John --

Happy Monday! With the holiday season in full swing, and the 2022 legislative session right around the corner, I wanted to check in and give you a quick update on what I’m working on and what I’m seeing as we approach Opening Day on January 10^th.

As you know, this fall I have been very busy visiting our local schools and talking to teachers, principals, staff, and students. I have visited over 40 schools since September, and while we hoped to visit all 55 schools before the end of the year, we were unable to hit all of them. We plan to visit the dozen or so schools remaining in the early part of next year.

Every one of these visits has been eye opening and confirmed much of what I saw in my last round of visits two years ago. COVID has obviously hit schools hard, as students adjust to being back in person after time away. Especially at the younger grades, students are having a hard time adjusting to their surroundings and regulating their behaviors. Many schools still do not have a full-time counselor, and workloads are busier than they have ever been.

At the same time, I continue to be impressed with the strength, fortitude, and passion that our teachers and school staff exhibit every day. They are doing the best they can in a very challenging environment, and I will continue to share their stories with my colleagues when we go back into session in January.

I am also busy getting bills ready for the upcoming legislative session and will re-run several of the fifteen or so bills I run every year. I had two bills signed into law last year, and I hope to continue that success going into my final legislative session.

I have already dropped two of my bills, repeats from last year that both passed the Senate with broad bipartisan support. The first is SB 1017, which would create a citizen’s review task force to examine and analyze all state tax credits, with the hope of gathering more data and statistics on what’s working and what’s not. The hope is to have a clearer sense of how we can draft and guide tax policy that helps create good paying jobs for our state and veer away from what’s not working and costing our state dollars that could be directed towards more efficient and effective public policy.

The other is SB 1018, which would create a state earned income tax credit (EITC) that would be paired with the federal benefit. This would be a targeted tax cut for low-income working families in Arizona. For families that meet the eligibility requirements for the federal EITC, they would receive the Arizona benefit as well. The cost would be about $70 million per year, with benefits going directly towards families who need it. These dollars are much more likely to go back into the economy that recent tax cuts largely targeted at the higher end of the income scale. I ran this bill in the 2021 session and it passed the Senate by a vote of 26-3. Hoping for the same level of broad bipartisan support in 2022!

There are about a dozen or so other bills that we are working on but have not filed yet, and they have to do with issues like mental health support, sexual assault prevention on college campuses, greater protections for our LGBTQ community, bankruptcy protections, and more. Stay tuned for further updates in January once we get these bills filed!

One question I’ve received lately is about whether a special session will happen before our regular session is set to begin on January 10^th. I don’t see that happening, partly because it’s the holidays and because our regularly scheduled session is set to begin so soon. The other complicating factor is that short of a bipartisan agreement to hold a special session, the governor is the only one who can call it, and during my five years at the capitol with this governor, we have never been called for a special session outside of the time we were already at the capitol. So, in other words, I don’t see it happening.

I’m also asked pretty frequently about how I think the 2022 session will go. Will it be a long session, or shorter because it’s a campaign year? It can’t possibly be longer than our 2021 session that lasted all the way until the end of June, right?!

I think we may be there longer than the end of June, yes. Much of the drama that engulfed the 2021 session has shown no signs of dissipating, and that drama will seep into our session next year as well. With razor thin margins in both chambers, every member of the majority knows that they can hold things up if a vote on a major bill or the budget is a partisan one.

One would hope that this would lead to more opportunities for bipartisanship, and as always, I will seek to build those bridges and support passing good public policy and even a good bipartisan budget.

It’s my last year, and I’m not running for re-election. That means I am more than ready to sit down with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and go out on a high note.

Thank you for reading! As always, thank you for your support and encouragement. I hope you have a happy, safe, and joyful holiday season, and a very merry new year. Wishing you all the best for the upcoming year.

Thank you,

Sean

http://www.seanbowieforaz.com/

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