When the five members of the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (AIRC) meet on Monday, they will discuss their differing opinions on what the new boundaries should be for Arizona’s 30 legislative districts and 9 congressional districts for the next decade.
Arizona’s current district boundaries in use since 2011 include seven legislative districts and two congressional districts with a Hispanic-majority population. The AIRC has looked at dozens of public-proposed maps, as well as draft maps proposed by the commissioners.
Yet despite the U.S. Census showing more Latinos were added to Arizona’s population than any other demographic, the number of Hispanic-majority districts is likely to not change. And that, according to AIRC observers, is due to the efforts—and political influence—of the Arizona Latino Coalition for Fair Redistricting.
But the Coalition does not appear to be interested solely in amplifying the political power of Arizona’s Hispanic population. Instead, it appears to only be interested in the segment of that population who are presumed be Democrats.
In fact, the group’s Statewide co-chairs—Maricopa County Supervisor Steve Gallardo and Pima County Supervisor Adelita Grijalva—are both Democrats, as are the five regional co-chairs.
The Coalition also appears to be receiving strategic advice from DJ Quinlan, who worked closely with the AIRC’s Democratic members during the 2011 redistricting effort. Quinlan, a former top official of the Arizona Democratic Party, has admitted to an association with the Arizona Latino Coalition for Fair Redistricting.
Critics say the Coalition’s interest comes at the price of ignoring an increasingly vocal and involved group—conservative Hispanics. And those conservatives are calling out the hypocrisy of folks like Gallardo and Grijalva for appearing to speak for all Latinos.
“Hispanics are the fastest growing part of the Republican Party and make up quite a large segment of Independent voters as well,” Steve Montenegro told AZ Free News. “The idea that all Hispanics vote the same way is both stupid and inherently racist.”
Originally from El Salvador, Montenegro has long been a voice for conservative values and for the elimination of race-based policies. He served nearly 10 years in the Arizona House and Senate, rising to the position of House Majority Leader.
Montenegro says the fact is more minority Republicans are getting elected from a variety of districts, including majority white districts.
“Most voters don’t care about race, and it is time for our mapmaking process to remove race and ethnicity from the process, and stop grouping Americans and Arizonans on the basis of the color of our skin,” he said.
Montengro and others point to the Arizona Latino Coalition for Fair Redistricting’s initial advocacy for creating an 8th legislative district with a predominantly Hispanic population. But the group’s proposal was unceremoniously dropped.
Critics say the reason the group dumped the idea is that with so many Hispanic voters leaning to the Right, the Democratic Party leadership feared spreading Hispanic population centers among eight instead of seven legislative districts would have benefited conservative candidates instead.
“The [redistricting] process is driven by partisan goals masquerading as concerns about racial groups or communities of interest,” says Montenegro. “So the Left uses Hispanics when helpful to create Democrat districts and then suddenly no longer cares about Hispanics when it negatively impacts the number of Democrat districts they can draw. They made that obvious when the so-called Latino Coalition suddenly stopped caring about drawing more Latino districts.”
The shift away from creating an 8th Hispanic-majority legislative district also caught the attention of Sergio Arellano, who served on the Latinos for Trump coalition.
“It is incumbent on us to call out the hypocrisy and lack of authenticity of Latino groups claiming to represent us all,” says Arellano, a Veteran, a businessman, and a Latino community leader who strives to support conservative candidates and causes. “For far too long, we have allowed others to speak for a demographic as if it is a monolith.”
And although it appears the new legislative district maps will be intentionally drawn to avoid an 8th Hispanic-majority district, Arellano insists he would have embraced the opportunity provided by such a district.
“It would be an incredible experiment to have had that additional district because that would become the catalyst that tears down the narrative about Latinos being Democratic; it would serve as a platform to prove once and for all who has the best interest of the community and state at heart,” he says. “Personally, it would be a dream come true to have the opportunity to run in an all-out Hispanic district against the racist liberal Democratic Party nominees.”
The same concerns have been raised with the Arizona Latino Coalition for Fair Redistricting’s involvement in how the state’s nine Congressional districts are configured.
Under the Voting Rights Act, the new CD maps must have at least two majority Latino districts to avoid reducing the current minority status. The Coalition noted in a letter to the AIRC in October of its interest ensuring the Congressional districts were formed to “protect and enhance majority Latino districts, helping to ensure that Latino voters have the ability to elect a candidate of their choice.”
And again, the Coalition considered proposing another Hispanic-majority Congressional district “due to the growth of the Latino population in Arizona.” The group did not pursue the idea, however, in order to preserve “the voting strength of the community.”
Yet some of the draft maps submitted to the AIRC by interested parties were able to maintain two Hispanic-majority districts while splitting up some predominantly Hispanic population centers or aligning smaller Hispanic communities with traditionally Republican areas that were in closer physical proximity.
Those maps were quickly discarded, which critics contend was due to ensuring Democrats did not end up in a more competitive race. And Montenegro believes some of the Democrats involved in the redistricting effort are actually using the Voting Rights Act to undermine the political interests of conservative Hispanic voters.
“The idea that you draw a district filled with Hispanics who will then elect a Hispanic and be happy because they’re represented by a Hispanic is dumb,” he says. “The left will tell them to smile and be happy because of the ethnicity of their representation, but only actual racists care about that as opposed to the votes and ideology of their representative.”
The No Surprises Act passed by Congress in the waning days of Donald Trump’s presidency to better inform patients of the costs of medical procedures and other services doesn’t take effect until Jan. 1, but the Biden Administration is already getting pushback on how it intends to implement one provision of the new law.
That pushback is coming from health care providers who recently blanketed federal officials with negative comments about a regulatory rule issued by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) the providers claim goes against the language of the Act, which was passed to formulate a nationwide process for resolving “surprise” or unexpected medical bills.
The two most common expected billing problems patients face in Arizona result from being treated by an out-of-network doctor at a medical facility within their network, or when a patient requires emergency or urgent care at an out-of-network facility.
For those in rural areas, a third common surprise billing issue involves charges for out-of-network air ambulance, or medical evacuation, services.
Under the new law, a patient’s copayment for an out-of-network bill will be limited to roughly what the patient’s copayment would be had the service or procedure been fully conducted in-network. Any unpaid balance can be challenged by the out-of-network provider, who must first attempt to negotiate the matter with the patient’s insurer or commercial health plan.
The rule also establishes an arbitration process the provider must follow if an agreement cannot be reached with the insurer / health plan. And after that, according to the American Hospital Association and other provider groups, is where the rule as currently written verves away from the intention of the new law
As put forth by HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, the rule requires an arbitrator to consider an insurer or health plan’s in-network median payment rate for the service or procedure in question as the “presumptively correct” rate. Priority is given to that rate over other factors mentioned in the Act, such as complexity of the billed procedure or service, whether a party engaged in good faith during negotiations, and the health care provider’s training and expertise.
“By directing arbiters to presume that the plan’s or issuer’s median contracted rate is the appropriate out-of-network reimbursement rate and creating a significantly higher bar for consideration of other factors means that the [independent dispute resolution] process effectively will be unavailing for providers,” according to Stacey Hughes, AHA executive vice president.
But not everyone in the health care industry is opposed to the rule’s presumption of the reimbursable rate during arbitration. Insurance companies and commercial health plan support the arbitration rules which make it harder for out-of-network providers to receive payment.
It is also seen as a way to force providers to sign on to more networks to reduce the cost of getting paid.
“The approach taken in the interim final rules is a clear win for hardworking people,” said Matthew Eyles of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a national association whose members provide health care coverage. “This is the right approach to encourage hospitals, health care providers, and health insurance providers to work together and negotiate in good faith. It will also ensure that arbitration does not result in unnecessary premium increases for businesses and hardworking American families.
For now, the Biden Administration appears to be standing behind the rule even though 35 percent of the U.S. House of Representatives signed off on a letter in November urging the presumptive rate rule be reconsidered.
The Biden-Harris Administration will continue implementing federal regulations from the No Surprises Act to not only protect the patients but also curb rising costs in health care,” Becerra said in response to the pushback. “We want costs to go down. When the arbitration process is wide open, no boundaries, at the end of the day health care costs go up, not down.”
The No Surprises Act was passed as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act.
The decision by President Joe Biden to sharply increase the tariff on Canadian softwood lumber to 17.99 percent is threatening housing affordability and has prompted calls from The Wall Street Journal and homebuilders for the White House to take quick action to reverse course.
More than one-quarter of softwood lumber—such as pine, cedar, fir, and spruce—used in America comes from Canada. The new tariff is twice the 8.99 percent rate in effect when Biden took office in January. It comes on the heels of wholesale lumber prices which tripled from July 2020 to July 2021, adding nearly $30,000 to the average cost of a new home, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB).
The NAHB says the increased tariff is adding on average another $9,000 to the price of a new home compared to July. It is also pushing up prices of renovation and remodeling projects that are critical for ensuring affordable housing options in many communities.
“The doubling of duties on Canadian softwood lumber is ill-timed and ill-advised,” NAHB Chairman John C. Fowke wrote to Biden on Dec. 3. “As has been the case for decades, the domestic lumber industry cannot, nor will not, produce enough lumber to meet U.S. consumer demand. We rely on lumber from Canada to fill the production gap, so punitive tariffs on our closest and best trading partner on a product that American consumers desperately need defies logic.”
Top NAHB officials met at the Canadian Embassy in Washington DC last week to discuss the tariffs. After the meeting, Fowke send his letter to Biden, calling on U.S. trade officials to negotiate with the Canadian government for a lumber trade agreement that eliminates tariffs and ensures a fairly priced supply of lumber.
“The tariffs harm housing affordability by acting as a tax on American home builders and home buyers, and contribute to huge price volatility in the lumber market by putting upward pressure on lumber prices,” Fowke wrote.
The association, which has 140,000 members across the country, also called on Biden to support efforts to increase domestic lumber production. “Improving the health of our nation’s forests and increasing the supply of domestic timber are not mutually exclusive goals,” Fowke wrote.
Last month the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board noted that prices for U.S.-produced lumber is at more than 75 percent above pre-pandemic levels.
“For decades U.S. sawmills haven’t been able to meet domestic demand, but they’ve leaned on government to protect their market share,” the WSJ’s opinion stated. “The shortage would be much worse if not for Canadian lumber, which backs up U.S. output.”
The tariffs, the WSJ wrote, “will raise building costs in an already strained housing market.”
Then last week, The Washington Post’s editorial board published an opinion succinctly titled “Biden is hiking lumber tariffs at the wrong time.”
And the editorial board for the Las Vegas Review-Journal wrote that driving up the cost of lumber via tariffs will discourage construction and worsen inventory shortages for southern Nevada. “Much like the weather, politicians love to talk about affordable housing but none of them want to do anything about it. Put the Biden administration firmly in that camp,” the Review-Journal noted.
Tuesday’s planned Arizona Workers Heroes Freedom March at the State Capitol is attracting national interest, according to event coordinator Merissa Hamilton of EZAZ.org.
Among those slated to speak at the noontime event is Kimball Cody, a firefighter – paramedic fired two months ago by the Salt River Fire Department. Cody’s termination after 13 years of dedicated service was due to his unwillingness receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
Similar firings are being threatened by the City of Phoenix for any of its 14,000 employees who do not provide proof of vaccination by Jan. 18, 2022, despite the fact the city told employees in May that vaccinations “are a personal choice that will not impact your employment in any way.”
City Manager Jeff Barton reversed course last month when he issued the mandate that can result in termination. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich is suing Phoenix officials over the mandate, but it could be months before a federal court reaches a decision.
Leaders of the unions which represent the city’s public safety employees say less than 50 percent of their members intend to comply with the mandate. The worry for many Phoenix residents is that experienced police officers, firefighters, and other critical service employees will seek jobs in other communities.
“Phoenix public safety is already in a crisis,” says Hamilton, a city resident. “Police and Fire are both terribly short-staffed and 911 response times are horrific. The mandate will crush public safety and the most vital city services like trash, water, and infrastructure.”
Some city employees are expected to meet Tuesday morning with a handful of state lawmakers prior to the Heroes Freedom March to discuss the city’s actions, according to Sen. Kelly Townsend (R-LD16).
For Cody, he was one of 84 employees for Salt River FD who were notified in late August of a vaccination mandate imposed by the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community (SRPMIC) tribal council. He then spent the next 40 days reflecting on whether the vaccine was the right thing for him and his family.
“We were really hoping it would be a bluff but there was no letting up,” Cody told radio host James T. Harris on Monday. Cody explained that his two requests for medical exemptions were denied, and Salt River tribal leaders refused to consider religious or spiritual exemptions.
In the end, four firefighters were terminated for non-compliance of a vaccination mandate which was never imposed on tribal members nor the employees of Talking Stick Resort and Casino which is also owned by SRPMIC.
KIMBALL CODY INTERVIEW:
Cody, who lives in east Mesa, told Harris he is speaking at the Heroes Freedom March to help Arizonans understand the negative impacts vaccine employment mandates are having.
“This mandate is real. My wife interacts with your wife. My kids go to school with your kids,” Cody said. “This is not a mandate in California or New York or some far away land. This is a mandate that is effecting real people right here and right now.”
Cody also wants to encourage Arizonans to contact Gov. Doug Ducey and their state legislators with a demand for a special session to enable passage of anti-mandate legislation.
Hamilton says EZAZ.org is hoping for legislation or court action against all vaccination mandates in Arizona before Christmas. “Families deserve to have this mandate put to rest so they can enjoy the holidays without worry,” she told AZ Free News.
As if small business owners haven’t had enough to deal with, now comes word that Congress pulled the rug out from under a major COVID-19 relief program that was supposed to run through the end of 2021.
Instead, many business owners are left scrambling to adjust their business plan with just three weeks left in the year.
The Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERTC) program was approved by Congress in 2020 to allow many small business owners to offset much of the cost of payroll taxes for those employees who were retained despite the pandemic. The program was to run through Jan. 1, 2022, allowing employers to claim credits of up to $7,000 per employee per quarter for all four quarters this year.
But that abruptly changed when President Joe Biden recently signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
According to the White House-supported legislation, the ERTC program came to a halt as of Sept. 30. That retroactive end means business owners who developed their budget based on claiming the credits Congress previously approved for the fourth-quarter will have a rude awakening at tax time.
Restaurants, retail, and professional services businesses are among the industries expected to be hardest hit by ERTC’s early termination, which was not previously publicized by the Biden Administration. It has fallen on business and trade associations to get the word out after the fact, but it is feared the message will be too late for many small businesses.
The National Federal of Independent Businesses is encouraging impacted business owners to notify their U.S. Representatives and Senators in hopes Congress will address the problem by restoring the original end date.
