A state senator who also serves as treasurer for Secretary of State Katie Hobbs’ gubernatorial campaign remains under fire for a tweet he wrote Friday which many perceive as an insult of a foreign-born state lawmaker.
Sen. Martin Quezada (D-LD29) tweeted “This is what #WhiteNationalism looks like” with a finger pointing downward toward Rep. Quang Nguyen’s supportive retweet of Gov. Doug Ducey’s announced signing of legislation banning government-sponsored or funded Critical Race Theory instruction.
Among those who came to Nguyen’s defense was Rep. Justin Wilmeth (R-LD15) who called Nguyen “one of the most kind, funny and caring people in this country,” along with Rep. Shawnna Bolick (R-LD20) who reminded Quezada of their colleague’s history.
Nguyen (R-LD1) was born in Vietnam where several of his family members were killed by Communists. He fled to America as a child asylum applicant, later becoming a U.S. citizen and a successful businessman before his election to the Arizona House of Representatives in November 2020.
Known as a quiet and respectful lawmaker, Nguyen was vice-chair of the House Committee on Military Affairs & Public Safety. He was most animated during the session when talking about his daughter’s various experiences and achievements in the U.S. Navy.
But Nguyen garnered national headlines last month when he pushed back on a suggestion by Rep. Daniel Hernandez (D-LD2) that Communism is not as big of a threat to Americans as White Nationalism. After Hernandez finished, Nguyen spoke up and spoke out.
“So, let me tell you something about White Nationalism,” Nguyen said while looking over at Hernandez. “White Nationalism didn’t drown 250,000 Vietnamese in the South China sea. The Communists did. White Nationalism did not execute 86,000 South Vietnamese at the Fall of Saigon. Communists did. White Nationalism did not put me here. Communism did. So don’t take it lightly. Don’t mock me. Don’t mock what I go through in life.”
As of Saturday night, neither Hobbs nor Quezada had commented on the furor over the tweet.
Nguyen was the prime sponsor of HB2575 which mandates that hospitals offering in-person visitation must include clergy as approved visitors. If a hospital does not offer in-person visitation then hospital staff must facilitate virtual clergy visits. HB2575 cleared both chambers with bipartisan support and was signed by the governor in May.
Gov. Doug Ducey described bipartisan legislation which sought to strengthen the State Emergency Council “well intentioned,” but he vetoed the bill anyway on Friday.
Senate Bill 1719 was one of 24 bills transmitted to the governor’s desk June 30, the last day of the legislative session. It was the only one vetoed by Ducey, who believed changing the law related to the State Emergency Council “would add unneeded bureaucracy to the management of emergencies, especially wildfires.”
There are 12 voting members of the State Emergency Council which recommends rules, orders, policies, and procedures to the governor during a declared state of emergency. State law requires the Council to “monitor each emergency declared by the governor” as well as the activities and responses to the emergency.
The Council is also required to recommend to the governor or the legislature when it believes emergency conditions have stabilized and the emergency “is substantially contained.”
Currently, the Council can be convened by the director of the Arizona Division of Emergency Management if the governor “is inaccessible.” It can then issue a state of emergency proclamation if approved at by at least three members of the Council, at least one of whom must be an elected official.
However, the law makes no mention of what happens if an accessible governor fails to convene the Council.
SB1719 was introduced in January by Senate President Karen Fann and Senate Minority Leader Rebecca Rios to bipartisan support. It would have required a governor to convene the Council “on or before the fourteenth day after proclaiming a statewide state of emergency…and shall continue to convene the council at least once every fourteen days for the duration of the statewide state of emergency.”
Under the bill, a statewide state of emergency would terminate if the governor failed to convene the Council according to the ongoing 14-day timeline.
The House passed SB1719 on a 44 to 14 vote margin and the Senate unanimously passed it on a 29 to 0 vote. But Ducey vetoed the bill.
In a July 9 letter explaining his action, the governor wrote such a law was “unnecessary given the good and thoughtful reformed developed this session between my office and the legislature to ensure guard rails during future health emergencies, preventing the potential for the kind of extreme and job destroying measures that we saw in other placed around the country last year.”
The members of the State Emergency Council are: the governor, the secretary of state, the state attorney general, the Arizona Adjutant General, the director of the division of emergency management, the director of the department of transportation, the director of the department of health services, the director of environmental quality, the director of the Arizona Department of Public Safety, the director of the state’s department of agriculture, the director of the department of administration, and the director of water resources.
There are also two advisory members -the Senate President and the Speaker of the House- who may give advice to the other members of the State Emergency Council but who is not eligible to vote. SB1719 included a provision to add several other legislative leaders as advisory members.
Articles published by some media outlets this week that top Arizona officials knew of a cyberattack of Maricopa County’s voter registration files last fall but have kept it hidden are incorrect, as shown by the level of news coverage the hack received in December and January.
Part of the problem, however, is Maricopa County officials did not respond to the cyberattack in a proactive manner when it was discovered during the 2020 General Election. There was no press conference nor even a press release advising the community that voter registration data had been hacked.
The dearth of updates has not helped instill voter confidence in the months since then if social media comments are representative of community mood. And a letter Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer has sent to some voters is not helping, as it contains an inaccurate claim about how county officials responded to the cyberattack.
News of the cyberattack was first announced in early December in a Forbes article which revealed FBI agents armed with a federal search warrant raided a Fountain Hills condominium on Nov. 5, 2020, two days after the General Election. The agents went to the residence of Ellen and Elliot Kerwin looking for evidence of the cyberattack, according to court records.
The search resulted in the seizure of several computers from the Kerwin home, along with eight hard drives, and a bunch of electronic accessories.
Megan Gilbertson, a Maricopa County spokeswoman, confirmed the cyberattack to Forbes for its Dec. 4 article and she has insisted that the only voter data the hacker or hackers accessed from Oct. 21 to Nov. 4 was information about voters which is already public by law.
“Analysis by the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office IT Security indicates an unauthorized individual gathered publicly accessible voter information from our website,” Gilbertson said. “Additional security controls were put in place to mitigate against this activity occurring in the future.”
But what Gilbertson failed to say is how someone was able to access the county’s voter registration files and whether the hacker tried to get into other county databases. Other Maricopa County officials have appeared to try to divert attention away from the cyber incursion or to minimize the impact, often stating there were “no problems” with the election.
Steve Chucri of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors announced just hours before the Forbes article was published that he was considering asking for a third-party audit of the county’s Dominion Voting System machines, even as the canvas was still pending in the nation’s fourth populous county.
Then after Stephen Richer was sworn in as the county’s new recorder in January he sent a notice to some voters addressing the hack. The notice tells “Dear Voter” that the county’s IT Security Department “immediately identified the attack and successfully took steps to stop the activity.”
However, it is apparent from FBI documents that the IT department did not “immediately” stop the breach, as the attack occurred over 15 days.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice told AZ Free News in May the agency cannot comment about the cyberattack as it is part of an ongoing investigation. But voters seem to be growing impatient with the lack of accurate and timely information more than eight months after the hack.
Among the questions left unanswered is whether the cyberattack was undertaken simply to see if it could be done, or was it intended to cast doubt about the election? Also, was the hack possible due to lax county protocols or possibly even by the unintentional actions of a county employee?
More importantly, is Maricopa County’s reticence connected in any way to the board of supervisors’ refusal to comply with a Senate subpoena for access to the election department’s internet routers?
The most critical question, however, is when will county officials come clean with a complete explanation of how someone hacked the voter records of a major government body.
A jury can decide whether a Tucson business is vicariously liable for the 2018 death of a woman killed by one of the company’s employees, according to a recent decision by the Arizona Court of Appeals.
In May, the court unanimously overturned a 2020 decision by a Pima County judge who had ruled Casas Custom Floor Care was not responsible for the actions of its employee, Martin Montano, who caused the death of Samantha Jo Cravens after running a red light on his way to the company’s office.
According to court records, Montano left a job site at the end of his shift and headed to the Casas Custom office to fill out and correct his timesheet. During the drive Montano collided with a car driven by Cravens, 29, who suffered fatal injuries.
Michael Corey Cravens, Samantha’s husband, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Montano and his employer in April 2019. Court records show Montano settled with Cravens in late 2019 but Casas Custom contended the company was not liable for its employee’s conduct.
In January 2020, the Humphrey & Petersen Law Firm filed a motion for summary judgment on behalf of Casas Custom to have the employer dismissed from Cravens’ lawsuit. The company argued Montano “was not acting within the course and scope of employment” and that there was an absence of an employer’s “right of control” over the employee.
The motion for summary judgment was granted in May 2020 by Judge Brenden Griffin of the Pima County Superior Court and Casas Custom was dismissed from the lawsuit.
Cravens, who is represented by the law office of Mesch, Clark, and Rothschild, appealed the grant of summary judgment. On May 25, Vice Chief Judge Christopher Staring of the Arizona Court of Appeals authored a unanimous decision reversing Griffin’s dismissal order.
Staring wrote that an employer can be found vicariously liable for an employee’s work-related conduct if the employee was “acting within the scope of their employment.” Scope of employment is defined by the court as an employee performing work “assigned by the employer or engaging in a course of conduct subject to the employer’s control.”
The Court of Appeals found there is a material factual dispute in Cravens’ lawsuit about whether Montano’s conduct was outside the scope of his employment. That makes Casas Custom’s liability a question for a jury, not a judge, Staring wrote.
Casas Custom Floor Care did not petition the Arizona Supreme Court for review of the appellate decision. The Pima County Superior Court will be mandated in a few weeks to conduct further proceedings in accordance to the decision.
Public records show Cravens’ case has been now reassigned to Judge D. Douglas Metcalf. In April, Metcalf was asked by Cincinnati Indemnity Company to grant a motion of summary judgment for dismissal of another part of Cravens’ lawsuit. One of the issues is whether a “Morris Agreement” entered into by Montano to settle the portion of the case against him is enforceable.
According to the Arizona Supreme Court, an insurer like Cincinnati Indemnity can accept defense of a claim while still reserving its right to contest coverage. The insured also has the option to independently enter into a settlement, provided the insured continues to cooperate with the insurer during the litigation.
The settlement, known as a Morris Agreement, “must be made fairly, with notice to the insurer, and without fraud or collusion on the insurer” in order to be valid. An insurer is not bound to a Morris Agreement unless it is reasonable and prudent, something Metcalf is expected to rule on this summer.
In the meantime, the judge will hear arguments on July 23 concerning other pending motions involving Cincinnati Indemnity and Cravens.
Montano, 32, was criminally charged in November 2018 with failure to stop for a red light and causing an accident which resulted in death or serious injury. The case was prosecuted as a misdemeanor and ended in a plea by Montano in 2019 of guilty or responsible.
Details as to what sentence was imposed on Montano were not available from the Pima Justice Court as of press time but the longest jail sentence allowed for a misdemeanor is one year.
Chairman Larry E. Penley of the Arizona Board of Regents has high praise for the investment made by Gov. Doug Ducey and the State Legislature in the Fiscal Year 2022 budget passed last week which recognizes the role the state’s three public universities play in Arizona’s economic wellness.
“This spending plan invests in Arizona’s competitiveness by supporting public university instruction, research and development, especially in the key growth sectors of health care, the sciences, biomedicine and engineering,” Penley recently said. “State funding also will assist ongoing efforts by Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University and the University of Arizona to meet the needs of a growing number of Arizona students.”
The 12 members of the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) serve as the governing board for Arizona’s three public universities – Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University, and the University of Arizona. The board is tasked with providing policy guidance for nearly every aspect of the university system, including capital development plans, strategic plans, and legal affairs.
The regents also set policy related to financial and human resource programs; academic and student affairs; public outreach; and the all-important student tuition, fees, and financial aid programs.
The main Higher Education budget bill, SB1825, involved more than just funding appropriations. Among other things, it requires the UA cooperative extension office to establish an Agricultural Workforce Development Program to provide incentives to food-producing agricultural organizations to hire apprentices.
“As Arizona emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, focus shifts toward ensuring our state is ready for the challenges of a New Economy increasingly built on the innovation, adaptability and skills of our workforce,” Penley said.
Another SB1825 provision allows the three state universities to offer pro bono assistance to claimants in the general stream adjudication of water rights if the claimants are small landowners and not represented by counsel.
The legislation also calls for ABOR to administer and implement a Promise Program to provide financial assistance to students in a baccalaureate degree who qualify for in-state student status, graduated from an Arizona high school with a qualifying grade point average, and meet eligibility criteria for the Federal Pell Grant.
“With the state’s initial investment in the board’s Arizona Promise Program scholarship, qualifying low-income Arizona students will have their tuition and fees paid in full to attend the Arizona public university of their choice,” Penley said. “The value of a university degree has never been higher, and this program represents our promise that cost won’t be a barrier to any deserving Arizona student.”
ABOR will take on yet another new responsibility thanks to the budget bill. On Jan. 1, 2022, the statutory duties of the Commission for Postsecondary Education and the e Arizona Teacher Student Loan Program will be transferred to ABOR.
State law designates the governor and the superintendent of public instruction -currently Kathy Hoffman- as ex-officio ABOR members along with two student regents who serve two-year terms. The other regents serve eight-year terms after being appointed by a governor and confirmed by a majority of the 30-member state senate.
In addition to Penley, the current regents are Fred DuVal, Kathryn Hackett King, Lyndel Manson, Cecilia Mata, Bill Ridenour, Ron Shoopman, and Karrin Taylor Robson. ASU student Nikhil Dave is serving as a student regent until 2022; the second student regent seat is currently vacant, according to the ABOR website.
Next up for the ABOR is a Sept. 9 meeting of the Finance, Capital and Resources Committee as well as the Academic Affairs and Educational Attainment Committee.
