Wednesday, January 12, 2022
Ducey is still the governor, and still not in charge of the border … Start your own police force … Anyway, let’s go!
Gov. Doug Ducey declared yesterday that “Arizona schools are open and they will remain open.”
But as schools welcome children back following a winter break where many gathered and traveled, they’re finding that staying open amid a once-again surging pandemic, often without relying on masks to help curb the spread, is difficult and requires a lot of stop-gaps.
Perhaps the best measure of the struggle to keep schools open is substitute teachers — the poor souls who keep 30 screaming children in line on a moment’s notice when a teacher gets sick. Without them, all hell breaks loose.
But after nearly two years of pandemic-ing, many of the state’s underpaid, under-appreciated and generally mistreated substitutes have finally had enough, the Republic’s Yana Kunkchoff and Megan Taros report. When you have to find substitutes for the substitutes, you’re in trouble.
Meanwhile, thousands of kids are getting sick as the vastly more transmissible omicron variant rips through schools (though only 54 Arizona kids have died from COVID-19), KJZZ’s Rocio Hernandez writes. Only 29 percent of Arizona kids under 19 have received at least one shot of the vaccine.
And kids, who can no longer turn off the webcam for a quick break, are having a hard time adjusting to returning to real classes. School officials say kids are showing more aggressive behaviors and shorter attention spans, the Daily Star’s Genesis Lara writes.
While teachers and school administrators generally don’t want to return to remote learning, many schools literally can’t afford to because of the way school funding formulas limit remote learning, Kunichoff explains.
But if politicians demand schools stay open, the least they can do is ensure that everyone, including students who can’t receive vaccinations, feels as safe as possible at school. And they can acknowledge that “open” doesn’t always make for better learning, as one student in New York shared a few days ago.
Tuesday, January 11, 2022
Democrats and public school advocates said Gov. Doug Ducey had two glaring holes in his final State of the State speech on Monday: funding for public schools and COVID-19.
“If we truly want Arizona to be unstoppable, our priority should be increasing education attainment,” said Education Forward Arizona spokeswoman Shannon Sowby, referencing Ducey’s slogan for the speech, #AZUnstoppable. “Increasing our attainment rate to the national average would generate over $7B for Arizona’s economy.”
School funding should be a priority issue, said Senate Minority Leader Rebecca Rios, given that schools will face up to $1.2 billion in budget cuts on March 1 without legislative action. That means a drastic reduction in per pupil expenditures — an average of $1,300 per student.
Ducey committed to keeping schools open and increasing school choice. For many, this ignored key issues facing a struggling education system.
Ducey declared schools would not be closed, despite the ongoing and worsening COVID-19 pandemic which has risen to record levels as the omicron variant has swept the state.
The governor lauded Arizona’s status as the number one state for school choice and promised to continue providing alternatives for poor and minority students stuck in “failing” schools.
Gov. Doug Ducey vowed to use state resources to increase border security, spend a billion dollars to treat and transport water from the Sea of Cortez, expand school choice and continue lowering taxes as he laid out a wide-ranging agenda for his last year in office.
In his eighth and final State of the State address on Monday, Ducey took a victory lap, highlighting his accomplishments from the past seven years, including 2021, which he called “one for the record books.” But his last year won’t be a quiet one, he said.
“I have a hard time stopping to celebrate victory. It was true at Cold Stone, and it’s been true in the public square,” Ducey said, referencing his time as the head of Cold Stone Creamery. “So, naturally, after we signed the budget, I told my staff: ‘In 2022, we’re going to top all of this.’ And so we’ve been hard at work to make this a banner year.”
Last year, Ducey signed a billion-dollar tax cut, fulfilling a pledge from his first gubernatorial campaign in 2014 to reduce the state’s income tax rate to as close to zero as possible. And with the state sitting on a multi-billion-dollar surplus, Ducey said the state will cut taxes once again rather than appease the “spending lobby.”
Still, the governor outlined some big-ticket budget items he wants to pursue this year, and none as big as his plans for water.
The state of the state is still strong ... Don't pull a David Gowan on us ... And Jan Brewer meets a former nemesis
Nothing exemplifies the Ducey administration like the governor screaming “WE WILL CUT TAXES!”
And scream Gov. Doug Ducey did at yesterday’s eighth and final State of the State speech, which Team Ducey billed as a policy-heavy forward-looking final address, but which felt more like a final victory lap touting old policies with and a few new promises sprinkled in.
Perhaps the most significant proposal came at the end of the speech: Sticking $1 billion in the Drought Mitigation Fund over the next three years and a vague promise of building a desalination plant in Mexico. (Not to mention an issue near and dear to our hearts: Speeding up the Interstate 10 widening project.)
The smaller policy proposals Ducey touted include: paying off more debt and “topping off” the state’s rainy day fund; making his regulation-cutting executive orders law; waiving in-state college tuition for military spouses; banning (again) teaching Critical Race Theory in schools; putting all K-12 curriculum online for review; expanding school choice generally; a pay raise for state troopers; increasing the foster stipend for caretakers who are relatives; and banning counties from charging rape victims processing fees for testing rape kits.And in case you were wondering how excited I was to hear Gov. @dougducey mention my work on I-10 expansion and the how it would be sped up, here you go! #LD08 @PinalCounty @CGDispatch @CityOfCG pic.twitter.com/nkDW66dakB
— T.J. Shope (@TJShopeforAZ) January 10, 2022
Rounding out the governor’s big agenda items for the year are a summer school program to get students up to speed on math, reading and American civics (of all things) and border security. The border security portion of his agenda is multifaceted, including funding for border counties to prosecute human smugglers, building a wall with Mexico on lands “where Arizona can,” (of which there ain’t much) and teaming up with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to create a “American Governor’s Border Strike Force” with the goal of patrolling and securing the border. As with much of this, the details were scarce.
Monday, January 10, 2022
With near-record COVID-19 caseloads and hospitalizations driven by the highly infectious omicron variant sweeping Arizona, the state legislature will convene today, Jan. 10, with almost no restrictions in place aimed at limiting spread of the virus at the Capitol.
Neither the House of Representatives nor the Senate will require masks. Plastic shields that had been constructed around lawmakers’ desks have been dismantled, and there will be no social distancing requirements.
“Our goal is business as usual, with a few additions,” said Kim Quintero, a spokeswoman for Senate President Karen Fann and the Senate Republican caucus.
The only notable difference from pre-pandemic times will be that some legislators will be allowed to vote remotely — but only from their legislative offices at the Capitol, and only if they have a doctor’s note.
House Speaker Rusty Bowers told the Arizona Mirror that legislators who can’t come to the Capitol because they are sick — or for any other reason — will not be able to vote remotely. The Senate is implementing a similar rule, Quintero said.
And in both chambers, lawmakers who are authorized to vote remotely won’t be able to participate in debates or discussions about legislation.
The lack of COVID-19 mitigation efforts outraged Rep. Athena Salman, a Tempe Democrat who is pregnant. She wrote on Twitter Friday morning that her due date is Jan. 11 — the second day of the legislative session — and blamed Bowers for ignoring her request to work remotely and then eliminating the possibility for all lawmakers.
“What I’m asking for isn’t anything new. Had I given birth last year, health protocols the Speaker adopted would have guaranteed protection for me & my baby. But GOP leadership—comprised of only men—have decided to play political games with the life of me & my future child,” she wrote on Twitter.
The changes stand in stark contrast to last year, when the state was facing record high COVID-19 caseloads and vaccine deployment only in its earliest stages last year and the legislature restricted public access, required facemasks and temperature checks, and allowed robust remote participation from both elected officials and the public.
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We’re heading down to the Capitol today to tempt fate with unmasked, anti-vax lawmakers who were recently freed from their individual Plexiglas partitions and basically any other precautions against the surging virus to watch Gov. Doug Ducey deliver his eighth and final State of the State speech.
Most sober assessments of the upcoming legislative session have a common theme: It’s gonna be long and torturous.
The Republic’s conservative columnist Robert Robb, for example, predicts a long session full of “misery and dismay” on several fronts: The outstanding budget-related court cases and excess cash mean budgeting will be a slow-moving nightmare, while the election sideshow and the looming election will interject more stupidity and dysfunction and cause the session to go longer than usual. (He mercifully didn’t even mention all the new lawmakers who have no idea how any of this works.)
“I hear people say that 2022 can’t be as bad as 2021. Please don’t say that. The zeitgeist may regard it as a challenge,” Robb wrote.
But Ducey is in no hurry. As a lame duck governor, today’s speech (and more broadly, this entire year) will serve as his last chance to brag about his accomplishments in the past seven years. Expect to hear a lot about the economy and the contrast to when he took office.
Lawmakers are still fixated on the 2020 elections and the Senate’s shambolic audit and are drafting all sorts of doomed proposals to Make Voting Great Again."I love the long sessions," @dougducey says when asked about the prospect of a long legislative session. "Governors don't sine die."
— Mary Jo Pitzl (@maryjpitzl) January 7, 2022
In many respects, it will be a backward-looking session — or as Capitol scribe Howie Fischer would say, a Groundhog Day session.
Friday, January 7, 2022
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Thursday warned of the dangers of a collapse of American democracy, standing in a historic chamber in the U.S. Capitol that was besieged by an angry mob of pro-Trump supporters who attempted to halt the certification of the 2020 presidential election.
“We are in the battle for the soul of America,” Biden said during a somber and strongly worded speech in Statuary Hall to mark the first anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
“This was an armed insurrection,” he said. “They weren’t looking to uphold the will of the people.”
Biden stressed that the way forward for the nation to recover from the attack is to “recognize the truth and to live by it.”
“We must be absolutely clear what is true and what is a lie,” he said. “And here’s the truth: The former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election. He’s done so because he values power over principle.”
Without citing former President Donald Trump by name, Biden noted that rioters threatened the life of the speaker of the House, and were “literally erecting gallows” to hang the vice president as they rampaged through the Capitol and battled police.
Trump, Biden said, sat in the dining room just off the Oval Office at the White House, “watching it all on television and doing nothing for hours.”
Biden said that Americans should not let Jan. 6 mark the end of democracy, and it instead should spur a renaissance period of protecting the ballot through congressional action.
“Deep in the heart of America burns a flame lit almost 200 years ago,” he said. “Here in America, the people rule through the ballot, and their will prevails.”
As lawmakers and Gov. Doug Ducey prepare for the start of the 2022 legislative session, the Arizona Supreme Court provided a simple blueprint for how not to craft their budgets.
The lesson is simple: Don’t include laws in the state budget that don’t actually have anything to do with the funding in the state budget.
On Thursday, the court issued its full opinion on its unanimous ruling from November that struck down substantial portions of last year’s state budget on the grounds that the bills violated a provision of the Arizona Constitution known as the single-subject rule. That provision requires the bills that the legislature passes to encompass a single subject, and for the bill’s title to provide adequate notice about what subjects it pertains to. The provision is intended to prevent a practice known as “logrolling,” in which lawmakers are forced to vote for something they oppose in order to pass another law they support.
Four budget bills were struck down in whole or in part, which scrapped dozens of new laws covering a wide variety of disparate subjects, including banning public schools from requiring face masks or vaccinations to combat COVID-19, prohibiting the teaching of “critical race theory” in K-12 schools, imposing new requirements for security measures in ballots, changing to dog racing and harness racing permitting requirements, stripping the secretary of state of authority over the state Capitol museum and of her ability to defend the state election laws in court, and changing the state’s definition of what constitutes a newspaper so more publications can publish public notices.
Three of the budget bills that the Arizona School Boards Association challenged will stand, sans the provisions that failed to comply with the title requirement in the single-subject rule. One of the bills, described only as a budget reconciliation bill for “budget procedures,” was struck down in its entirety.
Justice John Lopez noted in the court’s opinion that the bill, Senate Bill 1819, contains 52 sections that cover 30 distinct subjects. Despite the state’s claim that “budget procedures” is a broad concept that covers a wide variety of topics, Lopez wrote that the challenged laws have no relation to the state budget and that they’re “devoid of any reference or significant to budget procedure.”
“Our conclusion is inescapable: SB 1819 contains an array of discordant subjects that are not reasonably connected to one general idea, and certainly not to budget procedures,” Lopez wrote.
Thursday, January 6, 2022
Rep. Tom O'Halleran: Jan. 6 Insurrection "Showed Us the Power that Lies and Division Can Truly Have"
On this day one year ago, I sat on the Floor of the House of Representatives preparing to speak in support of the validity of Arizona’s election results when armed insurrectionists breached the Capitol and staff and members were rushed from the chambers. All around me I saw people running, calling out to friends, and doing what they could to help one another, their faces full of fear.
But no fear bothered me so deeply as the alarm I saw in our Capitol Police Officers’ eyes. As a former police officer and homicide detective, I’ve seen and felt fear myself. The hardworking men and women of the force sworn to protect and serve the U.S. Capitol, members, and staff knew they were under attack. They were being brutally beaten, were committing heroic and selfless acts to keep us safe, and were, quite literally, holding the line to protect our democracy.
Their faces are what I remembered most vividly when we learned later that a brave officer was lost to the violence of the day and four more to suicide later, with 140 suffering physical injuries and far more from injuries invisible. The numbers are unbelievable, unacceptable.
Among loss of life, trauma, and a nation shaken, the events of January 6, 2021, showed us the power that lies and division can truly have.
The work of the former president and his allies to undermine faith in our election process by attempting to mislead the American public only served to weaken us and make us vulnerable to foreign actors who would do us harm.
But we can heal from this, and indeed we have begun to do so. We certified the 2020 election results, have worked to rebuild trust in our democratic systems, and must continue to protect the right to vote and the power of each American’s vote. We can only do this by working together—continuing to show up to the table, striving to understand one another, and putting aside partisan differences to improve the lives of all Americans.
Thus, as we reflect on the anniversary and the pain of this dark day, we must also think of the strength of what our nation can be—the unity we can work to build in our own communities that will create a wholly less divided America.
I am proud to be part of a Congress that resolved to reconvene as soon as possible on this day last year to finish what we started. We could not, and did not, let anything stop us from serving the American people and fulfilling our constitutional duty. I never will.
Congressman Tom O'Halleran represents Arizona's First Congressional District.
