Arizona lawmakers have already filed a record-smashing 1,253 pieces of legislation so far this year.
But some lawmakers have been busier than others.
While more than a dozen of Arizona’s 90 lawmakers haven’t bothered to file a single bill since the legislative session started in January, a handful of busy-body lawmakers are making up the difference — filing dozens of bills each, often at the behest of lobbyists at the Capitol.
The deluge is a headache for legislative staff, who know that many of those bills have no chance at becoming law. Not to mention other lawmakers, who are expected to read each bill before casting a vote.
And there’s plenty more bills on the way, per legislative staff. They’re preparing for the possibility that each chamber could see more than 1,000 bills introduced this year. 1
Meanwhile, the number of bills that actually make it into law has plummeted in recent years, as Gov. Katie Hobbs has made liberal use of her veto stamp.
But that hasn’t dissuaded Republican lawmakers from trying.2
Republicans account for almost three-quarters of the bills filed so far this year.
When we told Republican Rep. Walt Blackman yesterday that he’s among the Legislature’s most prolific bill filers so far this year, he was shocked.
“I am? No way!” he said, as a Republican colleague chimed in to accuse Blackman of growing the size of government.
“No, I knew I had a lot of bills. And the reason why is because that rural Arizona, particularly my district, gets left out a lot. And that's been happening for years,” Blackman said.
Even though he knows that most of his bills aren’t going to make it into law, Blackman says they’re worth filing because it’s a way to give his constituents in the Snowflake area some “skin in the game.”
But it’s not just the good people of Snowflake that Blackman is filing bills for — like almost every lawmaker, some of the bills he files come directly from lobbyists.
“Some are from lobbyists — some are just from talking to my constituents,” he said. “It’s kind of a mix.”
Blame the lobbying industrial complex
Just because a lawmaker sponsors a bill doesn’t mean it was their idea.
Sometimes, the idea comes from a voter with a problem — as Schoolhouse Rock taught us.
More often, the ideas come from lobbyists and their well-heeled clients.
In fact, lobbyists are allowed to ask Legislative Council — the Legislature’s team of bill-drafting lawyers — to write up legislation.3
Then the lobbyist can shop around for a lawmaker to sponsor that bill.
And that’s exactly what they do. Lobbyists know which lawmakers have reputations as “good” bill sponsors, and they know the lazy ones. They choose their sponsors accordingly.
You can spot lobbyists standing in the lobby of the Arizona House and Senate, holding blue or brown folders containing drafts of bills, which are known as “intro sets,” seeking a lawmaker who’s willing to sponsor the bill that’s inside that folder.
We wrote about this trend a decade ago, quoting some old-school lobbyists shaming their newer colleagues for not being more secretive about their sponsor-shopping.
“Everybody sort of knew it happened, but it was never so out in the public eye. Now these guys walk around with the bill folders in their hands, flashing them around and holding them up,” lobbyist Marcus Dell’Artino told us in 2016.
Not much has changed since then.
Every January, we still spot lobbyists wandering the halls of the state Capitol, clutching those blue and brown folders.
But this year, they seem to be working overtime.
Worst-case scenarios: Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is drawing up plans for responding if President Donald Trump tries to cancel the November elections, 12News’ Joe Dana reports. At a forum in Phoenix last week, Fontes said “the bad guys are in the castle” and he’s been working with Gov. Katie Hobbs and Attorney General Kris Mayes on a “whole bunch of scenarios” to “preserve our democracy.”
Not real cops: Mayes said she was ready to tangle with the Trump administration, but on a different front, Amelia Moore reports for KJZZ. During a march on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Phoenix, Mayes said she “will protect all of our residents” if the Trump administration’s mass deportation program comes to Arizona.
“I don’t believe ICE is a real law enforcement agency, it is not a professionalized law enforcement agency.” Mayes said. “I am very concerned about it, but we will remain vigilant.”
Not over yet: A battle over funding the state’s developmental disabilities programs took over the state Legislature last year, and a similar battle could come back this session, KJZZ’s Wayne Schutsky reports. Hobbs asked for $128 million for the Division of Developmental Disabilities, which is expected to run out of money again this year as more people qualify for the program.
Damn, dude: Republican Rep. Lupe Diaz is trying to make it illegal to buy meat grown in a lab, and he’s not messing around, per Capitol scribe Howie Fischer. Under Diaz’s HB2791, if you sell “cell-cultured protein” you could be sentenced to 18 months in prison. Fellow Republican Rep. Quang Nguyen offered a more tempered measure. His HB2762 would allow the sale of lab-grown meat, but it would need a label saying it was “derived from cultivated cells.”
Disclaimer: Our reporting is derived from cultivated sources throughout the state government. Press this button so you can chow down on local reporting any time you want.
Ohhh, that’s where it is: The Arizona Ombudsman Citizens’ Aide — essentially the referee for complaints against Arizona government agencies — is getting a flood of cases, and officials aren’t sure why, Jordan Gerard reports for the Capitol Times. The office is on pace to reach 10,000 cases this fiscal year, which would be much higher than the past few years and even higher than when the COVID pandemic hit. Officials’ best guess is that Arizonans can actually find the ombudsman’s office now, since the state’s main web page and agency pages were standardized and the link to the ombudsman’s office was featured high up.
In other, other news
The Arizona Department of Child Safety is still not meeting requirements from a 2020 settlement that aimed to reduce the number of kids in congregate care and ensure that kids receive the behavioral health care they need (Nicole Grigg / ABC15) … Scottsdale residents are suing to block Museum Square, a $300 million hotel and condo project (Corina Vanek / Republic) … The City of Tempe might require bars to carry test kits to prevent drink spiking (Ignacio Ventura / KJZZ) … Why does Arizona offer 109 specialty license plates? An official from the state transportation department has the answer, which is essentially “blame lawmakers” (Bill Goodykoontz / Republic) … And using your phone to gamble on sports is risky, so state officials created a peer support group for people with gambling problems (Matthew Casey / KJZZ).
Despite all the awful things that happen on Twitter, online spats are still hilarious.
When longtime Capitol reporter Howie Fischer urged his Twitter followers to record ICE agents in Arizona, Kim Quintero, the comms director for the Arizona Senate GOP, said he was “narrative building” instead of reporting.
Quintero, a former TV weatherperson, tried to call out Fischer, the dean of the Arizona Capitol press corps, for “stringing together isolated incidents and turning them into a broad assumption.”
And although she was trying to bust Fischer’s chops, we’d argue that that’s actually not a bad definition of journalism. “The government did this thing a bunch of times, here’s why should pay attention and what you can do if you don’t like it” is about as bedrock journalism as you can get. (Also, if it happens thousands of times, should we still call it “isolated incidents”?)
We’d love to establish some of those “verified patterns” that Quintero says are real journalism.
Wouldn’t it be great to read the emails between say, a Republican senator and a lobbyist as they craft a bill together over the course of several months? That’d really to a long way toward “keeping government honest,” as Quintero described real journalism.
The thing is, the very lawmakers that Quintero speaks for set new rules a few years ago to shield all those emails and text messages from public view.
As Fischer put it: “This from the paid publicist for a Senate that has made access to records, like emails, difficult if not impossible. ALL public agencies need public oversight.”
1 If lawmakers in either chamber do go past the 999-bill mark, it’ll throw off the bill numbering scheme. (Senate bills start at 1001 and are numbered chronologically from there — the House starts at 2001.) So the House is preparing for the first-ever House Bill 4001, and the Senate could see its first Senate Bill 3001.
2 Fun backstory: Last year, Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin attempted a last-minute rule change to limit lawmakers to introducing only seven bills per year. His colleagues had a lot of fun dragging him for that, considering he had filed 74 bills that year. But even after getting mocked mercilessly, Kolodin couldn’t restrain himself to just seven bills this year — he has already filed 13.
3 To be fair, only lawmakers receive those final drafts of legislation, not the lobbyist. But if a lawmaker doesn’t want to sponsor the bill drafted on their behalf, they can simply hand that draft off to a lobbyist, who can go find a new sponsor.