The reactions to Friday night’s initially peaceful protest at the State Capitol which was turned into a melee by agitators eerily echo the response to the January 6, 2021 events in Washington DC, only this time the political shoes are on different feet.
Many Republicans back in 2021 urged Americans to not paint all attendees at protests and rallies across Washington DC on Jan. 6 as criminals. In fact, less than 2,000 of the estimated 40,000 who gathered in the city that day have ever been investigated or charged for engaging in criminal conduct.
Yet some leaders of the Democratic Party have sought since then to paint anyone who attended a “J6” protest or rally as domestic terrorists.
Their tune has changed, however, at least as it relates to Friday night’s gathering of what an Arizona Department of Public Safety spokesman said was 7,000 to 8,000 people present to protest the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade.
Among those who promoted the protest was Raquel Teran, the chair of the Arizona Democratic Party and a LD30 state representative. Teran tweeted a flyer which called on those who opposed the SCOTUS ruling to show up at the Capitol on Friday at 7 p.m.
— Raquel Terán #BlackLivesMatter (@RaquelTeran) June 24, 2022
The same event was publicized by a group going by the name RadicalWomenPHX which advised those attending to use a Sharpie to write the group’s arrest hotline on their arms “as an extra safety precaution” if the protest went “sideways.”
Teran is another Arizona Democrat who does not shy away from calling on supporters to “fight” in the streets, despite national Democrats who continue to blame former President Donald Trump’s call for supporters to fight election fraud as the cause of the incursion into the U.S. Capitol in 2021.
We are going to have to continue the fight for our freedoms, including access to legal and safe abortion. At all levels, the courts, the streets, and polls!
— Raquel Terán #BlackLivesMatter (@RaquelTeran) June 24, 2022
Twenty-four hours later, Teran had not tweeted any condemnation of those seen in multiple videos attempting to kick in doors at the Senate Building. Or those belonging to what an Arizona Department of Public Safety spokesperson called “splinter groups” who turned the initially peaceful protest into “anarchical and criminal actions.”
According to Graves, when some of the attendees realized the Arizona Legislature was in session, “they attempted to breach the doors of the Arizona Senate and force their way into the building. The violence of their efforts literally shook the building and terrified citizens and law makers who occupied the building.”
At one point some of the glass doors of the Senate building bowed from the attempts of forced entry, which Graves said triggered security and law enforcement officials to instruct everyone inside the building to move to secure locations.
“Due to the direct threat to the occupants of the Senate building and damage to the building itself, Arizona State Troopers took immediate action and utilized tactics including the deployment of field force teams and tear gas,” Graves noted.
On Saturday, Senate President Karen Fann tweeted a short video recorded by Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita from inside the Senate building. The video shows protestors outside the building, which has several glass doors and windows on the ground floor.
So proud of our senate staff and Police officers keeping us safe from the insurrection at the Az Capitol last night pic.twitter.com/4rqzFLXQ3u
In her tweet, Fann described the crowd as an “insurrection” but the DPS statement makes clear no one unlawfully entered any of the Capitol buildings. In fact, the video taken by Ugenti-Rita shows most of the large crowd of protestors yelling and carrying signs. Only a handful of agitators are seen pounding on the windows and kicking at the glass doors.
There were also false social media reports about educators “invading” the Arizona Senate as part of the protests, which Fann quickly refuted. She noted the educators seen in photos wearing Red for Ed shirts on the Senate floor were guests seated in the gallery and then brought to the floor in an effort to get them to safety along with Senators and staff.
Ugenti-Rita tweeted a second video taken later on Friday night when a DPS tactical team was deployed inside the Senate building. By then many of the protestors and rioters had left the area after tear gas was fired at the unruly crowd. .
— Michelle Ugenti-RITA (@MichelleUgenti) June 25, 2022
Sen. T.J. Shope supported the decision by DPS command to utilize tear gas when the crowd failed to stop the attack on the building.
Good! The situation was escalating beyond control and was no longer a “peaceful protest” but a riot that was endangering the safety of everyone inside the Senate and House of Representatives buildings. #AZLeghttps://t.co/VQgM8YnCyV
However, the situation at the Senate building was not the only one which triggered a law enforcement response in the area.
“As the riotous behavior at the Legislature was taking place, concurrent and spillover criminal misconduct in the form of felony criminal damage and the defacing of state memorials was occurring in Wesley Bolin Plaza,” Graves said.
The response of troopers and other law enforcement officers was complicated by the fact some people had brought children to the protest which turned into unlawful assembly, according to Graves.
“After multiple warnings, and notifications of trespass and unlawful assembly, state troopers deployed gas and strategically moved to clear the plaza,” Graves said, adding that as rioters were cleared from one area they damaged state property in the next area. Those properties and publicly funded memorials which suffered what Graves called “significant criminal damage” include:
Arizona Law Enforcement Canine Memorial
Arizona Peace Officers Memorial
Lt. Frank Luke Jr. Memorial
Korean War Memorial
Operation Enduring Freedom Memorial
Wesley Bolin Memorial Amphitheatre
158th Regimental Memorial
Estimates for the cost of cleaning and repairing the damage is not yet available. DPS released no information about any arrests which may have been made in connection with the damage, but among those calling for prosecution of those who marred the various memorials is Republican gubernatorial candidate Karrin Taylor Robson, who shared several photos taken by Sen. Kelly Townsend the morning after.
Every Arizonan should be outraged by the senseless vandalism of our monuments and memorials dedicated to fallen servicemembers and law enforcement.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Friday that there is no federal constitutional right to have an abortion despite the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. And the reaction was swift across Arizona’s political sphere.
Many of the comments focused on what most saw as a faulty ruling issued by the SCOTUS nearly 50 years ago to carve out a right to an abortion under the U.S. Constitution. Among them was Gov. Doug Ducey, who used Twitter to express his thoughts on that aspect of the SCOTUS opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito.
Roe v Wade was a poorly-reasoned ruling that had no Constitutional basis. The Supreme Court has made the right decision by finally overturning it and giving governing power back to the people and the states. 1/
Another elected official who took to Twitter was State Rep. Jacqueline Parker (R-Mesa) who retweeted an official statement released by U.S. Representative Andy Biggs.
I said it on the floor last year & I’ll say it again: Roe v Wade was a horribly reasoned decision & abortion has never been a Constitution right! It’s about time!! https://t.co/Xq07NhnN68
— Jacqueline Parker (@electjacqparker) June 24, 2022
State Rep. Walt Blackman (R-Snowflake) gave thanks to the six Justices who provided “victory for the unborn and states rights.”
Today’s monumental Supreme Court decision is such a victory for the unborn and states rights. Thank you to the 6 brave Justices for standing up for life and ending the falsehood that barbarous abortions that have killed millions of children was ever constitutional.
— Walt Blackman for Congress (@BlackmanForAZ) June 24, 2022
Also reacting to the decision was U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema who expressed concern that government will stand between healthcare decisions she said are best made between a woman, her family, and her doctors.
A woman’s health care decisions should be between her, her family, and her doctor. Today's decision overturning Roe v. Wade endangers the health and wellbeing of women in Arizona and across America. 1/2
Similarly, current Arizona Secretary of State and presumptive Democratic nominee for Governor, Katie Hobbs used the ruling as fodder for her campaign.
Knowing that this day was coming doesn’t dull the pain. Without Roe’s protection for the right to choose, governors are now the final line of defense to protect access to safe and legal abortion. It’s never been more urgent to go vote for pro-choice champions at the state level. https://t.co/KVcb7tTnRh
However, Matt Salmon, a Republican candidate for Governor, took a moment to somberly reflect on what he called “a historic moment for the millions of Americans who believe in the sanctity of life.” Salmon,
Today is a historic moment for the millions of Americans who believe in the sanctity of life.
After decades of tireless advocacy, the U.S. Supreme Court has stood up in defense of the Constitution & acknowledged the important role of the states in protecting our most vulnerable. pic.twitter.com/UlZk3h4FuE
Meanwhile, the question now for Arizonans is what impact Friday’s ruling with have here. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich issued a statement advising that he expects the state’s newest abortion law to take effect in about 90 days. It bans the medical procedure 15 weeks after conception.
Wildfires are burning record numbers of acres each year, with the arid climate and vast areas of federal land making the western United States particularly at risk. But one issue not being talked about enough is whether red tape is getting in the way of fire prevention and mitigation professionals doing their jobs.
The Montana-based Property and Environmental Research Center is raising the alarm about wildfire prevention projects being delayed so long due to the National Environmental Policy Act that mitigation efforts for millions of acres of at-risk lands cannot be undertaken in a timely manner.
And some of those lands are going up in smoke in the meantime, according to a recently released policy brief by PERC senior research fellows Eric Edwards and Sara Sutherland.
According to the brief, more than 10 million acres burned nationwide in three of the past seven years, mostly in western states And in California, nine of the 20 largest wildfires in the state’s history have burned in the past two years.
More than half of the land in the 11 contiguous western states is federally owned and managed,” the brief notes. “While multiple federal agencies must deal with wildfires, the largest burden falls on the U.S. Forest Service. Of the 640 million acres of federal land in the United States, the Forest Service manages 193 million.”
Wildland fire management is the top budget item for the U.S. Forest Service, with suppression costs reaching $1.76 billion in 2020. As a result of the greater severity of fires and the high costs of putting them out, Edwards and Sutherland note that more and more legislators, agency officials, and forest science researchers are concluding that additional proactive fire mitigation activities are needed.
The brief notes that forest managers use two common preemptive fuel treatments to lessen the intensity of wildfires – prescribed burns and mechanical treatments. Yet despite the fact these approaches have proven effective over the years, U.S. Forest Service has been unable to undertake mitigation activities at a meaningful scale, Edwards and Sutherland found.
The culprit, either intended or unintended, is the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) which the U.S. Forest Service must navigate in order to implement fuel treatment projects.
The PERC brief explains that NEPA is a procedural law which requires federal agencies like the U.S. Forest Service to assess the environmental impacts of proposed actions. Projects determined to have no significant impacts receive categorical exclusion from more stringent review, while projects with uncertain impacts require the agency to conduct an environmental assessment.
And for projects deemed to cause “significant environmental impacts,” federal agencies must complete an environmental impact statement (EIS), which Edwards and Sutherland note is “the most stringent type of review under the law.” It can also take more than five years, and sometimes more than seven, from initiation of the assessment to implementation.
Only some of the U.S. Forest Service’s fuel-reduction activities will require an EIS, but such projects require data gathering about expected impacts to the quality of the human environment. The agency must also solicit public comments and respond to all substantive comments.
Completing an EIS is the most time-consuming and resource-intensive of the NEPA assessments, Edwards and Sutherland found is that even the other two types of assessments can significantly increase the time it takes to implement fuel treatments.
“Advocacy groups, firms, and the general public can file objections to NEPA decisions to the Forest Service and, once that avenue is exhausted, can also file lawsuits to overturn decisions or compel additional analysis,” the brief notes. “Although most projects are not litigated, the depth of analysis and time spent on the NEPA process is commonly based on the threat of litigation, as well as the level of public and political interest and defensibility in court.”
Edwards is an Assistant Professor in Agricultural and Resource Economics at North Carolina State University whose research examines environmental and natural resource management institutions across a variety of resources. Sutherland is a lecturer at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and an environmental economist whose research focuses in part on the political economy of natural resource management, with a focus on fisheries and water management.
Scottsdale Unified School Board member Jann-Michael Greenburg could be removed from office for actions he undertook last year to circumvent Arizona’s Open Meeting Law, and the Arizona Attorney General’s Office does not want taxpayer funds to be spent for Greenburg’s defense.
Those are just some of the items of relief the AGO suggests in its lawsuit filed Monday against Greenburg and SUSD for alleged OML violations in August 2021 when Greenburg -then the board president- cut off speakers during Calls to the Public and barred other speakers from discussing district-related issues even though such comments must be permitted.
Records show the AGO received several complaints last summer about how the SUSD board was conducting meeting at its members were considering a mask mandate and proposed instructional model. The district later told Assistant Attorney General Michael Catlett the board was permitted to apply content-based restrictions on Call to the Public speakers.
However, Catlett’s lawsuit asks a Maricopa County judge for a judgment that Scottsdale Unified School District and Greenburg violated the OML during the cited meetings. The AGO also seeks an order prohibiting SUSD from expending any public monies for Greenburg’s legal representation, although any civil penalty ordered upon Greenburg would be paid for from the District’s general fund.
The AGO’s lawsuit makes clear that a public body is not required to offer a Call to the Public during its meetings and hearings. But if it does, there cannot be undue restrictions on what speakers can say except that the comments must address topics falling within the public body’s jurisdiction.
“Purposefully structuring a meeting so as to apply content-based restrictions on public comments addressing an issue listed on the same agenda and discussed at the same meeting transforms the public comment session into something other than an ‘open call to the public,” according to the lawsuit, which the defendants must answer within 20 days of service.
The AGO’s legal action against Greenburg and SUSD comes just weeks after Vernal Lee Crow of Glendale was sentenced for criminal violations of the state’s Conflict of Interest law while he served as vice-chair of the Arizona School Facilities Board (ASFB)
Crow was indicted in November 2021 for four alleged violations of state law in connection with votes he took part in in 2016 and 2017 despite the decision benefited himself or a family member. He later pleaded guilty to knowingly failing to disclose his association with Red Tree Consulting and failing to recuse himself from a vote in 2016 which awarded $112,000 for a repair job at a school in the Snowflake Unified School District.
As part of the deal, Red Tree Consulting was paid $12,050 of those funds. In addition, Crow pleaded guilty to knowingly failing to disclose another conflict of interest involving Red Tree Consulting which received $42,200 from a roof construction contract approved by the ASFB in 2017 for a school within the Casa Grande Union High School District.
The Attorney General’s Office is also following a legal challenge filed by a Sierra Vista resident in February 2019 against the Cochise County board of supervisors for appointing one of the supervisors to a lucrative judicial position.
The AGO has submitted numerous briefs in the case, which is scheduled for a trial setting hearing Tuesday morning.
In the case, then-Cochise County Supervisor Pat Call was appointed to a vacancy for justice of the peace at double his county salary. Call did not cast a vote on the appointment, but he was openly involved in a decision to not seek interested applicants for the position despite the fact several were present at the meeting.
Call also took part in an executive session prior to being nominated immediately after the supervisors resumed the public portion of their meeting.
In a rare move, the Greenlee County judge hearing the case at the request of Cochise County’s presiding judge disclosed the normally secret minutes of that executive session. The judge noted “justice so demands” the release.
The Arizona Supreme Court ruled last fall that the local resident can sue Call and the other two Cochise County supervisors -Ann English and Peggy Judd- for alleged OML violations. In addition, Chief Justice Robert Brutinel wrote that as a county resident and constituent of the board of supervisors, the resident “has an interest in protecting against self-dealing by Board members.”
It is expected that any trial will not occur until early 2023. English and Judd remain on the county board, although the lawsuit seeks to have them removed from office.
Call completed his term as justice of the peace at the end of 2020. He did not run for the office in the 2020 General Election.
Restaurants across Arizona won a majority legal victory Thursday that protects those who give jobs to minors under age 16 even if the job requires the minor to walk into or pass through the restaurant’s kitchen on occasion.
The issue arose after the popular Sofrita Restaurant in Fountain Hills was accused by the Industrial Commission of Arizona in 2018 of several violations related to its hiring of three hostesses who were under the age of 16. The Spanish-Latin restaurant was also hit with a $1,000 civil penalty.
Sofrita cooperated with the investigation, which confirmed the hostesses are tasked at times to take dirty dishes into the kitchen and sometimes used the restaurant’s rear entrance when reporting to work. This required the hostesses to walk through the kitchen to get to the hostess stand.
The ICA investigator cited Sofrita for three alleged violations of Arizona Revised Statute 23-232 for having employees under age 16 engage in activities “in, about, or in connection with” the kitchen. A fourth violation stemmed from the restaurant’s alleged failure to keep proper records to ensure the young employees did not violate ARS 23-233 in regard to how many hours a minor can work.
Sofrita challenged the violations and requested a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge. At the hearing, the state investigator testified that the child labor statute means employees under the age of 16 “cannot be in the kitchen” for any reason, not even simply to clock in for their shift.
Judge Jonathan Hauer rejected the Industrial Commission’s position, finding that Arizona’s child labor laws do not regulate “casual encounters” between minor employees and a restaurant’s kitchen space. The findings also concluded there was an “inadequate factual basis” for the ICA to impose the $1,000 penalty.
The State of Arizona appealed Hauer’s findings last year.
On June 16, the Arizona Court of Appeals affirmed Hauer’s rejection of ICA’s interpretation of Arizona Revised Statute 23-232 which prohibits restaurant employees under the age of 16 from working “in, about, or in connection with…cooking and baking.” The appellate opinion also affirmed Hauer’s finding which vacated the $1,000 civil penalty against the restaurant.
In a unanimous appellate decision, Presiding Judge David D. Weinzweig wrote that the statute the ICA relied on never mentions the word kitchen, and nothing supports the ICA’s reading that employers like Sofrita must prevent minors under age 16 from entering the kitchen.
The opinion also pushes back on the ICA investigator’s focus on the words “in, about or in connection with” the kitchen without tethering them to the statute’s specific prohibited activities of cooking and baking.
“It does not forbid employees under 16 years old from walking in the kitchen,” Weinzweig wrote, adding that federal regulations also undermine the ICA’s broad interpretation of a kitchen prohibition.
Weinzweig pointed to the Fair Labor Standards Act which permits minors under 16 to do kitchen work such as some food preparation, cleaning of some kitchen equipment, and even entering freezers to retrieve items.
