John --
Welcome to our eleventh weekly update from the state capitol! I hope you enjoy these updates each week as we navigate the 2021 legislative session.
Some good news: other than Appropriations hearings in the House today and the Senate tomorrow, committee hearings for 2021 are finished (we will eventually hold Appropriations hearings for when the budget is done, but that is only limited to budget bills).
This means that any bills that have NOT cleared committee hearings and are not scheduled in Appropriations this week, either as an original bill or a striker, are not going to advance. This is good news when there are bad bills out there, and they cannot advance any further.
So naturally, because this is the final week of Appropriations hearings, you would expect those committee hearings to be really long and take all day, right? Correct!
Our Senate Appropriations committee hearing, which usually takes place on Tuesday, is taking place on Wednesday this week. We are starting at 9am, instead of the usual 2pm, and we have THIRTY bills on the agenda. 30!
Keep in mind that for a normal hearing, we usually have about 8-10 bills. About half of the bills on the agenda are STRIKERS, which is something I’ve covered before in these updates. A striker is new language that completely replaces the language of an existing bill. So often strikers are used to bring back bills that died at some point in the legislative process. Or a bill was assigned to a committee where the chair of that committee didn’t like it and refused to hear it. Or a bill stalled in one chamber at some point in the process and a striker is introduced in the original chamber of origin, but through a different committee. Got all that?
It’s all legal under the rules of the House and Senate. So that helps explain why we are hearing THIRTY bills in Senate Appropriations on Wednesday.
I’m happy to report that two of the strikers we are hearing in committee tomorrow have my name on them! These are good bills. One appropriates $5 million to our state’s housing trust fund to help support affordable housing projects throughout the state. The other bill has to do with increased K-12 funding for gifted students and gifted programs throughout the state. It mirrors language from a House bill that passed the House Education committee but did not receive a hearing in the House Appropriations committee.
So I fully expect our hearing tomorrow to last the entire day…and who knows? It might stretch into Thursday as well.
An update on the two bills I mentioned last week, that were assigned to our Senate Commerce committee. The first is HB 2005, which I dubbed the “Apple bill,” and had to do with preventing online app stores like Apple’s from requiring app developers to use them for things like processing payments. The groups in support were independent app developers, and the groups opposed were Apple, Google, and various business groups.
The bill was pulled from the agenda, which means it did not receive a hearing and a vote. Based on my conversations with the chairman and the other members of the committee, it didn’t sound like the bill had the votes to pass. Many committee members were on fence about the bill, and wanted to hear the testimony from both sides before making a final decision on the vote.
And guess what! Yes, the bill is coming back as a striker, this time in House Appropriations later today. You know the saying: no bill is truly dead until the legislative session adjourns for good.
I have some good news about the other bill I discussed, HB 2773, which has to do with “liquor to go” sales and whether restaurants should have the legal ability to serve to-go cocktails. There were two sides very much at odds, with restaurants on one side and bars and grocery stores on the other. Thankfully, both sides worked towards a compromise, which seemed to make everyone at least somewhat unhappy, but at least they were on the same side! The bill is still being worked on and amended, but we did pass it out of committee to help move it along and give it more time for negotiations to continue.
Lastly, you may have heard that the Senate made the news yesterday: following the governor’s announcement last week that he was repealing many of the executive orders around COVID-19 protocols, particularly around mask wearing, the Senate president made the announcement yesterday that she was lifting the requirement that masks be required on the Senate floor and in Senate committee hearings.
We voted on the measure, and the vote was 16-14, on party lines. I voted no on the measure, and did so because I’m still worried about the millions of Arizonans who have yet to be fully vaccinated, and worried about the health and safety of our members, staff, and anyone else who visits the capitol complex.
I am glad that our case numbers have decreased, that more and more people are getting vaccinated, and that life may be returning to normal soon after a very difficult year. But I remain concerned and worried that we are lifting some of these restrictions too quickly, and putting people at risk of infection. Even individuals who have been fully vaccinated can still carry the virus and pass it along to others, even if they themselves do not get sick and get hospitalized.
On a personal note, I’m very glad and extremely grateful that several of my family members have been vaccinated, and am thankful for all of our front line health care workers and officials at the state and federal level who helped make it happen. Going forward at the capitol, I will continue to wear my mask and be careful around others, and treat them like I would want them to treat me.
That’s it for this week’s update; thank you so much fo reading! For more frequent updates, you can always follow me on social media.
Thank you,
Sean
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Sean Bowie for State Senate - PO Box 50802, Phoenix, AZ 85076, United States
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