by Daniel Stefanski | Apr 7, 2023 | News
By Daniel Stefanski |
Another legislative attempt to give Arizona law enforcement more space to do its job is meeting resistance from Democrats.
SB 1047, sponsored by Senator John Kavanagh, “expands the criminal classifications of third degree criminal trespass and refusing to aid a peace officer,” according to the purpose provided by the State Senate. The bill “classifies as third degree criminal trespass, knowingly entering or remaining at the site of a natural disaster, a traffic accident or another type of accident, a civil disturbance or an active law enforcement investigation, if there is active law enforcement intervention into criminal activity at the site and law enforcement communicates that public access is restricted.”
The bill also “classifies, as refusing to aid a peace officer, refusing to remain at a reasonable distance, as determined by the peace officer, from the location where the peace officer is actively intervening in a dangerous or potentially violent criminal occurrence with another person who is threatening or agitated or who appears to be emotionally unstable.”
In March, SB 1047 passed the Senate with a party-line 16-12 vote – with two members not voting (Gonzales and Diaz). It had previously cleared the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, Public Safety, and Border Security with a 4-3 vote, and the Rules Committee with a 4-3 tally.
After the Senate voted to approved SB 1047, the House wasted no time to start its consideration of this legislation. The House Committee on Military Affairs & Public Safety passed the bill – also along party lines – with an 8-7 vote.
Legislative Democrats have strongly opposed this bill throughout the session. The Arizona Senate Democrats Caucus tweeted, “Did you know? SB 1047 would reduce police accountability.”
The Arizona House Democrats also shared similar concerns with the bill this week, writing, “Sen. John Kavanagh’s unconstitutional attempt last year to prevent filming police activity never went into effect because no attorneys would defend it. So now he’s back in House Public Safety Committee with SB 1047 which would prevent observing police activity.”
Representatives from the Arizona Association of Counties and the Arizona Police Association supported SB 1047, while representatives from the State Conference NAACP, Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona opposed its passage.
The bill now awaits its fate in the Arizona House of Representatives.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Terri Jo Neff | Apr 6, 2023 | News
By Terri Jo Neff |
As the Arizona Legislature considers a bill clarifying the right of a county to tabulate ballots by hand, the Arizona Court of Appeals has been asked to decide how many ballots can be audited by hand if a county uses a machine tabulator.
The question before the appellate court is whether Arizona’s 15 counties are restricted to performing a hand count audit of only a very small percent of machine tabulated ballots, or if a county’s Board of Supervisors (BOS) have authority to demand a higher audit percent—even 100 percent—of those ballots to check the accuracy of the electronic tabulation.
The issue dates back to October 2022 when the Cochise County BOS approved a Resolution to have County Recorder David Stevens conduct a hand count audit of all ballots cast in-person on election day at the county’s 17 voting centers. The Resolution was challenged in court by the Arizona Alliance of Retired Americans (AARA).
Cochise County came out on the losing end of the case, which cost taxpayers nearly $90,000 in attorney’s fees to AARA. Now, the matter is in front of the Court of Appeals, with the county seeking to be vindicated for its hand count audit plan.
AARA filed its answering brief to the appeal last week. It asks for the county’s appeal to be dismissed as moot.
“Not only is the 2022 election over, but the mandatory audits prescribed by law have been conducted, and the election results were canvassed and certified,” AARA’s brief argues.
But if the Court of Appeals decides to weigh in on the question of whether Cochise County had authority to order a full hand count audit – of the early ballots, election day ballots, or both – then AARA argues the answer is no.
“Appellants are only legally authorized to conduct hand count audits in accordance with these statutorily prescribed procedures and cannot require a hand count audit of all ballots,” the brief argues. “Hand count audits must start with small, random samples for a limited number of races, and expand only on an individual race basis and only if hand counts repeatedly differ from electronic tabulations by more than a designated margin for error.”
AARA’s brief ignores the policy issue of whether an expanded hand count audit process would be better than the current law it claims is controlling.
Cochise County has until April 17 to file a reply brief with the Court of Appeals. There is no deadline for when a ruling must be issued.
The supervisors in favor of the expanded audit were Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, who took the position that “many voters” lacked confidence in the voting system. A 100 percent audit of in-person election day ballots was justified, they argued, to “enhance voter confidence.”
The Resolution passed on a 2 to 1 vote on Oct. 24, 2022. AARA and one of its local members sued the county the next week, seeking a court order enjoining, or barring, anyone from complying with the Resolution.
Judge Casey McGinley was brought in from Pima County Superior Court by Cochise County’s presiding judge to hear the case. McGinley ruled one day before Election Day that the county and Stevens could not engage in the expanded hand count audit.
McGinley went one step further, ruling that there could also be no full audit of early ballots.
According to McGinley, ARS 16-602(B) requires the audit of ballots casts at voting centers on election day to be “randomly selected.” Selecting 100 percent of those ballots from the start would render the statutory language and the mechanism for a limited expansion of the hand count audit superfluous, he noted.
McGinley further ruled that ARS 16-602(F) establishes 5,000 as the maximum number of early ballots which may be initially part of a hand count audit, despite contradictory language included in the EPM which states counties “may elect to audit a higher number of ballots at their discretion.”
In its appeal, the Cochise County defendants contend hand count audits based on a random sampling of ballots was intended to prevent election officials from auditing races for improper purposes. There would be no concern with how certain races were selected if 100 percent were audited, they contend.
If the Cochise County BOS loses on appeal, attorneys for AARA have asked for a new order requiring the county to pay the group’s court costs and attorney’s fees in connection with the appeal.
Cochise County taxpayers are also on the hook for the fees paid to the attorney for the supervisors and Stevens, including during the appeal.
Terri Jo Neff is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or send her news tips here.
by Daniel Stefanski | Apr 6, 2023 | News
By Daniel Stefanski |
As many California residents head east to Arizona in response to policies they find objectionable, Maricopa County appears to be taking a leap toward adopting some of those same policies.
The Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) recently contracted with a California-based consulting firm to “identify and evaluate new and available ozone precursor control measures that could be implemented within the nonattainment area” – which is an “eight-hour ozone boundary for the 2015 ozone standard (2015 National Ambient Air Quality Standard). According to the Final Report from the consulting firm, the area runs north to south from the Yavapai County line to Hunt Highway; and west to east from 499th Avenue to the Gila and Pinal County lines.
One of the geneses of this report stems from a little-discussed published rule from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in fall 2022, which moved “the region up the severity ladder for ozone pollution, reclassifying the region from ‘marginal’ to ‘moderate’ nonattainment for the ozone pollution standard.
In a press release dated September 2022, MAG revealed that “in 2015, the EPA tightened the ozone pollution standard from 75 parts per billion to 70 parts per billion,” and that the region encompassing “Maricopa County and portions of Pinal County missed that deadline.”
MAG wrote in the September release, that “the moderate nonattainment area classification requires new actions and measures, including:
- New control measures to reduce the types of emissions that create ozone.
- Emission offset requirement for new, large facilities locating in the nonattainment area and major expansions to large, existing facilities, which are required to offset every ton of emissions by 1.15 tons.
- Contingency measures (i.e., measures to be deployed if the nonattainment area does not meet yearly emission reduction milestones).
- Potential emission controls for intrastate facilities or other emission sources located outside the Phoenix-Mesa nonattainment area.”
Enter the consultant’s Final Report this spring, which suggested “approximately 50% reduction in nonattainment area anthropogenic NOx and VOC emissions” in order to bring the region into compliance with the EPA’s standard by an August 3, 2024, deadline. An Arizona Department of Environmental Quality Division Director recently admitted that “Maricopa County businesses and residents have done a fantastic job of reducing ozone pollution by 12.5 percent since 2000.” But Maricopa County would have to exponentially and substantially pick up the pace of slashing emissions in just over one year – compared to the two-plus decades of work to cut pollution by 12.5 percent. And that is likely impossible.
But MAG is still planning to move forward with this plan, and to meet this deadline, it included suggested measures to reduce ozone in the Maricopa Nonattainment Area to meet Clean Air Act requirements related to the 2015 ozone standard. Some of the suggested measures include adopting standards similar to California like banning the internal combustion engine, banning gas appliances, and a host of regulations on various business activities.
There is a tight turnaround for approval of these drastic measures to cut emissions in Maricopa County. Before the end of April, the “MAG Regional Council may approve the Draft Suggested List of Measures” after receiving recommendations from the MAG Management Committee. Then, over this summer, “implementing entities provide commitments to implement measures, or reasoned justification for non-implementation, to MAG for inclusion in a nonattainment area state implementation plan submission to EPA.”
The EPA guidance instructs that “states should consider all available measures, including those being implemented in other areas, but must adopt measures for an area only if those measures are economically and technologically feasible and will advance the attainment date or are necessary for reasonable further progress.” According to the March 6 Draft Suggested List of Measures to Reduce Ozone in the Maricopa Nonattainment Area, “if an entity decides that a measure on the Suggested List is not available or feasible for implementation, the entity will provide a justification for why the measure is not available or feasible.”
Cities, towns, and Maricopa County may soon be forced to decide between complying with extremely onerous measures to bring down a tremendous amount of emissions in a hurry or losing out on a generous offering of federal dollars (along with financial penalties that could be levied against those jurisdictions), setting up a potential battle over federalism that will determine Maricopa County’s (and eventually Arizona’s) commitment to its libertarian and freedom-minded roots or deviation to California’s environmentalism policies and politics.
by Daniel Stefanski | Apr 6, 2023 | News
By Daniel Stefanski |
Arizona Legislative Republicans and Democrats are continuing their legendary clashes over a bill that would severely punish unlawful exposures to minors.
SB 1698, sponsored by Senator Justine Wadsack, “establishes unlawful exposure to an adult oriented performance or business as a class 4 felony offense punishable as a dangerous crime against children and requires a person convicted of the offense to register as a sex offender,” according to the overview provided by the Arizona House of Representatives.
In a video explanation of the genesis behind this bill’s introduction, Senator Wadsack said she “felt a conviction to create this bill after coming across events like the drag queen story hours, which involve sexual adult performance in sexually explicit attire, reading books to children – often elementary school age.”
In February, SB 1698 passed both the Senate Judiciary and Rules Committee, before it was approved by the entire Senate chamber in early March by a 16-14 party-line vote. Before the vote on the Senate floor, Senator Wadsack inserted a five-part floor amendment, which (among other things) removed the definition of “drag show” from the original bill.
After the final Senate action on the bill, it was transmitted to the Arizona House of Representatives, where it was assigned to the House Judiciary Committee.
This week, the House Judiciary Committee considered the bill, and, after vigorous debate, passed it by a vote of 5-3. All Republicans voted to affirm the legislation, and Democrats voted to oppose. House Democrats labeled SB 1698 as one of the chamber’s “hateful bills,” linking the policy proposed by Wadsack to a hypothetical outcome that would see the end of “school-play versions of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.”
House Judiciary Committee Republicans made their voices heard during this hearing, pushing back against individuals speaking out against the bill and their colleagues from across the aisle. Representative Alexander Kolodin said, “All this bill does is prohibit parents from taking their kids to a sex show or a drag show. It’s common sense. How could you be against that?”
Representative Cory McGarr stated that “there is a growing trend that for some reason we are pushing hyper-sexual material on children. But to oppose this bill on the merit, to me, seems completely insane.”
Countering the naysayers of the bill, the bill sponsor, Senator Wadsack, previously clarified what her legislation does or does not do: “This bill does not target entertainers who are performing for adults. This bill also deals with individuals providing adult entertainment to minors, which is absolutely what crosses the line.”
Representatives from the National Association of Social Workers, Children’s Action alliance, American Civil Liberties Union of AZ, AZ Attorneys for Criminal Justice, and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona registered in opposition to the bill during the legislative process.
SB 1698 is expected to make its way to the House floor for a vote in the near future.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Daniel Stefanski | Apr 5, 2023 | News
By Daniel Stefanski |
A bill meant to add transparency to Arizona’s elections is approaching its final hurdle in the Legislature.
HB 2722, sponsored by Representative Gail Griffin, “authorizes the officer in charge of elections, the county recorder or any person who is designated by the county board of supervisors to count all or any portion of the ballots in an election by hand” – according to the purpose provided by the Arizona Senate.
In a statement to the House Municipal Oversight & Elections Committee, Representative Griffin explained the purpose of her legislation: “It’s a simple bill. It allows the counties to do a hand count. We believe that they already have the authority to do it, but this clarifies it.”
Last month, Griffin’s bill cleared the Arizona House by a party-line 31-28 vote – with one member (Representative Shah) not voting. Before the action from the full chamber, HB 2722 passed the House Municipal Oversight and Elections Committee with a 6-4 tally; all Republicans voting in favor of the legislation and all Democrats in opposition).
After the House transmitted this bill to the Senate, it was assigned to the Elections Committee, chaired by Senator Wendy Rogers. Rogers recently brought HB 2722 up for consideration, and it passed out of her committee with another party-line vote of 5-3.
During the committee hearing, Representative Griffin stopped by to testify for her bill. She told the members of the committee that she had worked with the Cochise County Recorder David Stevens on the bill’s language.
Democrat Senator Anna Hernandez had some harsh words for the bill sponsor before voting against the bill in the Senate committee: “I’m not inclined to support any legislation that is being pushed by someone who runs an institute that posts conspiracy theories…around elections.” Another fellow Democrat on the committee, Senator Mendez, added, “Advocates, policy advisors – everyone has noted to us that hand counts only produce inaccurate results, confused voters, and consume extensive time, money, and labor…We should not be inviting all of this chaos and pretending as if this is going to solve our problems.”
Senator Rogers had the final word on the bill before it officially passed her committee, saying, “Whatever it takes to get accurate, reliable results – because 250 years of blood and treasure have been spilled for our sacred vote.” She also read a 2019 quote from then-U.S. Senator Kamala Harris, which stated: “This shouldn’t be a controversial statement: The United States must embrace hand-marked paper ballots.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Corinne Murdock | Apr 5, 2023 | News
By Corinne Murdock |
The city of Phoenix is looking to expand its public transit system by adopting a new busing route that connects to light rail, a type referred to as “Bus Rapid Transit” (BRT). The city held a public meeting last Tuesday to discuss the proposed expansion. This would be the first BRT in Phoenix.
BRT is a busing system that incorporates the speed and capacity of light rail systems. The approved BRT system will span along 35th Avenue from Trail Inn Lodge/W. Van Buren Street, where it stems from Central Station and intersects the light rail system, to Cheryl Drive, where it runs up to Black Canyon Highway and intersects the light rail. There are 16 proposed BRT stations.
Where regular busing systems carry about 60-80 passengers on freeways and use High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes during the morning and evening, mainly for commuters, with limited stops near the beginning and end of their route, BRT carries 100-150 passengers throughout the day on major roads with prioritized right-of-ways like bus lanes.
BRT is part of the city’s 2050 plan, approved in 2015. The city notes that exact costs for the BRT haven’t been determined yet.
The city will go forward with its plan to expand public transit options as ridership has faced an overall decline over the past five years. Ridership dropped from 2018 to 2021 before increasing slightly in 2022. According to available Valley Metro data, ridership for February 2022 was the exact same as ridership for January 2023 — indicating that ridership may not increase from last year’s totals.
From 2018 to 2019, ridership dropped by 2.4 million; from 2019 to 2020, ridership dropped by 11.85 million; from 2020 to 2021, ridership dropped by 25.19 million; and from 2021 to 2022, ridership recovered by 4.5 million.
BRT is generally customizable to the needs of each city, generally including these key elements: advanced fare collection through methods like mobile apps, smart cards, or ticket kiosks; road modifications to prioritize busing like queue jump lanes, bus-only lanes and corridors, turn restrictions, or extended green lights and shortened red lights; expansive bus stations with canopies, seating, travel information screens, and ticket vending machines; and customized buses with amenities like USB charging ports and space for bikes.
Over 160 cities globally have BRT systems. Major cities in the U.S. with BRT systems include Las Vegas, Nevada; Los Angeles, California; Cleveland, Ohio; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Kansas City, Missouri; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Seattle, Washington; Omaha, Nebraska; Provo-Orem, Utah; and Houston, Texas.
According to the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy (ITDP), none of those cities’ BRT systems ranked high for meeting the BRT Standard. The standard rates are based on best practices: safety, operations, design, right-of-way dedication, busway alignments, and onboard fare validation.
The Phoenix City Council first approved the BRT system in October 2021.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
