffs, passed out of the House Military Affairs and Public Safety Committee today on a 6-3 vote. The bill also requires sheriffs to alert the targets of an investigation that the federal regulators were in town and requires that any fines leveled by the federal government be claimed by the state.