John --

Welcome to our first weekly update of the 2022 legislative session!

Last Monday I kicked off my sixth and final legislative session, full of emotions and excitement to get started. As you may have heard, we have a lot of new faces at the capitol, both in the Senate and the House, so it was great to see them begin their first sessions as well.

After a brief Opening Day ceremony, we went over to the House to hear the governor’s final State of the State address. Of all the Opening Day addresses I’ve heard the governor make, this was definitely the most partisan, full of attacks on the president and time spent on federal issues instead of state issues.

Last Friday was an exciting day, because that’s the day the governor released his executive budget proposal for the year. Believe it or not, the proposal had several great components to it, including substantive investments in higher education, workforce development, infrastructure, and water. The main feature for me however was his tax proposal: he wants to create a state version of the Earned Income Tax Credit, a plan that would direct a tax cut to low-income working Arizona families.

Does that idea sound familiar? It should, because I introduced the exact same idea as a bill last year (SB 1040), and it passed the Senate by a vote of 26-3. The governor’s proposal is the exact same language as the bill I introduced last year.

I’m excited that the governor and his team have embraced this idea. His executive budget proposal is an excellent starting point, and while there are a few areas I would like to see added (mainly an expansion of the state grant program for school counselors and social workers, and an investment in the Housing Trust Fund), this is a budget I could potentially support, depending on the details.

As always, the budget will be negotiated throughout the legislative session, and I plan to do what I’ve always done, which is work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to produce the best budget possible. Stay tuned!

There is not much legislative activity the first week, with only a few committee hearings and most time spent on getting bills ready to introduce. Action will pick up this week, especially today, with two Appropriations committee hearings (more on those later).

How are my bills coming along? I’ve officially dropped five of them, but about a dozen more on the way. Here are the bills I have introduced so far:

SB 1017 – State Finance Review Task Force – this is a bill I run every year, and it will be heard in the Senate Finance committee tomorrow. It passed the Senate last year with broad, bipartisan support. The bill would create a task force to study state revenues and develop recommendations for what the state should do long term in terms of fiscal policy and tax credits.

SB 1018 – Earned Income Tax Credit – As I discussed earlier, this is my idea to create a state version of the federal Earned Income Tax Credit. You must meet certain income thresholds to qualify, and the size of the credit increases depending on how many children you have. For a family of four that makes about $50,000, for example, they would receive about a $300 state tax credit. The program would cost about $75 million per year. The bill will be heard in the Senate Finance committee in the next couple of weeks.

SB 1149 – Countywide Elections; Vote by Mail – Another bill I run every year, this bill would allow counties the option, if they want to, to move to all vote by mail elections. County supervisors in each county could vote to approve this if they so desired. It’s worth pointing out that most off-year elections, like school bond and override elections and city elections, are regularly vote by mail only.

SB 1189 – School Counselors; Grants – This bill would allocate dollars over the next several years for schools to hire more counselors and reduce our extremely high student-to-counselor ratio (the highest in the country).

SCR 1017 – State Mine Inspector; Appointment – A new one! This is a referral that voters would have to approve if it passed through the legislature. Arizona is the only state in the country that elects a mine inspector, so this would move the position to be appointed by the governor instead of elected.

I will drop several more bills this week, and I will share details on each in next week’s update!

This week is set to be a busy one. This morning I have a Joint Appropriations hearing over in the House, where we will hear presentations on the governor’s executive budget proposal, and we will get to ask the governor’s office questions. In the afternoon, we have our regularly scheduled Senate Appropriations hearing where we will hear presentations from several state agencies on their budget requests for the year.

Later this week, we will hold regularly scheduled committee hearings for both Senate Finance and Senate Commerce as well. My days are starting to get very busy as more meeting requests come in for the dozens of bills we will be debating and voting on in committee hearings over the next couple of weeks.

Thank you for reading! I’m excited to be back at work, and ready to work hard for my constituents. Hope to see you again next week!

Sean

http://www.seanbowieforaz.com/

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