John --

It’s Crossover Week! What does that mean, by chance? It’s the week where the Senate and House do floor votes on LOTS of bills in order to send them over to the other chamber. They are “crossing over” to the other side of the courtyard, so to speak, to start the legislative process in a new chamber.

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This means a couple of things. First, there are no regular committee hearings, except for Appropriations (our Senate Appropriations hearing starts later this morning). Second, that leaves a lot of time for floor action, and on Wednesday and Thursday, that means floor sessions both in the morning AND the afternoon, where we will be voting on dozens of bills.

But before we dive in to crossover week, a quick update on how some of my bills are progressing. Good news all around to report: SB 1444, our bill that clarifies that mental health days for K-12 students count as excused  absences, unanimously passed the Senate on Thursday of last week. Now it’s on to the House!

Our two other K-12 mental health bills, SB 1445 and SB 1446, will likely go to the floor later this week. SB 1445, which deals with suicide prevention training for college students studying to be school counselors or school social workers, is likely going to receive an amendment, and we are working on the language for that currently. SB 1446, which would require suicide prevention numbers on the back of student ID cards at the high school and university/community college levels, is going to caucus later this morning and likely to the full Senate un-amended later this week!

I also have a community college bill, SB 1284, which may hit the Senate floor later this week as well. It’s passed two committees unanimously, and it would create a two-year promise program for low income Arizona students who want to study in CTE (Career and Technical Education) programs.

So that’s FOUR bills I’ve introduced that have all passed committees unanimously and all may pass the Senate in the coming days. Not bad for a member of the minority party!

So back to “Crossover Week,” a week where we as legislators are shaken out of our usual weekly routine. This deep into the session, we all start settling into a groove: we know which days our committees meet, we know which days are briefings take place, and we fill the rest of our days with meetings mostly devoted to hearing more about the bills we will hear in the committees we are assigned to.

Crossover Week upends that, and for my colleagues who don’t serve on Appropriations, this week is *only* floor action. And because House bills only started getting assigned to Senate committees yesterday, we haven’t had a chance to dive into really any House legislation thus far.

Unfortunately, we’ve passed most of the “easy” Senate bills so far, and what’s left tends to be the more controversial bills that maybe needed amendments to address concerns or has been held back to make sure the votes are there to pass it on the floor. On the floor yesterday, we had several controversial bills dealing with the initiative process, ballot referrals that would reduce state revenue, and an ESA voucher expansion bill that was ultimately pulled.

Because of how long Appropriations is going to last today (25 bills on the agenda!), we aren’t set to have any floor calendars today. But Wednesday and Thursday will be two very long days filled with dozens of votes. It’s our job to put in the work the nights before to make sure we’re ready and briefed on each of the bills coming to the floor, which means some long nights ahead for many of us!

Any update on the budget?! Last week I shared some of the gossip I was hearing about whether or not a budget will get voted on this week. I still doubt it, based on the information I’ve heard in the last week.

There are definitely serious budget meetings going on, as the House, Senate, and governor’s office seek to hammer out a deal. There are still some sticking points, which I’m hearing are settled around the *size* of the tax cuts that are included, and then the investment in higher education. The universities are pushing hard for something called “The New Economy” initiative, which would increase investment in specific programs, not just a general appropriation to the universities like we’ve done in years past. Some of my more conservative colleagues don’t want to increase funding for this, but it’s a priority for some of my moderate colleagues in the majority caucus. And it’s a priority for us in the minority caucus as well!

My main priorities for this year’s budget are the same as they’ve always been: increased investment in K-12 and higher education, increased investment to support our developmentally disabled community, and more support for our Housing Trust Fund. On the education side, that means restoring K-12 District Additional Assistance (DAA) and an increased investment in school safety resources (mainly school counselors and social workers), and for higher education, that’s creating the New Economy initiative and whatever support we can get for our community colleges.

Whether this will be a bipartisan budget this year depends on a couple of things. The first of those is the size of the commitment to K-12 education. The second is how large the tax cuts are in comparison to some of the other investments being made in education and infrastructure. Finally, the third factor will be whether any “poison pills” are added to the budget – these are policy items that tend to be on the controversial side, which perhaps couldn’t pass as stand-alone bills and get added to the budget at the last second. For example, the controversial sex ed bill that died earlier this session; if that were added to the budget at the last possible moment, suffice to say that would be problematic for bipartisan support.

So assuming there are no poison pills, that increases the chances we might have a bipartisan budget this year. But as always, it depends on the details, and we have yet to see those as of this writing. Stay tuned!

I hope you enjoyed this week’s update – stay tuned every Tuesday morning for more updates! And on Monday mornings, I post a weekly video on social media outlining the week ahead at the Senate.

Thank you for all your help and support – please consider a contribution today as we gear up for this fall!

Sean


http://www.seanbowieforaz.com/

Paid for by Sean Bowie for State Senate. Authorized by Sean Bowie.