On Thursday, Arizona House Speaker-elect Ben Toma (R-LD27) announced the committee and chair appointments for the upcoming session.
The House GOP clarified that committee membership is forthcoming.
Arizona House Speaker-elect @RepBenToma today announced committees and chair appointments for the upcoming 56th Legislature, 1st Regular Session, which opens on January 9, 2023.
I am absolutely honored to be named House Commerce Chairman by Speaker-elect @RepBenToma. Ensuring Arizona’s tremendous economic environment stays strong and its future remains bright is my chief focus. I’ll work hard to keep Arizona strong! Let’s get to work! pic.twitter.com/DUfxZ8xycx
— AZ State Rep. Justin Wilmeth (@JustinWilmethAZ) December 1, 2022
Municipal Oversight & Elections Committee — Chair: Rep. Jacqueline Parker (R-LD15), Vice Chair: Rep. Alexander Kolodin (R-LD03)
Honored to be named Vice Chair of Elections/Municipal Affairs serving under my colleague and good friend @electjacqparker. Let the games begin! https://t.co/EKoMWa4PvS
The Senate announced its committee chairmanships and leadership last month.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Senate President-Elect @votewarren Provides Update on Majority Caucus Leadership Team and Announces Senate Committee Chairmanships pic.twitter.com/wbeHMeO0df
Republican Reps. Paul Gosar (AZ-04) and Andy Biggs (AZ-05) joined an amicus brief with 15 other lawmakers to prevent future airplane mask mandates.
Specifically, the lawmakers challenged the CDC’s legal authority to issue a mask mandate for airplane travel in Health Freedom Defense Fund v. Biden. They contested that Congress hadn’t and couldn’t grant the CDC the authority for such a mandate.
Astonishingly, Biden is still fighting to force you to wear masks on airplanes.
That’s why several of my colleagues and I are fighting back.
We sued the CDC, but another case received a ruling before ours, so we filed an amicus brief for that suit:https://t.co/YLylPHEihw
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY-04) led the amicus brief, joined by Biggs and Republican Reps. Barry Moore (AL-02), Lauren Boebert (CO-03), Bill Posey (FL-08), Brian Mast (FL-18), Andrew Clyde (GA-09), Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-14), Matt Rosendale (MT), Dan Bishop (NC-09), Warren Davidson (OH-08), Ralph Norman (SC-05), Chip Roy (TX-21), Bob Good (VA-05), and Alex Mooney (WV-02).
Sen. Rand Paul (KY) also joined the amicus brief. These Congress members represent 13 different states.
The case is before the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals currently.
The Florida Middle District Court ruled against the Biden administration in April, finding that the CDC exceeded its statutory authority and failed to follow notice and comment rulemaking. Following the loss, the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a joint statement with the CDC pledging an appeal of the ruling.
“The Department continues to believe that the order requiring masking in the transportation corridor is a valid exercise of the authority Congress has given CDC to protect the public health,” stated the DOJ.
The lawsuit follows legislative attempts to end the mandate and prevent future ones, and years of aggressive crackdowns on resistance to mask-wearing on flights.
Last July, Biggs and Paul introduced legislation to prohibit mask mandates for public transportation. Neither version of the legislation made it to a committee in the Democratic-controlled Congress.
For two years, airlines put passengers who refused to mask up on their “no-fly list.” In February, Delta Airlines asked other airlines to share their no-fly lists to expand its own.
Negative public response to the move caused the company to backtrack. By April, Delta began removing people who refused to adhere to masking requirements from its no-fly list.
Last December, the CEO of Southwest Airlines testified to the Senate his doubts about masks’ ability to prevent COVID-19 transmission in airplanes. The fully vaccinated, double-boosted CEO caught COVID-19 a day after that testimony.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Governor Doug Ducey shared on Thursday that he and 20 other governors petitioned Congress to end the Biden administration’s military vaccine mandate.
The 21-member coalition, led by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee through the Republican Governors Association (RGA), urged congressional leadership in a letter to end the vaccine mandate implemented by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last August. The coalition noted that more service members were leaving than were being recruited.
“The Biden vaccine mandate on our military creates a national security risk that severely impacts our defense capabilities abroad and our state readiness here at home,” stated the coalition.
As governors, our ability to respond to emergencies is contingent upon the strength & size of our National Guard. Joined 20 other governors to call on Congress to put a stop to Biden’s unnecessary vaccine mandate and protect the men & women in uniform. https://t.co/EcA5LytlnH
In October, the National Guard and Army disclosed that they missed their recruiting target by 10 and 25 percent, respectively. Last month, the Armed Forces revealed that they’ve discharged 8,000 members since implementing the vaccine mandate.
The governors warned that the falling National Guard forces would hinder natural disaster and emergency operations in their states. The coalition reminded the congressional leaders that President Joe Biden told 60 Minutes that “the pandemic is over” in September. However, multiple, anonymous White House officials attempted to walk back Biden’s statement through interviews with mainstream outlets favored by the administration like Politico and Washington Post.
In addition to Ducey and Lee, Governors Kay Ivey (Alabama), Asa Hutchinson (Arkansas), Ron DeSantis (Florida), Brad Little (Idaho), Eric Holcomb (Indiana), Kim Reynolds (Iowa), Tate Reeves (Mississippi), Mike Parson (Missouri), Greg Gianforte (Montana), Pete Ricketts (Nebraska), Chris Sununu (New Hampshire), Doug Burgum (North Dakota), Kevin Stitt (Oklahoma), Henry McMaster (South Carolina), Kristi Noem (South Dakota), Greg Abbott (Texas), Spencer Cox (Utah), Glenn Youngkin (Virginia), and Mark Gordon (Wyoming) signed the letter.
Seven RGA members that didn’t sign onto the letter were Governors Brian Kemp (Georgia), Larry Hogan (Maryland), Charlie Baker (Massachusetts), Ralph Torres (Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands), Mike Dewine (Ohio), Phil Scott (Vermont), and Jim Justice (West Virginia).
Though Ducey issued support on this issue to end the military vaccine mandate, it’s unlikely it will be a priority for his successor. Governor-elect Katie Hobbs praised the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate last September in a statement to the Arizona Mirror.
“Vaccines are our best path to defeat this pandemic and keep our economy open. This is the right move to protect Arizonans and our economic recovery,” stated Hobbs.
In mid-October, Hobbs indicated in a campaign press release that she was supportive of sweeping vaccine mandates. Hobbs’ campaign did so by highlighting excerpts from a CNN opinion piece denouncing her Republican opponent, Kari Lake, for opposing vaccine mandates.
However, just days later, Hobbs signaled neutrality on the subject of requiring the COVID-19 vaccine for K-12 attendance. Hobbs told C-SPAN that she hadn’t considered whether or not children should be required to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in order to attend school.
Katie Hobbs won't say if she supports forcing Arizona kids to be vaccinated for Covid in order to attend school.
In April, Ducey signed HB2498 into law, prohibiting state and local governments from mandating the COVID-19 vaccine.
Great news! @DougDucey has signed HB2498! This will prevent government agencies from mandating the COVID vaccine. Medical decisions should be made by the individual, not by tyrannical government bureaucrats/politicians. Big win for medical freedom! pic.twitter.com/A41vxTem0d
President Joe Biden will make his first visit to Arizona, after nearly two years in office.
The president will come to north Phoenix to celebrate the development of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) plant. The foreign company is scheduled to begin its Phoenix operations in 2024.
The Biden administration has a keen interest in domestic semiconductor manufacturing — the president signed the CHIPS and Science Act in August, the day after the FBI raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. Senators Mark Kelly and Krysten Sinema focused on the act’s passage rather than the raid. The pair championed the legislation as means of improving the flagging economy.
The closest Biden came to visiting was last February. Biden, along with Vice President Kamala Harris, engaged in a virtual tour of an Arizona State University (ASU) vaccination site at State Farm.
Earlier this week, Vice President Harris and I took a virtual tour of a vaccination site in Arizona. Because of the hard work of these folks — and countless others across the country — we’re going to beat this virus once and for all. pic.twitter.com/xekXB967h5
Former President Donald Trump first visited Arizona as president in August 2017, several weeks after the Charlottesville, Virginia “Unite the Right” protest after which several counter-protesters were run over and killed. He visited again in October 2018.
Harris has yet to visit the state, either. Apart from the virtual ASU tour, the closest the vice president came to visiting Arizona was a trip to the Arizona-Nevada border along Lake Mead.
Yesterday, I visited Lake Mead, which is a crucial source of water for 25 million people, including those living in Nevada, California, and Arizona. Due to the climate crisis, Lake Mead has dropped to its lowest level ever–causing water shortages for some of these communities. pic.twitter.com/EAQgl4m8n7
The last time the vice president came to the state was in October 2020 on her campaign trail. Harris visited Tucson and Phoenix.
Harris remains absent from the state, despite designation as border czar and Arizona being one of the states hardest hit by the border crisis under their administration. To date, the vice president has only made one border trip to Texas, after much resistance. Legislators and pundits criticized that visit, however, contending that Harris made a brief stop at a Border Patrol station miles from the site of the border crisis.
A detailed record of Biden’s public calendar is available here. The LA Times maintains an open-source data archive of Harris’ public calendar.
Although no border crisis existed at the time, Vice President Mike Pence visited Arizona multiple times in 2019. In April of that year, he addressed a controversial razor wire topping the border wall in Nogales. He came in March to speak with the National Association of Manufacturers and tour the Drug Enforcement Agency facility and returned in October to visit the Caterpillar manufacturing site.
Prior to that, Pence visited Arizona several other times to visit with Governor Doug Ducey and other lawmakers, including his stumping for former Republican Senator Martha McSally.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
The Arizona Supreme Court will issue a ruling in the next few months that could allow complaints to be resolved and enforced by state agencies even if the agency did not have authority to impose a penalty or sanction in the first place.
On Nov. 15, the justices conducted oral arguments in a dispute between Legacy Foundation Action Fund and the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission over nearly $100,000 in penalties imposed in 2015 against Action Fund for alleged violations related to election finance reports and political ads.
The Legacy Foundation Action Fund unsuccessfully challenged the Clean Elections Commission’s authority during agency-level proceedings, including an argument that the Commission lacked subject matter jurisdiction. Subject matter jurisdiction is a legal requirement that a given court or government agency has the authority to hear the matter brought before it.
Attorneys for the Action Fund did not timely appeal the issue, waiting instead until 2018 to revive the jurisdictional issue when the Commission sought to collect the penalty.
Earlier this year, the Arizona Court of Appeals issued a split opinion which held in part that the “need for finality” with a decision of an Arizona administrative agency can be more important than whether the agency actually had authority to issue the decision in the first place.
The opinion also noted a judgment by a state-chartered agency such as the Clean Elections Commission is not a legal nullity if the party failed to raise the jurisdictional issue in a timely appeal.
However, a strongly worded dissenting opinion by Judge Cynthia Bailey noted that while Legacy Foundation Action Fund forfeited several appellate rights by not filing its appeal on time, “it did not, and could not, forfeit” its right to challenge the Commission’s subject-matter jurisdiction.
“Subject-matter jurisdiction can neither be waived nor conferred by stipulation. A court simply cannot hear a case over which it has no jurisdiction,” Bailey wrote, adding that “under Arizona statutes and rules, the potential injustice when an agency acts beyond its statutory authority outweighs any interest in finality and judicial economy.”
Bailey’s dissent opinion closely aligns with arguments put forth in an amicus (friend-of-the-court) brief filed with the Arizona Supreme Court by the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation.
The Goldwater Institute is a nonpartisan public policy and research foundation whose priorities include the defense of individual rights against Arizona’s various state agencies which often operate outside the boundaries of evidentiary and procedural protections.
In the brief, attorney Timothy Sandefur cites prior court decisions in Arizona—some dating back to the 1920s—which have led to established case law that a judgment issued by a court, tribunal, or agency that lacks jurisdiction is void ab initio, or legally null.
“This has always been the rule in Arizona…and it should not be altered now,” Sandefur wrote, pointing out that Action Fund’s only opportunity to have its jurisdictional challenge heard was by the Commission itself, “which is not a judicial body, but a party to this dispute.”
And to elevate finality in litigation over validity as the court of appeals did “is to elevate form over substance and – alarmingly – efficiency over legitimacy,” the brief states.
Sandefur urged the Arizona Supreme Court justices to reject establishing a new legal standard for jurisdiction, especially in light of the burden it will create for people trying to defend themselves when agencies overstep their bounds, Sandefur wrote.
That burden “is likely to fall hardest on unsophisticated and unrepresented parties, particularly small business owners, workers, and entrepreneurs, who are often subjected to enforcement by regulatory agencies and often lack the wherewithal to obtain legal representation,” he added.
A decision from the Arizona Supreme Court is expected in Spring 2023.
As the 2022 fiscal year closed, the Arizona Treasurer’s Office continued its positive years-long trajectory of the state’s finances.
Highlights of these year-end reports included a 2,126 percent increase in the Local Government Investment Pool (LGIP) total October earnings: over $13.4 million. Total LGIP assets were just under $5.7 million.
Arizona Treasurer Kimberly Yee reported that the Local Government Investment Pool's total October earnings were $13,450,586 at today’s Board of Investment Meeting. This is an increase of 2,125.96% (not a typo!) from October 2021 earnings.
— Office of the Arizona State Treasurer (@AZTreasury) November 29, 2022
Arizona operates four LGIPs. Pool 5 LGIP earnings were over $6.7 million, Pool 7 LGIP earnings were just under $5 million, Pool 500 LGIP earnings were over $1.2 million, and Pool 700 LGIP earnings were over $446,000. Total participant earnings reached over $40.1 million.
The treasurer’s office also reported a 29 percent increase over the past three years in the Permanent Land Endowment’s market value: $7.1 billion.
The Permanent Land Endowment Trust Fund (PLETF) issues funds for 13 beneficiaries, including the state’s K-12 education, universities, prisons, hospital, school for the deaf and blind, retirement home, and legislature. K-12 funding will receive a $402 million boost from this increase in this upcoming fiscal year. They are the largest beneficiary of the PLETF.
Arizona Treasurer Kimberly Yee reported that in October 2022, the Arizona Permanent Land Endowment reached a market value of $7.1 billion. That is a 29% increase since Treasurer Yee took office in January 2019.
— Office of the Arizona State Treasurer (@AZTreasury) November 30, 2022
These reports were issued during the Board of Investment (BOI) meeting on Tuesday.
Arizona Treasurer Kimberly Yee welcomes the public to the November 2022 Arizona Board of Investment meeting on Tuesday, November 29, 2022, at 1:00 P.M. via the web with audio conferencing.
— Office of the Arizona State Treasurer (@AZTreasury) November 28, 2022
Treasurer Kimberly Yee’s administration has yielded high dividends from the start.
In Yee’s first 100-day report after taking office in April 2019, they reported in that quarter a $426 million increase (seven percent) in the PLETF, a $5 million increase (62 percent) in general fund interest income, a $10.2 million increase (65 percent) in state agency interest income, and an $8.1 million increase (69 percent) in local government interest income. The PLETF increase enabled a $369 million distribution to K-12 schools, a 6.5 percent increase. For the 2020 fiscal year, K-12 education received $342 million; a $21 million increase from the previous fiscal year.
By the end of her first year in office, Yee announced a number of record highs: investment earnings of $567 million, a PLETF total of $6.23 billion, assets under management total of nearly $18 billion, state operating balance total of $3.75 billion, and distributions to K-12 schools and government totaling $567 million.
The pandemic didn’t hinder these positive performances. By the end of 2020, Yee raised the endowment to a then-record high of $7.1 billion. The treasurer’s office also reported a record distribution of nearly $400 million to PLETF beneficiaries; an increase of nearly four percent, namely for K-12 schools. In October 2020, the treasurer’s office also took on oversight of the AZ529 Plan, or Arizona Education Savings Plan (AFCSP).
Last March, the PLETF outperformed the long-term average returns of the largest university and college endowments in the country.
By the end of last year, the treasurer’s office achieved more record highs. Total assets under management increased to $26.1 billion, the state operating fund balance reached $7.7 billion last June (excluding federal pandemic aid), and the PLE reached nearly $8 billion with a one-year return of 27.5 percent.
The treasurer’s office also distributed $448.5 million to K-12 schools, state agencies, and local governments; a total of $1.57 billion in three years. That included an expansion of distributions to K-12 schools for this year, totaling $372 million. Yee’s administration also increased the LGIP assets by over 19 percent; a total of over 59 percent since Yee took office.
Yee has emphasized that her approach to treasury management focuses on less costs for taxpayers consistently. At the end of her first year in office, Yee shared that her management philosophy focused on reducing taxpayers’ burden.
“The more we earn, the less Arizonans have to pay in direct taxes,” stated Yee. “Each investment dollar we earn is one less dollar that has to be collected from taxpayers while staying committed to our investment philosophy of ‘safety, before liquidity, before yield.’”
In recent months, Yee implemented safeguards to prevent non-pecuniary factors from influencing, and potentially hindering, state investments. In September, the BOI modified its investment rules to prevent Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) ratings from being factors of consideration when investing.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
