House Minority Leader Reginald Bolding (D-Laveen) said that those elected officials celebrating the elimination of the income tax increase weren’t leaders in any sense of the word. The Maricopa County Superior Court ruled on Friday that the increased income tax, Prop 208, was unconstitutional because it exceeded the allowed spending limit for what the tax dollars would be purposed for: education.
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Standing on the table beating your chest because you were successful taking money from our classrooms & teachers (while overturning the will of voters) isn't leadership, it's a lack thereof! #Prop208
The remark came after Governor Doug Ducey tweeted that the court ruling was a “win for Arizona taxpayers.” Ducey did note that he anticipated the ruling would be appealed but expressed confidence that the Arizona Supreme Court would also find Prop 208 to be unconstitutional.
This ruling is a win for Arizona taxpayers. It’s another step in undoing the damage of Prop 208 and making sure we continue to benefit from having the lowest flat income tax rate in the nation. 1/
Bolding issued similar sentiments in 2018, vowing that Ducey’s support for the demise of a similar tax hike would cost him his election that year. Ducey won comfortably, earning 56 percent of the vote over the Democratic candidate, David Garcia, who earned under 42 percent of the vote.
Mark my words. Today is the day @dougducey loss the election for Governor of Arizona. Removing @investinedaz from the ballot and going against the will of the people and the #REDforED movement will have consequences. Our kids & communities shouldn't have to beg for resources.
Voters may be asked to approve the requirement of ID for early ballots, according to the Arizona legislature’s approval of a proposed constitutional amendment, SCR1012. The resolution, sponsored by State Senator J.D. Mesnard (R-Chandler) and now headed to Governor Doug Ducey for approval, passed 31-26 along party lines in the House on Monday and 16-12 in the Senate last Thursday.
SCR1012 would require voters to sign an affidavit including their date of birth and their early voter ID number: either their driver’s license number, their nonoperating ID license number, the last four digits of their social security number, or their unique identifying number. For security purposes, the legislation clarified that concealment measures must be undertaken when delivering or mailing the ballots. If a voter can’t mark the ballot themselves, they must include their assistant’s phone number and relationship to them.
Election workers must ensure that this additional information is present and accurate. Inability to confirm the information would first require election workers to contact the voter before disqualifying the ballot.
Additionally, on-site early voting locations must require voters to present their ID before receiving a ballot. The legislation prohibits the state from charging for nonoperating ID licenses required for registering to vote or voting.
The legislation would apply no earlier than the next primary elections in 2024.
During last week’s vote on the bill, Senate Democrats argued that the bill would cause severe lags and disruptions at best and outright voter suppression at worst. Senate Republicans responded that signatures alone weren’t a sufficient identifying measure.
State Senator Martín Quezada (D-Quezada) noted how after a similar bill was enacted in Texas, a rate of 40 percent of ballots were rejected in the largest county, Harris County, to the tune of thousands of ballots. Quezada said that the potential rejection rates were too great to pass the bill. He argued that it would be “suppressing the vote.”
In response, State Senator Kelly Townsend (R-Mesa) rebutted that signatures alone weren’t enough. She declared that about 90 percent of signatures from the 2020 election were obvious mismatches, along with 39 percent of those being probable mismatches. Townsend raised the greater concern of accountability for the election workers who decided to approve those ballots with mismatched signatures, questioning whether they would also rubber stamp ballots with missing, unmatched, or incorrect ID numbers or birth dates.
“Why are we wasting our time on this? What’s the point? May the best cheaters win. You know? Because no one’s going to hold you accountable. So maybe that ought to be the new narrative: whoever can outplay the system the best is the one who wins the election,” said Townsend. “You guys say ‘voter suppression’; we need cheating suppression.”
State Senator Sean Bowie (D-Chandler) argued the bill was unnecessary. He said that over 80 percent of his district’s voters vote by mail. Bowie said that people weren’t capable of adapting to the changes of additional requirements on their ballot.
State Senator Vince Leach (R-Tucson) pointed out how Democrats weren’t insulted at the idea of IDs for other parts of public life, including traveling, but expressed displeasure concerning elections.
“It’s beyond the pale that when it comes to a ballot box that, all of a sudden, everything goes out the window of everyday life. The world is changing because of one small card the size of a credit card. It’s unbelievable,” said Leach.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
On Wednesday, the Arizona House approved a bill to expand open meeting law to require enough seating for anticipated attendance and that the agenda include the time when the public may have physical access to the meeting place. The vote panned out evenly along party lines: 31-28, with all Democrats opposed and all Republicans in favor of expanding open meetings.
The legislation, introduced by State Representative John Kavanagh (R-Fountain Hills), included a civil penalty for leaders of the public body violating the seating and access time requirements.
When addressing the House Government and Elections Committee, Kavanagh said that governing bodies should anticipate controversial issues that would cause sudden spikes in public attendance. Kavanagh cited the Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) incident last year, in which the governing board closed the doors half an hour early to their meeting after enduring overwhelming public attendance the previous week. The legislator explained that he was turned away from attending the meeting because the room was full.
“This is simply meant to prevent a town council, or a school board, or anyone who has a controversial topic from suppressing public input by keeping the meeting in a tiny room so people can’t get in. And that happens,” said Kavanagh.
State Representative Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek) noted that he’d experienced something similar to Kavanagh’s SUSD experience. Hoffman recounted how Higley Unified School District (HUSD) officials refused to allow public attendance beyond 20 percent room capacity, turning away individuals attempting to participate.
Committee Democrats expressed concern that governing bodies wouldn’t be able to anticipate public attendance adequately. Kavanagh said that it would be up to citizens to file open meetings complaints if they suspected government officials weren’t adhering to reasonable accommodations as directed in this bill. He noted that the League of Arizona Cities and Towns wasn’t in opposition to this bill.
Minority Leader Reginald Bolding (D-Laveen) explained in his “no” vote that the bill’s intent was “noble,” but failed to spell out how government officials should anticipate public attendance to accommodate seating. State Representative Sarah Liguori (D-Phoenix) argued that limiting public access to open meetings was a matter of safety, citing the presence of COVID-19 and violence at school board meetings.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
The Arizona House passed HB2507 on Wednesday, a bill declaring that religious services are to be considered essential during a state of emergency. While all House Republicans voted for the bill, several Democrats voted against the majority of their party to pass it: State Representatives César Chávez (D-Maryvale), Diego Espinoza (D-Tolleson), Alma Hernandez (D-Tucson), Daniel Hernandez (D-Tucson), Robert Meza (D-Phoenix), and Lorenzo Sierra (D-Avondale).
However, the bill would require that religious organizations comply with safety or occupancy requirements contingent upon other essential services. The only way around occupancy requirements would be in the case that the government couldn’t provide proof that their requirement was the least restrictive means of furthering their compelling interest. If the government violates these protections, then a religious organization could receive declaratory and injunctive relief, compensatory damages, and attorney fees.
In Canada, worship wasn’t considered an essential practice throughout the pandemic. One preacher, Artur Pawlowski, has been arrested five times for keeping his church open and opposing the draconian government. Last week, Pawlowski was arrested for speaking to members of the Freedom Convoy, the truckers protesting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s dictatorship. Pawlowski’s speech reportedly caused the truckers to change their mind about abandoning their protest: instead of leaving the border for Edmonton, they heeded Pawlowski’s charge to “hold the line.” According to Pawlowski’s lawyer, law enforcement keeps Pawlowski in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day.
The Canadian government further winnowed away at the freedom of religion by outlawing certain beliefs, such as opposition to homosexuality.
Pawlowski grew up under the Soviet Union’s Communist regime in Poland. Like Pawlowski, the state representative behind HB2507, Ben Toma (R-Peoria), grew up in a dictatorship that his family eventually fled: the communist dictator of Romania from 1965 to 1989, Nicolae Ceaușescu. Toma offered details of his experience in an interview with James T. Harris on “The Conservative Circus.” Toma expressed fear that the government’s response during COVID-19 marked a descent into an authoritarian state. He noted how his bill helped push back against dictatorial trends exhibited by the government throughout 2020: disincentivizing and outlawing religion to increase government reliance and subservience.
“If your ultimate allegiance is to God, then you have something on which to rely on, to sort of fight back against state overreach,” said Toma. “But once you take God out of it, then the only thing you can rely on is what? You end up having to trust the state. To me, that’s the scariest possible solution because that’s how we got some of the worst dictators and some of the worst criminals, guilty of genocide and everything else across the world.”
AZ State Rep. Ben Toma discusses the tyranny going on in Canada as he speaks on his personal escape from Romania un https://t.co/KEIfNHfVwI
In addition to the hostility toward religion, Toma observed that other signs of communism were present in the country, with implementation or entertainment of ideas like rationing, supply chain shortages, social credit, and censorship.
Governor Doug Ducey hasn’t lifted Arizona’s state of emergency yet.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Public comments are due on or before March 4 for those wishing to provide input about a proposed plan by U.S. Air Force change how its special use airspace is utilized in several military operations areas, referred to as an MOA.
The USAF recently issued a Notice of Intent for the preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement to evaluate potential impacts of proposed actions involving MOA airspace which is used to support missions at Davis-Monthan AFB, Luke AFB, and Morris Air National Guard Base.
An MOA is an airspace established outside Class A airspace to segregate certain nonhazardous military activities from civilian and commercial air traffic. Vertical and lateral flight limits are specified in an MOA, as well as flight activities which are prohibited or allowed (and when) within the MOA.
According to the USAF, the MOAs proposed for optimization include Tombstone, Outlaw, Jackal, Reserve, Morenci, Bagdad, Gladden, Sells, Ruby, and Fuzzy. A map provided with the notice of intent shows those MOAs cover a large swath of airspace across Arizona,
The changes under consideration include updating the published times for using an MOA; adjusting the altitudes of existing MOAs to support low-altitude training; authorizing supersonic training at lower altitudes in more MOAs; and authorizing use of chaff and lowering the minimum release altitude for flares.
Some MOAs would see minimal changes, but others -such as Tombstone- would see an expansion of lateral flight limits, thus allowing military flights over areas of southeast Arizona and southwest New Mexico where such flights are not currently permitted.
The proposed action would not create any new MOAs nor make changes to land use beneath the MOAs or weapons release, according to the Air Force.
Only five in-person public meetings were scheduled with USAF personnel about the notice of intent, one of which was canceled in Bagdad due to COVID-19 restrictions in the area. The one meeting remaining in Arizona will be at Morenci on Feb. 23.
However, a meeting in Reserve, NM on Feb. 22 and one in Animas, NM on Feb. 24 are open to anyone who wishes to attend. An USAF spokesman said the public meetings were scheduled for impacted communities known to have limited internet access.
All of the information provided at the in-person meetings is available on the website. The website also includes the ability to submit comments online.
The USAF intends to update the website as the project moves forward.
