John --

Welcome to our second update from the capitol! After a shortened schedule last week, we are diving into a full week of committee hearings this week, and our first floor votes of the session are expected later this week as well.

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First, some good news: our first bill to receive a committee hearing this session passed the Senate Education committee unanimously. It’s SB 1097, and it clarifies that mental health days count as an excused absence for our K-12 students. It’s a bill we almost got across the finish line last year, and I am optimistic about its chances this year.

As always, grateful to my colleagues for their support. The bill passed the Rules committee yesterday, and it may just progress fast enough to receive a floor vote later this week. Stay tuned!

I have another bill that will receive a committee hearing tomorrow, and this is one that I’m excited about. I mentioned it in last week’s update: SB 1040 would create a state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), to pair with the federal credit that is already in place. 

The EITC is designed to help low income working families, many of whom are struggling right now due to the pandemic. There are 29 states that currently have a state version of the federal EITC, and the way it works is that the state credit is a percentage of the larger federal credit, and anyone eligible for the federal EITC qualifies for the state version. My bill would create a credit that is five percent of the federal credit.

What does this mean, exactly? For example, a family of four making about $50,000 a year would qualify for about $300 in state tax relief. The amount depends on your income level and the number of children you have (the more children, the larger the credit).

The bill is receiving a hearing in the Senate Finance committee tomorrow, and I’m very optimistic about its chances to go to the full Senate floor in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

I went over last week some of the bills I’ve introduced, and I introduced a few more since that last update. I still have a few more to go (which I will discuss in next week’s update), but here are the latest bills that now have bill titles and are viewable online:

SB 1246 - school districts; boards; term limits - this would put term limits in place for school board members, limiting them to serving no more than eight consecutive years, or two terms.

SB 1247 - opioid prescriptions; naloxone requirement; exception - I’m working with the Arizona Medical Association on this one. It would It relates to an exception for the use of naloxone when it relates to patients in hospice care or end-of-life care.

SB 1313 - countywide elections; vote by mail - I run this bill every year; it allows locally elected county board of supervisors the option, if they choose to do so, to move to all vote-by-mail elections.

SB 1375 - Arizona nurses academy - this would create an Arizona Nurses Academy to help promote and incentivize students to join the nursing sector.

SB 1376 - schools; curriculum; mental health - this is a big one. It would essentially require that all grades K-12, as a part of their standard health curriculum, include instruction in mental health. I just dropped this bill yesterday, and it’s something our staff and I have been working on for months. Stay tuned - I’m hopeful that this one will receive a lot of support this session.

I still have at least a half dozen bills that are almost ready, and just getting their final touches. This includes our slate of LGBTQ legislation, including expanding statewide non-discrimination protections for employment, housing, and public accommodation, and banning youth conversion therapy. More details on the bills and their bill numbers in next week’s update!

If you have been following the news, you know that there are quite a few controversial bills making their way through the legislature. There are close to a thousand bills that have already been introduced, with hundreds more coming before our deadline to submit bills next Monday.

I am repeatedly asked where I stand on some of these bills, and what my vote will be. There are some, like several of the bills going after voting rights, that are easy to diagnose. But I generally want to read, study, and analyze bills before commenting on them, and I simply don’t have some of these bills come before me until weeks after I am asked to comment on them.

For example, I serve on three committees: Appropriations, Commerce, and Finance. If a bill is assigned to one of those committees, I not only read the bill and its fact sheet before each committee hearing, but I also receive a briefing from our Senate policy staff on each bill, too. So if you ask me where I stand on a bill that’s assigned to one of those committees, AND it receives a hearing, I will know enough about the bill to give you an answer, since I will be voting yes or no on the bill in committee.

If a bill is being heard in, say, the Government committee, I may hear about it on social media or through the legislative grapevine, but I haven’t been briefed on it yet. Once a bill passes the Government committee, it then goes before the entire caucus during our weekly caucus meeting, which is usually the week after the committee hearing. Once a bill is discussed in both the Republican and Democratic caucus meetings, it is then ready for the Senate floor, first in something called Committee of the Whole (or COW for short, where amendments can be added, or we can debate the bill on the floor), and then on something called Third Read, which is where we actually cast final votes on the floor.

So if you call our office or send me an email about a bill, there’s a chance I’ve seen it already, and can give you an answer, but there’s also a chance that it hasn’t come across my desk yet. My assistant and I work hard each week to make sure I have all of the information I need to make an informed decision on whether to vote yes or no, but that often takes time. And with over a thousand bills introduced every year, it takes a LOT of time.

I hope that background on our legislative process was helpful. With committee hearings now in full swing, floor votes will be starting later this week. We’ll start with non-controversial bills, but then dive into weightier issues in the next week or two.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s update - stay tuned every Tuesday morning for more updates on our work at the state capitol.

Thank you,

Sean

http://www.seanbowieforaz.com/

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