by Corinne Murdock | May 21, 2022 | News
By Corinne Murdock |
The Arizona Capitol was astir on Wednesday after House leadership entertained the notion of dispatching law enforcement to track down two Republican members needed to pass three election integrity bills. Ultimately, the idea was nixed, the legislators never came back, and the three bills failed — but leadership and the two lawmakers are at odds as to who was to blame.
House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R-Mesa) and Majority Leader Ben Toma (R-Peoria) contemplated dispatching Department of Public Safety (DPS) officers to locate State Representatives Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek) and Jacqueline Parker (R-Mesa) in order to pass three bills: SB1013, SB1260, and SB1362. Though the bills failed, all three will be reconsidered.
Hoffman accused Bowers and Toma of engaging in intimidation tactics. On “The Conservative Circus” radio show, Hoffman claimed that Bowers knew days in advance that he was missing multiple Republican votes for certain election bills, but decided to wait to utilize law enforcement on the day of voting. He said that was why Bowers and Toma were to blame for the three election integrity bills’ failure.
“The bottom line is that Rusty Bowers and Ben Toma knew they were missing Republican votes yesterday, yet they decided to put up election integrity bills up for vote so that they would fail,” said Hoffman. “Rusty Bowers chose to play petty political games with critical election integrity bills, and then attempted to wield the power of tyrants to send armed men to his own conservative members to clean up his mess.”
Hoffman said that Bowers issued disparate treatment in sending DPS after him, noting that Bowers refused to send DPS after Democrats last year who staged a walkout during budget voting.
“Last year when Democrats all over the country, including right here in Arizona, were weaponizing their legislative attendance to try to kill election integrity legislation, when they were running and hiding in an attempt to prevent a quorum, the conservatives were the ones who asked Rusty Bowers last year to send DPS in a legitimate government role to bring them back to the capitol, and he refused to even consider it every single time it was brought up,” said Hoffman.
Hoffman claimed that Bowers and Toma were “playing games” with election integrity bills. He insisted that the pair forced every House representative to sit around for an hour as they planned to send officers to his and Parker’s homes.
In response to Hoffman’s accusations, Bowers explained that Hoffman and Parker walked away from the House floor to influence voting in the Senate. He blamed Hoffman and Parker for the failure of the three election integrity bills.
“House rules permit us to compel members back to vote,” stated Bowers. “Let me be clear, sending DPS was discussed but was never deployed in any fashion. Any notion otherwise is a lie. Because we were missing votes, 3 election integrity bills failed on the House floor.”
Parker made light of media coverage of the situation. She alluded to live reporting from Arizona Republic reporter Mary Jo Pitzl, who relayed that Parker and Hoffman were called “Bonnie and Clyde” by those on the floor and stated falsely that DPS was dispatched.
“Bonnie and Clyde? Is the same press that called us ‘fiscal hawks’ last year now comparing us to bank robbers? More like Robin Hood & Lil John standing up to King Rusty & Sheriff of Nottingham Toma,” wrote Parker. “Just wait until the budget comes out & the real bank robbers are exposed!”
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
by Corinne Murdock | Mar 10, 2022 | News
By Corinne Murdock |
Arizona attorneys may no longer have to have membership within the State Bar of Arizona in order to practice law in the state. On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee passed a bill prohibiting the Arizona Supreme Court from requiring attorneys to have any organization membership in order to become or remain a licensed attorney. Like the bill’s passage in the Senate, the bill passed along party lines in committee.
State Senator Vince Leach (R-Tucson), the bill sponsor, shared that Attorney General Mark Brnovich had to hire an attorney to litigate a case because his attorneys were under State Bar investigation due to complaints from Secretary of State Katie Hobbs. Leach said that the secretary of state was “weaponizing a tool within the legal system.” However, he noted that those 12 bar complaints disappeared after he introduced the bill.
Leach added that many attorneys who wanted to speak on the bill didn’t show up because they were afraid of upsetting the status quo.
“They won’t come here because the State Bar, which is designed to protect the industry, and — if this is a word, if it’s not a word, I’m still going to say it — lawyering to look out for the good of the legal profession. You have members that are forced to pay $500-and-some-odd, don’t want to come here and say ‘Yeah there’s a problem with the bar,’” said Leach.
Leach encouraged the committee to view the State Bar as a corporation, and to question their practices and lobbying activities.
State Representative Neal Carter (R-Queen Creek) asked Leach if union membership was required for the practice of other professions in the state, to which Leach replied no — Arizona is a right to work state.
State Bar of Arizona President Jennifer Rebholz expressed opposition to the bill, arguing that the Arizona Supreme Court should have its decision to require bar membership respected as a matter of separation of powers. The representative insisted that the state bar wasn’t a union, but rather a conduit for the will and disciplinary authority of the supreme court.
Carter recounted the history behind state bars, pointing to the feudalist systems which required a state bar of sorts to act as an intermediary between the courts and the people. He expressed concern about the fact that attorneys didn’t testify on the bill out of fear of retaliation from the State Bar.
“It seems to me the whole system was borne out of a kind of restricting access idea and that today it drives up cost for legal services, so that those who need it the most — indigent people, people accused of crimes and so on, particularly adversely affects minorities and others than those who have the money to pay for lawyers because it drives up costs,” said Carter. “I also think it makes it harder for those people to join the profession themselves. It really is a sort of anti-democratic, anti-American, anti-equality, anti-access to justice system.”
State Representative Mark Finchem (R-Oro Valley) insisted that individuals weaponize the bar and that it should function more as a service organization, not a labor union. State Representative Jacqueline Parker (R-Mesa) added that the State Bar was far from unbiased.
In their opposition, committee Democrats concurred with Rebholz’s perspective that the State Bar was crucial to the separation of powers.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
by B. Hamilton | Jun 27, 2021 | News
By B. Hamilton |
On Friday, a group of Arizona legislators reached out to Governor Doug Ducey with an offer to work with him to address the “omnipresent border crisis.” In a letter to the governor, the legislators also inquire as to the level of funding provided to the Border Strike Force.
Led by Rep. Shawnna Bolick, the lawmakers advised the governor that they hope to work with him to “come up with a concrete plan to further allocate resources to complete portions of the Border wall and ensure Border Strike Force is fully funded.”
The lawmakers accuse the Biden Administration of not making “the public safety or health of Arizonans” a top priority, noting that it “took until today for Vice President Kamala Harris to see the invasion for herself in El Paso.”
“We applaud other governors answering your call for assistance to send some of their law enforcement as back up as the ongoing invasion continues along the southern Border,” write the lawmakers. “The problem is real. We wish you didn’t have to rely on other states to bail us out because the federal government has failed us, but illegal immigration affects every state.”
The lawmakers cite as a source of concern an incident that occurred earlier this year which was “highlighted in the local newspaper that the Department of Public Safety release two confessed human smuggler with just a traffic citation after stopping him along a valley freeway in April with a van full of illegal immigrants.”
“It was rather alarming to read that the illegal immigrants in the van were released into the Phoenix area even though it is a direct violation of state law to be in our state unlawfully. It is noted that the federal agents would not pick up this van full of illegal immigrants if they weren’t violent felons. If the Border Strike Force isn’t identifying traffickers along the southern Border and they are making their way into the Valley, is the Border Strike Force understaffed and underfunded?”
The lawmakers expressed a desire to “work together to further investigate why this human trafficker was let go.”
“We support trade relations with Mexico, but we do not want transnational crime rings bringing further ruin into our state. It is past time to plug the gaping holes on state land that buttress Mexico allowing traffickers to invade our state.”
The lawmakers argue that border security is a states’ rights issue.
Last week, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that Texas would build its border wall. Abbotts aid that the state will be soliciting donations from across the country to help fund the wall.
“When I do make the announcement later on this week, I will also be providing a link that you can click on and go to for everybody in the United States — really everybody in the entire world — who wants to help Texas build the border wall, there will be a place on there where they can contribute,” Abbott said on a podcast show called “Ruthless.”
As AZ Free News reported earlier this month, Ducey and Abbott urgently requested all U.S. governors to send available law enforcement resources to their states along the U.S.-Mexico border as illegal border crossings, apprehensions, and unaccompanied migrant children in federal custody increase.
The Customs and Border Protection apprehension numbers for May showed more than 180,000 illegal aliens were apprehended crossing the border over the course of the month, a 674% increase from the 23,237 illegal aliens apprehended at the border in May 2020.
In a joint letter from Ducey and Abbott, fellow governors were told: “In response to the ongoing surge of illegal border crossings, with the accompanying threats to private property and to the safety of our citizens, Governor Abbott has declared a disaster and Governor Ducey has declared an emergency.”
Bolick was joined in the letter by Reps. Becky Nutt, Tim Dunn, Walt Blackman, Brenda Barton, John Kavanaugh, Mark Finchem, Joseph Chaplik, Beverly Pingerelli, Leo Biasiucci, Judy Burgess, Frank Carroll, Quang Nguyen, John Fillmore, Jacqueline Parker, and Steve Kaiser.
