Maricopa County might become four counties, per a new resolution seeking to break up the fourth-largest county in the nation.
HCR2018 wants to shrink Maricopa County, then divide the remaining land into three counties named after Native American tribes that once populated the Valley and southern area of the state: Hohokam, Mogollon, and O’odham. The bill sponsor is State Rep. Alex Kolodin, cosponsored by State Reps. Joseph Chaplik, David Marshall, and Barbara Parker.
Kolodin told AZ Free News that the initiative is a continuation of a bill run last year; however, since this year’s version is a resolution it will ultimately be up to the voters to decide Maricopa County’s fate. Kolodin shared that voters discussed breaking up Maricopa County with him often on the campaign trail last year. The dissent to the proposal that he did hear concerned an increase in costs, but Kolodin said he thinks the opposite would be true.
“It’s never been my experience in government that having it smaller and more conservative increases costs,” said Kolodin. “There’s an optimal size for counties, and that’s not having a county board of supervisors that oversees over three-quarters of a million people. That’s more than a congressman.”
Kolodin noted that Maricopa County residents’ grievances with their current administration aren’t a shared experience by residents of other counties. In fact, he observed other counties having a positive relationship with their board of supervisors during his travels as a lawyer.
Kolodin argued that county officials should be able to pick up the phone and talk to constituents — a far-fetched concept for Maricopa County residents. The county has a population of about 4.5 million; Arizona has a population of around 7.4 million.
“Besides the problems of unaccountable government, people joke about the ‘great state of Maricopa.’ I think there’s lots of Democrats in Pima County that would agree that Maricopa County has an outsized presence. Counties should be relatively coequal entities,” observed Kolodin.
Kolodin said that the restructuring would also improve elections administration. Maricopa County experienced massive Election Day failures stemming from their printers.
“One thing we’ve learned from this last cycle is that Maricopa County is too big to effectively run itself anymore,” said Kolodin. “It completely screwed up the 2022 election. It’s too hard for them to run it.”
We also asked Kolodin to weigh in on community feedback regarding Maricopa County’s rebranding unveiled last week. Some noted that the new logo intended to depict an orange cactus looked like a middle finger.
“All I can say is these guys have spent the past several years demonstrating utter contempt for their constituents,” said Kolodin. “I’ve been involved in politics for a while, and the constant feeling is [that Maricopa County residents] don’t feel like they’re heard. You never hear that about the State House, ‘Oh these guys are so distant, they’re so inaccessible.’ You might disagree with us, but you would never feel that we don’t care about our constituents. People feel like members of the board of supervisors don’t care about their constituents, and they just feel like they’re not heard.”
When a county gets so big and unaccountable that they think they can flip voters the bird with impunity it is time to break them up and return government to a smaller and more local level. My bill to dismantle Maricopa County will let voters decide if that is a good idea. pic.twitter.com/WzfYyVUs0D
Maricopa County has struggled to fulfill basic functions like public record requests or, most recently, complying in a timely manner with an Arizona Senate subpoena.
“They’re trying to run a state with a county’s infrastructure. It just doesn’t make any sense,” said Kolodin. “It gives rise to both arrogance and incompetence. The arrogance is they think they can thumb their nose at the state legislature. It upsets the constituents.”
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Several of the bills would establish an election integrity commission; a tiebreak system for when the attorney general and secretary of state can’t agree on the Election Procedures Manual (EPM); further rights for political party and public observers to oversee processing of drop box ballots; a requirement for drop box ballot processing to be recorded on a live feed; the option for any county to forgo the use of electronic tabulation machines; and clarifications for minimum signature disqualification and observer rights to challenging signatures.
One bill would prohibit the secretary of state, county recorders, county board of supervisor members, and any elected or unelected officer in charge of elections from serving as a chairperson, treasurer, or any other member of a political action committee (PAC). That bill would prevent controversies such as ongoing public scrutiny over Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer’s PAC. A similar bill was introduced last session by State Representative Shawnna Bolick (R-Phoenix), but never made it to any committee.
Richer’s PAC, Pro-Democracy Republicans, submitted $45,000 to Defending Arizona Values for polling and mailers, $10,000 to Awareness Analytics for polling, just over $7,000 to Richer for event and operating expenses, over $3,700 to Connect Strategic for consulting, and over $2,200 to Summit Consulting Group for consulting.
The PAC’s $88,000 in donations came from thousands contributed by various business leaders across different sectors, like investing and insurance.
Another bill would further clarify legislative intent concerning Title 16, “Elections and Electors,” Chapter 4, “Conduct of Elections.” The proposed legislation clarifies that courts, election officials, and others in power have interpreted these statutes to “an undesirably restrictive degree of public transparency.” Kolodin’s bill establishes a rule of construction that requires the interpretation of statute that affords more transparency to prevail.
A final bill, the “Voters Right to Know Act,” would establish a system enabling voters to see an image of their cast ballot online. These ballots would be digitally organized in a searchable manner by precinct, not vote center, and would include a report informing voters how each vote for the particular candidate or ballot measure was tabulated. Each ballot would also have a unique identifier like a serial number. However, the identifier wouldn’t be linked to individual voters in any government database. Exempt from this ballot image database would be Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) votes. Violations of this legislation would constitute a class 2 misdemeanor.
Though they share the same name, Kolodin’s bill is unrelated to Proposition 211. That separate act approved by voters during this election claims to purge dark money from elections, though it includes carve outs for leftist dark money: corporate media, Big Tech, most labor unions, and certain PACs.
Prior to joining the state legislature, Kolodin served as a prominent constitutional attorney. Over the last few years, he’s represented the Arizona GOP in several election integrity cases. Kolodin attempted to extend Maricopa County’s polling hours on Election Day following mass voting machine failures, which the county explained during its cavass on Monday were due, in part, to incompatible heat settings on a series of retrofitted ballot-on-demand (BOD) printers. Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) intervened in that petition to ensure its demise.
In case anyone wonders why I've been running around like a crazy man. Proud to be representing the @AZGOP in this suit! https://t.co/4o0gBSCLvI
A court ruled against a request to extend Maricopa County polling hours despite mass voting machine failures, after Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) petitioned to reject the request. Kelly is in a highly contested race against one of the GOP candidates that filed suit, Republican challenger Blake Masters.
Two Republican candidates, Masters and Kari Lake, filed an emergency request on Tuesday afternoon to extend the polling hours to 10 pm, after the mass failure of tabulation machines across the county for over eight hours. This extensive failure resulted in issues such as voters spoiling ballots, leaving without voting, or unwillingly casting a provisional ballot.
One of the lawyers that filed the case, Harmeet Dhillon remarked that Kelly’s intervention was hypocrisy given his public commitments to thwarting voter disenfranchisement.
“Goes to show you that Democrats’ platitudes about voting rights are often situational, at best,” said Dhillon.
Hearing concludes. Court rules against the TRO request, despite the admitted problems with voting in Maricopa County, and multiple factual declarations from voters affected by bad instructions and malfunctioning equipment at over 25% of polling places in Maricopa County. https://t.co/Dl3slewbYG
A lawyer for the Arizona GOP, Alex Kolodin, called the court’s rejection “unfortunate” in an interview with “The Conservative Circus.” Kolodin shared that frustrated voters left polls, or were forced to cast a provisional ballot after they checked in at a malfunctioning vote center. The law doesn’t allow for voters to cast a ballot at another polling location after they’ve checked in at one location.
“The campaigns tried to explain to the judge that this was a very unique situation with this widespread issue where voters really were deprived of the right to vote and that made it a unique circumstance that warranted keeping the polls open a couple extra hours,” said Kolodin.
Lawyer Alex Kolodin discusses why voters were not granted more time to vote given the high percentage of counting m https://t.co/XfTYCfF7Za
Kolodin said that at least 33 to 40 percent of vote centers were affected by tabulation machine failures. Kolodin stated that the timing marks on the ballots likely weren’t printed properly, which meant the tabulators couldn’t read them.
Kolodin added that printers have been a major issue for Maricopa County since the 2020 election, and were at the root of the SharpieGate controversy.
“It’s funny, the county has known about ballot printing issues for two years,” said Kolodin.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Whether a new state law concerning mask mandates is effective now, or doesn’t go into force until Sept. 29 is the question a Maricopa County judge must answer, but even he admits the final decision will be made by someone else.
Judge Randall Warner held oral arguments Friday morning in a petition for a temporary restraining order (TRO) requested by Douglas Hester against his employer, Phoenix Union High School District, which recently announced a mandatory mask policy for its students, parents, and staff when on school property, including buses.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) currently recommend K-12 students, parents, and staff wear masks when indoors even if vaccinated for COVID-19. Phoenix Union and at least nine other districts across the state have announced or implemented mask mandate.
Hester contends the new state law barring cities, towns, charter and public schools, community colleges, and public universities from ordering or enforcing any such mandated mask usage became effective June 30.
One or both the sides in the case could appeal Warner’s decision on the effective date of the no-mask mandate statute, depending on how he rules and the reasoning behind his decision. Warner acknowledged as such Friday when he said his ultimate duty in the case is to “tee it up for the Supreme Court” and let the justices make the final ruling
Hester, a science teacher for the district, contends HB2898, the K-12 Education Budget Reconciliation Bill which created the new law, is already in effect due to a retroactive clause. Therefore, he wants Warner to issue a TRO to block enforcement of Phoenix Union’s new policy.
Phoenix Union, through its attorney Mary O’Grady, opposes any TRO. O’Grady also filed a motion on the district’s behalf asking Warner to dismiss the case. It is the district’s position that the effective date of the new statute is not until Sept. 29, the ninety-first day after the legislative session ended.
The district also questioned why legislators would include a retroactive effective date if the new law took effect on the schedule Hester’s attorney Alex Kolodin contends is in place.
According to Kolodin, the 90-day provision does not apply to HB2898m the K-12 Budget reconciliation bill. He argued Friday that is one reason appropriations bills are not subject to voter referendums.
“The retroactivity clause, the governor, and members of the Legislature have all expressed their intent was for schools to not be able to do this after June 30 by putting in that retroactivity clause,” he argued.
Hester named the Phoenix Union District and its eight board members as defendants. Warner’s decision is expected next week.
