The Bureau of Land Management (BLM)’s Lower Sonoran Field Office is once again seeking public comment where recreational target shooting should be allowed within the 486,400-acre Sonoran Desert National Monument, if it is allowed at all.
Tuesday’s notice of the call for public input begins a 30-day scoping period prompted by a court settlement earlier this year. The comments will be used to identify areas where recreational target shooting might continue to be offered. There will also need to be an environmental assessment.
“While we have preliminary alternatives for the environmental assessment, we expect that public scoping will generate more alternatives for us to consider,” said BLM’s Phoenix District Manager Leon Thomas. “This scoping period is an opportunity for the public to help guide land use decisions at the Sonoran Desert National Monument.”
Established in 2001, the Sonoran Desert National Monument is located on public lands in Maricopa and Pinal counties. About 435,700 of its acres are currently available for recreational target shooting.
In 2015, a federal judge ordered BLM to reanalyze the impacts of recreational target shooting on the SDNM. The led in August 2018 to the issuance of Record of Decision / Resource Management Plan amendment based on extensive public input and an updated environmental analysis to maintain access for target shooters throughout 90 percent of the SDNM while ensuring public safety and resource protection.
Much of the restrictions are centered on the Juan Batista de Anza recreation management zone, the most heavily area of SDNM.
However, a legal challenge to that decision was filed in 2019, leading to a settlement in April which requires a new round of planning.
There are also plans for BLM to conduct virtual public meetings. Those dates have not yet been announced.
The Sonoran Desert National Monument contains three distinct mountain ranges – the Maricopa, Sand Tank and Table Top Mountains – as well as the Booth and White Hills, all separated by wide valleys. The monument also contains three Congressionally designated wilderness areas and many significant archaeological and historic sites, and remnants of several important historic trails.
With nearly $7,000 becoming available for every K-12 student to attend a private school or be homeschooled through the recent expansion of Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs), the Arizona Department of Education’s website has been overwhelmed with parents seeking to apply.
The credit becomes available on Sept. 24 but the number of parents applying in advance has created issues for the Department of Education’s website. An advisory posted to the website this week noted “high volume” may cause users to receive an error message when trying to establish an account.
On Saturday, Ducey took to Twitter as word spread about the tremendous interest.
Parents are laying on the pressure! They want options and are excited about Arizona’s universal education savings accounts. https://t.co/aa10cKAufp
The ESA expansion legislation sponsored by Rep. Ben Toma provides families of all 1.1 million of Arizona’s K-12 students the option of allocating 90 percent of state funding which would have been allocated to the student’s district or charter school and have it be available for private school tuition, home-schooling, tutoring, and other educational needs such as transportation, textbooks, and computers.
Among the permitted expenditures for homeschoolers is the cost of specialized teachers for subjects such as foreign language, art, and music.
Homeschoolers can and do apply to this already. Originally it was only for people in D rated school zones. Now anyone who wants to homeschool can pull their tax dollars and use on curriculum and tutors and mentors etc. I know, I am a paid music teacher for a few families.
Ducey presided over a Aug. 17 ceremonial signing of HB2853. He later said making ESAs available to all of Arizona’s K-12 students was putting “the power back in the hands of parents, who are best suited to make decisions for their children’s education.”
Jenny Clark, founder of Love Your School, attended last week’s ceremony (Ducey actually signed HB2853 on July 7). Clark says Arizona’s ESA program can be life-changing for Arizona’s students.
“My five children have benefitted from ESAs and I can’t help but think how many kids don’t get the help they need,” Clark said. “Now, they will. Every child in Arizona will have the same opportunities and ability to get the education tailored to their needs.”
Corey A. DeAngelis of the Federation for Children was one of the stakeholders involved in ensuring passage of HB2853, calling it “a national model” that empowers parents. He too used Twitter to comment on what the high demand on the ADE website means.
“This is why the government school monopoly fights so hard against giving families a choice,” DeAngelis wrote. “They’re terrified. They know parents want alternatives.”
There is a very good chance Arizona voters will not see the proposed Arizona Fair Elections Act on their ballots in November now that a judge has kicked out tens of thousands of petition signatures.
On Thursday, Judge Joseph Mikitish of the Maricopa County Superior Court sided with arguments from the Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AFEC) that many of the petition sheets filed by a Democratic-backed committee trying to change Arizona elections laws had, in fact, failed to comply with current election laws.
In July, the committee submitted 47,690 petition sheets containing roughly 475,000 signatures in hopes of qualifying the Arizona Fair Elections Act for the 2022 General Election ballot. At least 237,645 signatures must be deemed valid once random-sampling verification is completed by the state’s 15 county recorders.
But AFEC filed a legal challenge which alleged more than 1,000 of the circulators who collected the signatures—representing one-half of the petitions—did so in violation of one or more of Arizona’s laws.
Mikitish released an order late Thursday agreeing with several of the 32 specific objections put forth by AFEC. The effect of the judge’s ruling is that nearly 97,000 signatures will be knocked off, which puts the Act in jeopardy as the verification process continues. With a typically high sampling rejection rate, there will likely be too few verified signatures to move the Act to the ballot.
“Based on the random sample that is currently being conducted, we believe they will fall short of the minimum to qualify for the ballot by more than 10,000,” according to AFEC President Scot Mussi.
In his ruling, Mikitish noted that Arizona law calls for the constitutional and statutory requirements imposed on initiative efforts to “be strictly construed.” He added that strict compliance is defined in case law as “nearly perfect compliance” even if there will be “harsh consequences” due to a seemingly small “unfortunate mistake.”
The judge held a two-day evidentiary hearing on Aug. 15-16 and received dozens of written arguments from the parties on whether the numerous challenged circulators complied with state law.
AFEC contends the provision of the proposed AFFE Act will “upend” Arizona’s election administration and voter registration laws, curtail current safeguards with the initiative and referendum process, and reduce candidate contribution limits while promoting more taxpayer subsidies to certain candidates.
Voters in the southern Sulphur Springs Valley will find out later this week whether they get to vote on the creation of a Douglas Groundwater Basin Active Management Area that will establish new regulations for the withdrawal and use of groundwater by private landowners across a large swath of Cochise County.
And the Douglas AMA initiative could make it on the 2022 general election ballot even if not enough verified, valid petition signatures were turned in, according to an argument put forth by the group which collected the signatures.
Judge Laura Cardinal will conduct a hearing Friday on a challenge by Rural Water Assurance to block the AMA initiative from the ballots of roughly 13,450 voters whose addresses fall within the boundary of the proposed Douglas AMA.
The city of Douglas as well as the agriculture-heavy communities of McNeal and Elfrida will be impacted if the Douglas AMA is approved, as will be a portion of the city of Bisbee and surrounding areas.
Proponents of the Douglas AMA contend unregulated pumping from large agricultural wells in central and southeastern Cochise County is depleting the aquifer. They are calling for several restrictions on groundwater use and irrigation which proponents claim are necessary to prevent harm to local residents who live in the area.
Critics like Rural Water Assurance, however, argue that an AMA interferes with private property rights in a number of ways. There will also be a loss of property value from newly implemented AMA-related restrictions placed on the use of the land, they argue, including a 100-year assured water supply certification required for subdivision development.
There is also concern that the push for a Douglas AMA comes at a time when southeast Arizona is expecting to see long-anticipated renewed economic activity thanks to Congressional plans to overhaul the current Douglas Port of Entry at the Mexico border.
But the issue before Cardinal will not be about the political arguments or water policy. Instead, she is being asked to rule whether Arizona Water Defenders submitted enough petition signature to get the AMA initiative on the upcoming ballot.
Part of what Cardinal must decide is whether it matters if those petition signatures are legitimate signatures of actual registered voters living within the boundaries of the proposed AMA. Or is a random sampling good enough.
Arizona Water Defenders needed at least 1,346 petition signatures to qualify for the ballot. The group submitted 2,271 signatures on July 6 and Cochise County Elections Director Lisa Marra later reported there were 1,683 valid signatures.
However, the process Marra used did not actually verify the validity of all of the signatures. Instead, a few dozen signatures were discounted immediately due to technical issues after which a random sample validation process was used.
This resulted in an extrapolated figure being provided by Marra without any verification if all of the presumed valid signatures were in fact valid.
In its election challenge, Rural Water Assurance argues Cardinal must disqualify nearly all of the submitted petition signatures as deficient for myriad reasons from mismatched voter signatures to signers not living within the proposed AMA boundaries.
A more crucial problem, the election challenge argues, is some of the 206 petition sheets did not include a completed circulator affidavit. That affidavit must be filled out by the person who circulated the petition to collect signatures.
With 10 signatures possible on each petition sheet, any petitions not properly circulated could result in a large number of disqualifications whether the voters’ signatures themselves are valid.
For its part, Arizona Water Defenders has asked Cardinal to dismiss the election challenge. The group argues that under current state law, it is legally irrelevant whether there is actually 1,346 verified petition signatures for getting the Douglas AMA initiative on the ballot.
The only important factor, according to the group’s attorney, is that Marra’s random-sampling calculation gave the group credit for more than the required number.
“There are no longer any remaining statutory requirements for the examination and verification of each signature of each petition by the Recorder,” attorney John A. MacKinnon argues in a motion to dismiss. “If the number of valid signatures as projected from the random sample equals or exceeds the minimum required number, the initiative is entitled to be on the ballot” under one of two statues.
The Cochise County Board of Supervisors and Cochise County Recorder David Stevens have been subpoenaed to court for Friday’s hearing, as has Marra and members of Arizona Water Defenders.
Arizona currently has five AMAs. The four located in Prescott, Phoenix, Pinal County, and Tucson where created by the Legislature. The fifth was approved by Santa Cruz County voters several years ago.
A pep rally type celebration was held Tuesday to help promote expansion of Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) for all K-12 students in Arizona.
“Today, we celebrate the signing of the most expansive school choice legislation in recent memory,” Ducey said during a ceremonial signing of House Bill 2853 which provides about $7,000 in education credits for every Arizona student to attend the K-12 public, private or charter school of their choice.
“Arizona is now the gold standard for educational freedom,” the governor said.
Arizona’s kids now have more educational opportunities than ever before — and now, the sky’s the limit for their exciting futures ahead. pic.twitter.com/yf0DFMScZ7
The expansion of ESAs under HB2853 was sponsored by House Majority Leader Ben Toma (R-Peoria) with the support of the Goldwater Institute. ESAs are paid out as scholarships for families to use for tuition and tutoring expenses as well as transportation, textbooks, computers, and other costs related to supporting a student’s educational needs.
Our kids will no longer be stuck in under-performing schools. We’re unlocking their educational potential and advancing a bold new era of learning opportunities. pic.twitter.com/HsJJd7F1oG
ESAs served roughly 100 Arizona students back in 2011. Last year that number was 11,000. But with HB2853 now in effect, all 1.1 million students at the K-12 level.
“This reform empowers parents weary of a one-size-fits-all approach to public education to customize their children’s schooling based on their unique needs,” Goldwater Institute President and CEO Victor Riches said when the law took effect. Riches added that Arizona families “deserve the right to choose the best education option for their children, regardless of zip code.”
“States around the nation should follow Arizona’s lead and pass legislation that funds students, not systems,” he said.
Reactions to Tuesday’s signing ceremony event were very positive.
