Here's an exchange between Republican John Kavanagh and Democrat Kyrsten Sinema that gives some insight into where legislative Republicans and Democrats are coming from on the health-care debate in Phoenix.

The tax package that would cut taxes on Arizona's wealthiest residents and businesses and increase taxes on homeowners is scheduled for a hearing in the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday, April 7.

Senate President Bob Burns had previously stalled the bill, which is expected to cost the state $942 million in tax revenue once it's fully implemented.

The latest dispatch from Sierra Club lobbyist Sandy Bahr:

“You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.”
— Lyndon B. Johnson

April 2, 2010

Hi everyone! As if the Legislature has not done enough damage or introduced enough ridiculous, senseless, and truly harmful legislation for one session, it is now taking a second crack at it by pushing a plethora of strike-everything amendments. Remember these are the amendments that completely gut a bill and replace it with something different and many times unrelated. It is a way that dead bills are revived and a way to jam something through at the last minute, so no one reads it too carefully. It seldom results in good legislation.

SB1200 NOW: game and fish commission; recommendation board (Nelson) was just transmitted to Governor Brewer, so please contact her again and ask her to veto it. This bill limits the Governor’s ability to make appointments to Game and Fish by limiting who she can appoint, ensures that the larger public will have no role in wildlife management, and codifies in law the good ol’ boy system. It sets up the Arizona Game and Fish Commission appointment recommendation board, which is made up of narrowly defined hunting organizations, one member of the public, and one rancher. The purpose of this board is to interview

Written by Alec Nielson/ArizonaNewsService.com

PHOENIX—After some false starts—and a recent near-death experience—a ban on texting behind the wheel faces one final hurdle in the Arizona Legislature.

If the legislation passes and Gov. Jan Brewer signs it, Arizona will join 20 states and the District of Columbia in barring drivers from sending a text message, peeking at an e-mail or updating their Facebook status on the move. Some cities, including Phoenix, also ban texting while driving.

But few places have had such a tough time getting a ban passed, and the Arizona House is a considerable obstacle.

Sen. Al Melvin, R-Tucson, one of the main sponsors of the legislation, said the public supports it but the outcome in the House remains uncertain.

Rep. Steve Farley, D-Tucson, the other main sponsor, agrees.

"The road will be difficult in the House, no doubt, but I remain optimistic that common sense will win out in the end," Farley said.

Sandy Bahr of the Sierra Club sends us this dispatch:

“The long fight to save wild beauty represents democracy at its best. It requires citizens to practice the hardest of virtues—self-restraint." —Edwin Way Teale.

Hi everyone! That whole self-restraint concept is lost on the majority in each house of the Arizona Legislature as they pass bill after bill that will harm our state, its people, and its air, water, and wildlife. What is up with that anyway? There have been few years in the time I have been following the antics of the legislature where I have seen such a collection of truly terrible bills advance, the way they are this year. And speaking of truly terrible bills . . . .

SB1200 NOW: game and fish commission; recommendation board (Nelson) passed out of the House on Thursday 36-19-5 and is on its way to the Governor. Please contact Governor Brewer and ask her to veto SB1200. Yes, it is a long-shot, but giving up is just not an option. This bill ensures that the larger public will have no role in wildlife management and codifies in law the good ol’ boy system. It sets up the Arizona Game and Fish Commission appointment recommendation board, which is made up of narrowly defined hunting organizations, one member of the public, and one rancher. The purpose of this board is to interview Game and Fish Commission candidates and make recommendations to the Governor — she/he has to pick a commissioner from among those recommendations. Any candidate for Game and Fish will have to pass this group’s litmus tests.

You can contact Governor Brewer by calling her at

As we note in this feature story, our state legislators have filed more than 1,200 bills and a bunch more resolutions and memorials, ranging from a bill that provides new ways to hassle anyone who looks like an illegal immigrant to a resolution praising the Chicago Cubs for continuing to hold spring training games in Mesa.

How can you, as a good citizen, keep track of all of this? Well, we’re going to make it easy by highlighting some of the most interesting bills and following them at the Arizona Blogislature, a brand-new feature here on The Range. We’ll also be bringing you update in our dead-tree edition as space and circumstances warrant.

Between now and Sine Die, we’ll follow these key bills as they fight for survival through the perilous committee process, battling everything from strikers to the COW challenge in their race for the governor’s desk.

The NRA got most of its agenda through the Legislature last year—reforms like allowing guns into bars, for example, or allowing you to brandish your weapon if you felt threatened in some way.
But there are still some things that stand between you and total gun freedom. One of them is Arizona’s law regarding concealed weapons, which requires you to take an eight-hour class on gun safety to get a permit to carry a hidden gun. (You can carry a gun openly in Arizona without a permit.)

Evidently, requiring any sort of gun-safety training is a terrible infringement on our God-given rights. Senate Bill 1108 and House Bill 2347, identical bills which are both up for a vote of the House and Senate on Monday, March 29, eliminate any kind of criminal penalty for carry a concealed weapon.

• HB 2148 puts married couples ahead of single persons and gay couples when it comes to legally adopting children in Arizona. The bill, sponsored by a crew of Republican lawmakers, passed the House passed the House of Representatives on Tuesday, Feb. 23 and passed the Senate Public Safety and Human Services Committee on March 17. It's headed for the full Senate.

Christopher Conover of KUAT-TV's Arizona Illustrated gives us an update of how the federal health-care plan creates a big hole in the state budget that was approved last week because the state will be obligated to continue to provide health-care coverage to kids and poor people. Watch it after the jump.

Well, Republicans were warned that they were jumping the gun by cutting the services. Even without the new federal plan, it was a boneheaded move that was going to result in the loss of more than $1.5 billion in federal matching funds, hurt hospitals and insurance companies, and cause massive job losses in the health-care industry, which is one of the few sectors of the economy that had increased jobs in recent years.

Meanwhile, Howie reports that rather than deal with this colossal misstep, Gov. Jan Brewer wants to play political games in the courts. This week's special session isn't set to deal with the problem of restoring KidsCare; it's to establish the ability to file suit against the feds because Attorney General Terry Goddard won't take the case:

In the interim, time is limited: The budget Brewer signed into law earlier this month eliminates the Kids Care program which provides nearly free health insurance for children of the “working poor,” effective June 15. That’s designed to save $18 million.

The federal legislation, however, spells out that any state which reduces its current health programs below current levels immediately forfeits the right to future health care dollars from Washington.

Gubernatorial press aide Paul Senseman said Brewer won’t ask lawmakers to fund that $18 million now, wanting to wait to see if

You may have heard that state Rep. Daniel Patterson (D-Tucson) was removed from his seat on the House Committee on Military Affairs and Public Safety earlier this month.

Well, we at Tucson Weekly TV have tracked down the video for your viewing pleasure, so you can see first-hand the terse March 17 exchange between Patterson and Sen. Russell Pierce. The two were discussing SB 1027, a pilot program which would install small seismic sensors to detect illegal border crossers.

As an aside, if a Joe Biden gaffe can sell T-shirts, than these gems from the video can too:

I made the case for government funding for the arts on Arizona Illustrated last night. Watch it after the jump.

Thomas Betlach, the director of the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, has some bad news for Gov. Jan Brewer: The estimated cost of the new health-care reform package for the state of Arizona is $11.6 billion over between fiscal years 2011 and 2020.

In a statement, Brewer called the costs "staggering."

That cost includes restoring the huge cuts to AHCCCS and KidsCare that lawmakers made earlier this month to balance the budget. That funding has to be restored, according to Betlach's analysis, in order to remain eligible for federal Medicare funding.

Arizona is a victim of the generosity of voters, who expanded health-care coverage to everyone below the federal poverty level with the Healthy Arizona initiative in 2000. Had voters not expanded coverage, the additional costs to the state would have been roughly $860 million less a year, according to Betlach.

Read Betlach's analysis yourself here.