Legislation banning critical race theory (CRT) was switched out with a bill to offer corporations a tax break in what may be a welcome respite from the lasting effects of the 2020 pandemic. State Representative Michelle Udall (R-Mesa) championed original legislation banning CRT from K-12 schools, which passed the House last month. Then last week, the Senate Finance Committee erased it all with a strike-everything amendment to instead offer a $4 million tax break for corporations.
Now, HB2112 requires the amount of any federal deposit insurance corporation premiums that are disallowed as a deduction for federal income tax purposes to be subtracted from a corporation’s gross income in this state. Senate Finance Committee Chairman David Livingston (R-Peoria) introduced the striker.
“This will benefit small Arizona banks the most,” claimed Livingston.
Udall didn’t speak on the bill during the committee hearing after the striker was announced. Nobody offered an explanation as to why the CRT bill was done away with, or who caused its demise. AZ Free News reached out to Udall and Livingston with these questions; they didn’t respond by press time.
An Arizona Bankers Association spokesman explained that the bill was necessary because the state failed to decouple its tax cut from changes to the federal tax cut in 2019. Livingston noted that failure to establish the tax cut put Arizona at a competitive disadvantage to other states.
A previous version of the bill failed to pass the Senate Ways and Means Committee. This time around, the amended bill was approved without discussion.
Apparently, parents didn’t get the memo that the CRT ban was no longer in question. Several mothers in support of the bill signed up to speak on the bill; one mother began to speak, only to be informed by Livingston that the bill no longer existed.
A different bill may be the reason for the original HB2112’s eradication — this one, a resolution that would have voters decide whether the state constitution should ban any individual or entity from “compelling or soliciting” belief of CRT tenets, as well as imposing preferential treatment based on them. The resolution would encompass all levels of public education, from K-12 through higher education.
State Representative Steve Kaiser (R-Phoenix) introduced the resolution.
The bill, HCR2001, also passed the House last month along party lines, several weeks after Udall’s bill passed. It passed the Senate Education Committee last week, and will be considered in the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Monday’s scheduled Senate committee meeting to look into requested Maricopa County records from the 2020 election was canceled after the county’s Board of Supervisors complied with Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s subpoena, following State Senator Kelly Townsend’s (R-Mesa) pushes to have them to respond to her records requests echoing those made in Brnovich’s subpoena. Townsend’s efforts were to assert the will of Arizonans, she said in a press release, noting that she took action when the supervisors didn’t comply with Brnovich’s requests at the beginning of this month.
“I am pleased to report that Maricopa County has complied with the legislative subpoena commanding fulfillment of the Attorney General’s request dated March 9, 2022. The Government Committee scheduled for later today is therefore no longer necessary, as its intended objective has been achieved. The County’s acknowledgement of its duty to timely account for election administration activity is a laudable victory in our pursuit of accountability to Arizona voters,” wrote Townsend. “While the Maricopa County Chairman defends the delay in their response to the Attorney General with indeterminate case law and timelines set by courts, our subpoena conveyed the will of Arizonans, from the branch most representative of the statewide electorate, that the County make election integrity requests a top priority, rather than place them in a public records queue.”
However, Townsend noted that her job wasn’t done. She promised that she and a number of unnamed colleagues would ensure that Maricopa County officials carried out their compliance to the end.
“While I am encouraged by Maricopa County’s evolving attitude towards transparency and compliance, I will be closely following the Attorney General’s ongoing investigation and will be following up with additional inquiries to answer further questions I have as Government Committee Chairman,” stated Townsend. “I stand with my colleagues as we remain committed to engage again when it is necessary for the Legislature’s plenary authority over statewide elections to be exercised.”
Townsend issued her subpoena last Monday. In response, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates claimed it wasn’t necessary to show up to Monday’s scheduled hearing because they already submitted requested records to Brnovich. Gates added that Townsend may not have authority to subpoena their board without permission of Senate President Karen Fann (R-Prescott).
Townsend responded by citing Arizona code, which allows committee chairmen to subpoena individuals.
As an educational opportunity, @billgatesaz remarks that I did not get permission from the Senate President, however may we all learn statute and see that A.R.S. 41–1151 allows for any Chairman to issue a subpoena w/o permission. A.R.S. 41–1153 requires that it be complied with. pic.twitter.com/gjnpktAHdZ
Gates reasserted to KJZZ several days after Townsend’s remarks that the board wouldn’t respond. Instead, the county’s attorney, Ed Novak, was slated to appear at the meeting.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
The third largest owner of radio stations in the U.S. is getting bigger with the announcement that it is expanding into Arizona and Utah by acquiring Cherry Creek Broadcasting LLC.
New York-based Townsquare Media confirmed last week it has agreed to pay $18.75 million to add Colorado-based Cherry Creeks’ 43 stations in 9 markets to Townsquare’s holdings The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2022, pending regulatory approval.
Townsquare is a community-focused digital media and digital marketing solutions company with 321 stations in 67 markets focused outside the top 50. Its only stations in the southwest U.S. have been in Texas, but that changes with the Cherry Creek deal.
Three stations based near the border in Sierra Vista -KTAN Thunder 98.1 (1420 AM and 98.1 FM), KWCD Country 92.3 FM, and KZMK All Hits K101.(100.9 FM)- are part of the deal, as well as three stations in southern Utah.
“Folding Cherry Creek’s quality brands and digital platform into Townsquare is the natural next phase in our growth journey and offers Cherry Creek employees access to a deep bench of resources and guidance to continue their shared mission.” said Jonathan Brewster, Cherry Creek CEO.
“As we’ve grown with the help of partners like Bain Capital Credit, we have maintained our focus on serving small-to-midsize communities and leveraging this platform to build a robust digital-solutions business that advertisers desperately seek.” Brewster added.
Kalil & Co. Inc. acted as exclusive broker for Cherry Creek.
A last minute bill which could give voters the chance to significantly increase the pay for Arizona’s 90 lawmakers and double the length of terms for state senators is set to be heard Monday.
The Arizona Legislature is in session at least 100 days each year starting in early January. Under current law, voters have the final say in setting the annual salary for the state’s 30 senators and 60 representatives.
That rate is $24,000 a year which has not changed for nearly 25 years.
However, Sen. David Gowan and Rep. Regina Cobb are supporting legislation under Senate Bill 1180 which would ask voters in November to set legislators’ pay at 60 percent of the governor’s salary. The governor’s annual pay is currently $95,000, meaning lawmakers would be paid $57,000 a year starting in January 2023.
But it is not only pay that would double for a state senator like Gowan, who represents all of Cochise and Greenlee counties, as well as southern Graham County and a portion of Pima County.
SB1180 includes language asking voters to change the length of Senate terms from two years to four years. And although state representatives would still serve two-year terms, all lawmakers would be allowed to serve up to 12 years in each chamber, for a total of 24 years if a lawmakers runs between the two chambers.
The current limit is eight years in each chamber, or 16 years total as a lawmaker.
To get the bill heard at this point in the session, Cobb has introduced an amendment to strike all the language of Gowan’s current SB1180, which was a COVID-19 expenditure reporting bill already passed by the Senate. The “strike everything amendment” is 25 pages that if cleared by the Legislature would put the provisions in front of voters in November as Senate Concurrent Resolution 1018.
Among the provisions is an overhaul the reporting system for lobbyists who make campaign contributions or expenditure on behalf of a state lawmaker.
According to SB1180, the current quarterly reporting of such expenditures would be replaced with a new mandate that those expenditures be reported within five business days. It also significantly increases the type of gifts to a state officer or employee or a member of the officer’s or employee’s householdwhich would have to be publicly reported.
Currently there is a long list of exemptions to the gift rule, allowing some public officials and employees or their families to accept travel, lodging, and speaking engagement fees without the “gift” ever being reported to the public.
The new transparency rules related to lobbyist activity would also require a new web-based digital platform application to allow for real-time entry of information and public accessibility. SB1180 would allocate $10 million to the Arizona Secretary of State to cover that cost.
On Monday, Cobb’s House Appropriations Committee will hear SB1180’s strike everything amendment. If it passes, the new version of the bill would go back to the Senate for approval because the language varies from what the Senate passed last month.
Gowan has been a strong advocate for ensuring more Arizonans can afford to run for the Legislature, particularly those who live hours away from Phoenix.
In the 2021 legislative session, he spearheaded a bill to change the per diem rates for lawmakers from outside Maricopa County. Those rates -which had equaled $60 a day for housing and food since 1984- were raised to $207 a day for the first 120 days of session.
Future rates will be adjusted based on the federal winter per diem rates set annually by the U.S. General Services Administration. Per diems are separate from pay or travel reimbursement.
The per diem bill became law when Ducey utilized a rare procedural maneuver to allow the legislation to take effect without a governor’s signature.
Mesa Public Schools (MPS) won’t explain where over $32.3 million of their federal emergency funds slated for COVID-related expenditures went. The lack of transparency calls into question the amount of funds funneled into undisclosed areas potentially unrelated to education while teachers struggle for increased salaries and school supply funding.
AZ Free News inquired with MPS about their COVID-19 expenditures after readers requested we look into reports that teachers were asking parents to donate basic supplies like paper because they were running out — and apparently their district wouldn’t cover it. In its annual financial report submitted last October, MPS reported nearly $40 million remaining in their maintenance and operation funds
That led AZ Free News to look into MPS expenditures. The millions we inquired about came from their latest public Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) report. Specifically, we inquired about what was behind the repeated listings of “indirect costs,” “other,” and “etc” expenditures that MPS allocated millions of dollars toward. AZ Free News focused on these expenditures:
Page 8: the “other (includes indirect costs)” totaling over $16 million
Page 9: the “etc” expenditures under PPE totaling nearly $1.7 million
Page 9: the “other” and “indirect costs” together totaling over $554,000
Page 10: the “COVID relief positions” totaling over $122,000
Page 10: the “indirect costs” totaling nearly $4.3 million
Page 12: the “indirect costs” totaling over $9.6 million
With each public records request, MPS officials would refer us back to the public ESSER report. After several follow-ups, MPS General Counsel Kacey King informed AZ Free News that MPS could not fulfill the request further because explanation of those additional expenditures in full would require MPS to “create records.” Under Arizona law, government entities aren’t required to create records that they don’t have.
In all, Arizona has received over $4 billion in ESSER funding. MPS received some of the largest bulk of that funding, coming in second for most ESSER funds received: around $229.2 million, coming in second only to Tucson Unified School District (TUSD).
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Earlier this month, Brophy College Preparatory School engaged in a 10-day-long social justice campaign for its annual Summit on Human Dignity. Although the 40 Days for Life campaign began March 2 and will last until April 10 this year, the school didn’t include pro-life or abortion conversations in any of its workshops that day or in any other part of the summit. The school also didn’t engage in other prevailing social issues at conflict with the Bible, such as homosexuality, transgenderism, premarital sex, divorce, COVID-19 vaccination, women in church leadership, and parental rights. The summit also occurred during Lent, a religious observance for some denominations who claim Christianity to commemorate Jesus Christ’s 40 days of temptation by Satan in the desert following his baptism. Nowhere on the summit webpage did the school mention the observance.
Laced throughout these tracks was the prevailing issue of race and alleged racism, and each track included keynote speakers not directly involved in the issue at hand but with plenty of commentary to offer — mainstream media reporters, activists, and academics — with the exception of those presenting in the Indigenous Rights track.
The promotional video for the summit mocked the city’s Civil War-era founders in a revisionist historical skit, stuffing all of the summit’s topics into 10 minutes of footage: systemic racism, Native American rights, water conservation, public education, and illegal immigration. Despite characterizing one of the founders, ex-Confederate soldier-turned-Army dispatch rider Jack Swilling, as dismissive of Native Americans, the skit didn’t mention Swilling caring for two Apache children as his own. The photograph the school used to identify Swilling was a doctored version of an original depicting Swilling with an Apache Indian boy identified by historians as his adopted son, Guillermo “Gavílan” Swilling — though it’s disputed if he and the other child, a girl, were ever formally adopted due to laws at the time on adoption of Native American children. The version used by Brophy was one that erased the boy from the photograph entirely, created 15 years later.
The two students in the skit characterized the city as “completely unsustainable and deeply problematic on a number of ethical levels.”
The four questions the summit proposed were urges to the participants to focus on the social justice issues presented in each track.
On one day committed to workshops, the school offered 29 different lectures or presentations, out of which only four weren’t apparently centered on social justice. The remainder of the workshops focused on the rights, issues, or controversies with: Native Americans, policing, environmentalism, homelessness, illegal immigrants, Black Lives Matter (BLM), prisons, and race.
One workshop focused on God specifically: “Heaven on Earth: Strengthening Our Relationship with God.” However, another focused on affirming the validity of other world religions: “An Interfaith Look at Phoenix,” by the Brophy Interfaith Coalition.
