As we mentioned in this week's cover story, Brewer has wants to introduce more competition into the Arizona school system by instituting a plan that gives schools that get higher test scores and improve their academic performance a boost in state funding. Critics say it would result in schools with struggling students—often at the bottom end of the economic ladder—having fewer resources to help the kids who need it most.

Brewer's plan has been turned into SB 1444, which creates a complex formula for state school funding based on academic performance. SB 1444 passed the Senate Appropriations on Tuesday, Feb. 26. Next stop: The obligatory Rules Committee hearing and then it's off to the Senate floor.

Julia Tylor of Cronkite News tells us that SB 1242, one of our Bills To Watch this session, has stalled awaiting a hearing in the Senate Finance Committee:

PHOENIX — When Alexis Bristor graduates from Arizona State University in December with a degree in film and media production, she plans to pack her bags and head straight to Hollywood.

“There’s a few editing places around Arizona, but they aren’t really doing the kind of things I want to do with my career,” Bristor said. “They’re usually focusing on family films or promotional videos kind of a thing for local companies and stuff like that, whereas I want to be making films.”

This mindset is part of what prompted Sen. Al Melvin, R-Tucson, to author SB 1242, which would create an income tax credit for companies that produce multimedia in Arizona. The goal of the legislation, Melvin said, is making Arizona more competitive with other states that offer similar tax incentives, thus enticing graduates of Arizona’s film schools to stay.

“Our universities have great programs in the field, as well as our junior colleges,” Melvin told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Energy and Military earlier this month. “All we’re trying to do here is level the playing field with New Mexico and other states that are competing with us.”

Bethany Barnes of Arizona-Sonora News Service reports on a state bill to fund programs for mental-health first aid, a program that has been championed by Congressman Ron Barber at the federal level.

Two Tucson lawmakers are hoping their bipartisan bill will help Arizonans be more attune to the mental health needs of their community.

HB 2570 passed out of the House Appropriations Committee Wednesday and would take $250,000 from the general fund to expand the Arizona Department of Health Services’ Mental Health First Aid program.

The program runs 12-hour training sessions to help the public to understand and assist people with mental illness. The training is often free and is similar to taking a CPR class, according to the Department of Health Services’ website.

The Tucson Police Department came out in support of the bill. TPD Sgt. Jim Kirk compared the program to neighborhood watch efforts, which he said were a great help when he was a burglary sergeant.

The bill came out of conversations that the bill's sponsors, Rep. Ethan Orr (R-Tucson) and Rep. Victoria Steele (D-Tucson), had when running against one another. Orr and Steele both live less than a mile from the Safeway where former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot. The two started talking and realized what they had in common, Orr said.

Rep. John Kavanagh (R-Fountain Hills) said he was pleased to hear the bill, noting that it “is a critical part of the overall education process,” that is needed for mental health.

Kavanagh said the bill pairs nicely with two of his own bills, HB 2555 AND HB 2618, both of which have passed out of committee.

Bethany Barnes of Arizona-Sonora News Service reports on a bill to that would have required a notarized signature in order to receive an early ballot:

One person’s safeguard is another person’s hurdle.

The motives of a bill that would require a notarized signature to get on the Permanent Early Voting List were called into question in Thursday’s House Judiciary Committee.

HB 2350 died in committee (though the idea could still pop up in another form during the session) after a tense talk that was cut short by the committee’s chair.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Carl Seel, R-Phoenix, asserts that notarized signatures are the equivalent of the I.D. check at the polls.

Rep. Lupe Contreras, D-Avondale, thinks Seel isn’t looking to reduce fraud as much as he is the Latino vote.

“I think it is a red herring, quite honestly, to throw the race card out there,” Seel said.

Contreras questioned why fraud needed to be addressed now. Seel pointed that more people are voting early. Contreras pointed out that many of those voters are Latinos.

Contreras said he would rather the bill be called what it is, to which Seel asked if Contreras thought the bill implied some “characteristic of race.”

“Yes, in every way shape or form. Yeah,” Contreras said.

It was at this point that committee chairman Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, intervened. Farnsworth told Contreras he was out of line. He then held the bill, saying it didn’t have the votes.

Member’s concerns about the bill varied.

• Photo courtesy Dani Moore
• "My tiny little rats are certainly much less disruptive than a miniature horse would be," said Dani Moore, who uses the rats to alert her to when she is having spasms.

Bethany Barnes of Arizona-Sonora News Service looks at a proposal to limit what kinds of service animals will be allowed in Arizona restaurants:

The Arizona Restaurant Association is aiming to take some of the guesswork out of who’s coming to dinner.

While it hasn’t quite been “lions, tigers and bears,” it has been “parrots, ferrets and squirrels,” according to restaurant owners, who say Arizona’s loose definition of service animal is resulting in service animal shams all over the state.

So the restaurant association is backing HB 2401, which passed out of the House Health Committee on Wednesday. The bill would align the definition more closely with the federal definition, which was narrowed in 2011.

The designation of service animal would go to the dogs—and a few miniature horses—that can perform a task to help someone with a disability. This would exclude comfort animals, which aren’t allowed at the federal level either, though people are allowed to have an animal that helps with psychiatric conditions, if the animal is trained to perform a task.

As it stands now, any animal in Arizona can be claimed as a service animal and there’s very little anyone can say about it.

For whatever reason, said Roxane Nielsen, co-owner of the Prescott Brewing Company, more people seem to believe their dogs have the right to go anywhere.

Bethany Barnes of Arizona-Sonora News Service reports on a bill that would criminalize get-out-the-vote efforts that collect early ballots and turn them in at the polls on Election Day:

Turning in your neighbor’s early ballot for them could get you some jail time if Senate Bill 1003 goes anywhere, though you’d be unlikely to raise any poll workers’ eyebrows unless you offered to bring in all of your neighbors’ ballots.

SB 1003, sponsored by Michele Reagan (R-LD 23), passed through the Senate Elections Committee on Tuesday. The bill would make it a class 5 felony to return an early ballot for someone who isn’t a close relation or housemate.

The bill is targeted at people showing up at the polls with massive amounts of ballots, but volunteers from organizations, like the Mi Familia Vota Education Fund, argued that the bill would hurt their efforts to educate and increase turnout from minority and elderly voters.

Volunteers testified that they gain the trust of those who don’t trust the mail, remind the forgetful, and energize the apathetic.

Sometimes this means fishing ballots out of trashcans and scraping salsa off them, one woman testified.

Bethany Barnes of Arizona-Sonora News Service rounds up the various proposals on gun violence in schools at the Arizona Legislature:

Arizona lawmakers may agree they’ve had enough when it comes to gun violence in schools, but agreeing on what will be enough — if anything — to protect students is trickier.

Even if they manage to agree, the money just isn’t there. It’s a problem compounded by the fact that Arizona is giving its curriculum a costly makeover.

At most, school safety funding will probably inch closer to what used to be the status quo.

Here’s a round up of some of the plans so far.

THE GOVERNOR’S APPROACH:

Gov. Jan Brewer’s plan seeks $3.6 million for the Department of Education’s school resource officer program. This would bring the program’s total funding to $11.4 million. The program’s highest level of funding was $15.5 million. Brewer’s plan would add 80-or-so officers to the current 104, according to the Department of Education. That’s a far cry from the number needed to provide armed guards at each of Arizona’s more than 1,700 schools.

John Huppenthal, the state superintendent of public instruction, said Brewer’s plan doesn’t cut it. It’s “woefully inadequate,” he wrote in an email. Such scant funding, he wrote, would make it, “impossible to fairly determine the few that would be best served by a resource officer.”

REP. CHAD CAMPBELL'S PROPOSAL:

Campbell, D-Phoenix, has the plan that promises the most but faces the greatest odds.

He thinks a lot of things need to come together in order to protect schools.

His HB 2374 asks for more school resource officers, doubles the number of counselors, requires and pays for schools to do a threat assessment and creates a safety fund that would allow schools to get cash for their individual safety needs.

Arizona-Sonora News Service Legislative Reporter Bethany Barnes sends us the following dispatch from yesterday's Senate Public Safety Committee hearing:

Arizona may have the best weather for motorcyclists, but it doesn’t matter if you can ride year-round when you keep getting hassled by The Man.

Rollin Knights Motorcycle Club member Billy “Rooster” Lockedy, 35, is hoping the passing of SB 1086 out of the Senate Public Safety Committee will make the weather a little easier to enjoy.

Bikers from all over the state swarmed the Capitol for the hearing of a bill that would require police to be trained to not profile motorcyclists.

The hearing room was so packed people trickled out into the hallway.

Testimony was limited because of the number of people wanting to speak. Those who did shouted (the microphones were broken, to the audience’s chagrin) stories about hour-long traffic stops, being held at gunpoint with no idea why, and watching a drug-sniffing dog bite a fellow rider.

On the opposing side was Lyle Mann, executive director of the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board.