John --

Welcome to our third weekly update from the state capitol! I hope you enjoy these updates each week. The legislative session is now fully in gear; this is expected to be a busy week full of committee hearings, floor debates, and efforts to stop many of the bad bills making their way through the legislative process.

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Let’s start with some good news: last week I talked about my bill to create a state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which would provide some tax relief for working low income families. I’m happy to report that our bill, SB 1040, passed the Senate Finance Committee with bipartisan support! It passed the Rules committee yesterday, and it’s potentially going to the Senate floor later this week or early next week.

Another piece of good news: our bill to clarify that mental health days count as an excused absence in our K-12 schools, SB 1097, unanimously passed the full Senate last Thursday, 29-0. It’s now headed for the House; we still have a couple more weeks of Senate hearings for Senate bills, and House hearings for House bill, so it’ll be a couple of weeks before my bill is eligible to be heard in the House. Stay tuned for more updates, but I’m pretty confident that this bill will receive as much support in the House as it received in the Senate. 

This week is a busy one, not just because of all the bills we are hearing in committees, but also because I have *three* bills being heard in committee! (Did I mention it’s really hard for Democratic bills to be heard in committees?) 

Later today I have two bills being heard in Senate Education. The first is SB 1174, which would allocate $2 million from the general fund to fund STEM internships for students across the state. I have always been a big supporter of additional funding and support for scholarships and financial aid for students, and this bill would not only help students, but also hopefully encourage more students to go into STEM fields, which helps our economy.

The second bill being heard in Senate Education is SB 1376, which would require mental health instruction to be included in health curriculums for our K-12 schools. I’m excited about this one, as it would essentially mean that all students in our K-12 schools receive some kind of social emotional learning, mental health driven instruction starting at a young age. I’ve seen this kind of instruction in some of our local Kyrene schools, and I hope we can incorporate this type of instruction into classrooms all across Arizona.

The third bill of mine that will be running this week is SB 1004, which will be heard in the Senate Finance committee on Wednesday. This would create a state finance review task force that would take a hard look at our state finances, tax credits, and other expenditures to see how we compare to other states and what steps we could take to responsibly grow our economy and make the investments we need to be competitive as a state.

Yesterday was also the deadline for Senate members to drop Senate bills, and last I heard there were over 800 (!) that were dropped. In a normal year there are about 600 or so bills that are dropped. If you do the math, that’s over 25 bills introduced per Senator!

Here are the final bills that I dropped in the last week:

SB 1423 - schools; bullying policy; definition - this bill would require school districts to develop pretty robust anti-bullying policies, and also incorporate training for teachers and support staff. Most school districts already do this, but it’s more important than ever, especially with the rise of online and digital bullying.

SB 1424 - criminal responsibility; gender; sexual orientation - this would outlaw something called a “gay panic defense,” which is used when someone accused of assault or similar offenses says that they attacked the person because they thought they were hitting on them. Several states, including New York, have banned this in recent years.

SB 1425 - antidiscrimination; housing; employment; public accommodations - I run this bill every year. It’s our statewide nondiscrimination protections bill that adds sexual orientation and gender identity protections for employment, housing and public accommodations.

SB 1426 - conversion therapy; prohibition; minors - I am running this bill for the fourth year in a row. It would ban gay conversion therapy for minors. Every state that borders Arizona, including Utah, have banned this harsh and medically discredited practice, and it’s well past time that we do the same.

SB 1483 - pet dealers; prohibitions; cats; dogs - This bill seeks to gives the Attorney General more authority to go after pet dealers who do not follow state or federal laws around the safe delivery and sale of dogs or cats. “Puppy mills,” in other words. 

SB 1633 - early intervention program; autism screening - this bill would require earlier screening for autism for children in specific state child intervention programs.

SB 1634 - developmental disabilities; down syndrome - this bill would add down syndrome as one of the developmental disabilities outlined in state statute.

SB 1715 - unemployment insurance; definition; benefit amount - this bill would allow workers who are collecting unemployment benefits to earn up to $160 a week through part time work and still qualify for their full unemployment benefits from the state. 

That’s a lot of bills! All together this session, I sponsored 21 bills, which is on the high end for me, as I usually sponsor around 12 to 15. I also cosponsored dozens of bills, both from my colleagues in the Senate and the House.

Including this week, there are three more weeks to hear Senate bills in Senate committees, which means a lot of long committee hearings coming up. And on top of that, we’ll have more and more floor sessions and floor votes, as hundreds of bills make their way to the Senate floor for our final say.

And yes, we do have a load of bad bills making their way through the process, particularly bills that go after our voting rights and seek to harm our K-12 education system. I’ll write more about those bills next week, so stay tuned!

I hope you enjoyed this week’s update - stay tuned every Tuesday morning for the latest from me on what’s going on at the state capitol.

Thank you,

Sean

Thank you,

Sean

http://www.seanbowieforaz.com/

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