The Arizona Republic's Laurie Roberts sizes up the Arizona Legislature:

Our leaders are obsessed with the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution yet strangely uninterested in Article 11, Section 10 of the Arizona Constitution - the part that says the Legislature must improve and properly maintain public schools. Or Article 11, Section 6, the part that says a college education "shall be as nearly free as possible."

But not to worry. We've got legalized sparklers now and a ban on making mermaids, and though you soon may not be able to get a good education under your belt, you can tuck an Uzi down your pants any time.

If Arizona was a runaway train, we'd be entering the trestle bridge and about to pitch headfirst over the edge and into the gorge.

And what are our leaders doing? When they're not finding new ways to stick it to the poor and the mentally ill and everybody's favorite target, the illegal immigrant, they're back in one of the boxcars, working on a bill that gives you the right to seize a city bus if anybody stops you from bringing a gun into a government building.

In his latest Farley Report, Rep. Steve Farley explains his call for an eye-popping 300 percent tax on medical marijuana:

Another one of my bills, HB2557, has received a lot of attention from many of my friends who don't agree with the concept — perhaps including many of you. But I want you to understand clearly where I am going with this before you decide that I've gone off the deep end with this.

HB2557, which has five Republican and eight Democratic co-sponsors, seeks to tax the sales of Medical Marijuana (MM) at 300%. That could bring in as much as $1.8 billion a year, enough to preserve health care for everyone in poverty (as voters intended in Prop 204), restore our education cuts, restore transplant services, boost our economy, and pay off our massively increasing debt load. 300% is roughly the level at which we currently tax cigarettes, and it is roughly equivalent to the markup that dispensaries will take as profits for the sale of MM. A $2 joint would cost $8. Money could also be used to inspect the quality and safety of MM, something that is not currently going to happen.

Sandy Bahr, the legislative lobbyist for Arizona's Sierra Club chapter, sends out a weekly update:

Hello all! We knew it was too good to be true and that they would find a few ways to try and undermine environmental protections. This coming week, they will begin to move bills in earnest and, so far, there is not too much to like. Of particular concern are bills aimed at water jurisdiction. We need Clean Water Protection for Arizona’s rivers and streams, intermittent and ephemeral, which provide the lifeblood for arid land. We must keep strong protections in place. Ask members of the Committee on Water, Land Use and Rural Development to vote no on the following bills, both of which are geared toward weakening Clean Water Act protections:

SCR1015 jurisdiction over intrastate waters (Allen: Antenori, Biggs, et al) refers to the ballot a proposed constitutional amendment to ensure that the Clean Water Act does not apply to most of Arizona’s waters. It states there is no jurisdiction to nonnavigable intrastate waters, which includes many of our rivers, streams, washes, etc. This is a very bad idea as Clean Water Act protection is critical

• Sen. Al Melvin (R)

Democrat Cheryl Cage, who lost to Melvin by fewer than 2,000 votes in 2008, is looking for a rematch and hopes that Melvin’s conservative voting record will help carry her to victory in one of Arizona’s few swing districts, which reaches from the Catalina Foothills to Pinal County’s Saddlebrooke. Republicans have a roughly seven percentage point lead in voter registration over Democrats in the district, but nearly 30 percent of voters in LD26 are registered Independent or other.

Republican Sen. Al Melvin's Web site here

Democrat Cheryl Cage's Web site here

House

Incumbent Rep. Vic Williams, who was first elected in 2008 and served

• Sen. Alvarez (D) Efrida

Senate
Democratic incumbent Sen. Manuel "Manny" Alvarez, a pistachio farmer from Efrida who has represented Legislative District 25 since winning a House seat in 2002, will fight to keep his seat in this humungous, five-county swing district stretching along the Arizona/Mexico border from east of Yuma to the southeast corner of the state. The multi-cultural district includes military families in Sierra Vista, the residents of border towns such as Nogales and Douglas, Marana suburbanites and Native American tribal members on the Tohono O’odham Nation.

About four out of 10 voters identify as Democrats and about three out of 10 identify as Republicans. But even though Dems have a registration edge, one of the district's two House seats is held by a Republican, which gives the GOP hope that they can knock out Alvarez and put another of the state's 30 Senate seats in the Republican column.

Two GOP candidates are vying for the chance to take on Alvarez: Gail Griffin, a real-estate agent and

The Sierra Club has finished grading state lawmakers. To no great surprise, Sierra Club lobbyist Sandy Bahr was dismayed by the session:

It has often been stated relative to the Arizona Legislature, “It cannot possibly get any worse.” Well, it can, and it did. The 2010 Arizona Legislative Session will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the worst for Arizona’s natural resources. While a tough economy certainly meant there would be some hits and tough decisions, much of what was done this session was unnecessary and unwise and will harm Arizona’s future.

Local Democrats got A's; local Republicans got F's.

You can find the entire report card here.

Here's Bahr's entire press release:

Voting is open in the Arizona Capitol Times' Best of the Capitol survey. I encourage you to vote for my brother, Doug Nintzel of the Arizona Department of Transportation, as Best Government PR Person. Details here.

Howie Fischer talks about the recently wrapped legislative session with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air. Listen to it here.

A funny moment: Gross wonders whether these bills that Gov. Jan Brewer had signed would have been vetoed by Democrat Janet Napolitano. Gross asks: "Is there a big shift going on in Arizona? A shift since Janet Napolitano left?"

Some thoughts on HB 2617 from Robert Wick, one of the owners of Wick Communications, the Tucson Weekly's parent company:

This is a very hard time to find environmental protection in Arizona, between a Legislature that cares little about it, and Gov. Jan Brewer, who has been signing almost anything that hits her desk that caters to what she perceives as her electorate.

She recently protected the rights of Arizona citizens from being regulated for greenhouse gas emissions, as if this were the right to bear arms. It seems clear to those of us in the endangered political center of either party that you protect the environment to protect the population that, for the most part, came to Arizona because of the environment. Economic growth depends on that tenet.

We fear that she is about to sign another bill that is a blatant environmental attack on water quality, HB 2617, the mining amendment bill. The bill will prohibit Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) from regulating mines any more stringently than the federal government. This would halt future programs that control the first mine pollutants that hit drinking water before others—like sulfate regulation in Green Valley. Sound good? It would set up an industry controlled committee to "advise" state agencies on how to implement mining environmental regulations. HB 2617 will allegedly "streamline" permitting of new mining so that what few ADEQ employees are left will feel the heat of cigar smoking industry lobbyists.

It’s pretty hard to see where it saves jobs. Copper is certainly a necessary mineral, but mining employment, to date, has depended on the price of copper, efficiency of production, and technology used to get metals desired out of the ground. Copper employment in Arizona provides a tiny percentage of our jobs and tax-base statewide, and it has left piles of pollution that poison Arizona’s water, along with pits and shafts.

Definitely mining is important! It is just that in 2050, this state is projected to have more than 15 million people, and the demand for clean water and air will be eminent.

We plead with the governor to step back and think about her citizens and the water they drink and the air that they breathe. Veto HB 2617, and work to pass legislation that protects the environment and reflects the wishes of all of us in this state.