John --



Hello, and welcome to the third week of the legislative session! Committee hearings are well underway, and we expect to have our first floor debates and votes later this week.



Let’s start with some good news! SB 1017, my bill to create a statewide finance review task force to examine state revenues, state tax credits, and long-term revenue growth unanimously passed the Senate Finance committee last week.



I have another bill that will be heard in the Senate Finance committee tomorrow, and it’s SB 1018, my Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). It’s the same bill that I ran last year that passed the Senate by a vote of 26-3 and was included in Governor Ducey’s executive budget proposal two weeks ago. It would cost about $75 million per year and directly help low-income working families.



I’m working to get more of my bills heard in other committee hearings over the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned for details on that!



Our deadline to drop bills is this upcoming Monday, so while hundreds of bills have been dropped already, we certainly expect several hundred more to come later this week. The third week of session is usually when the pace starts to pick up and our schedule gets very busy, and we are starting to feel that by looking at our calendar for the next couple of days.



More bills being introduced means more bills being heard in committees, which means more meetings to discuss those bills and longer stretches of time dedicated to briefings ahead of those committee hearings.



Thankfully, I arrive at the office every day at 7am and spend my first hour getting caught up on emails, drinking plenty of coffee, and looking over what’s ahead for the day. Today, for example, my morning is filled with meetings about legislation and briefings for my two committee hearings tomorrow.



I’m getting a lot of questions about bills that have been introduced going after voting rights, and I can assure that I’m keeping track of them and discussing with colleagues. I don’t serve on the committees that hear these bills, so I’m not in briefings on them just yet. Please know that protecting voting rights has always been one of my top priorities, and it will continue to be as long as I’m at the legislature.



One factor to keep an eye on this session: how COVID-19 continues to impact our work environment. Legislative leadership has decided to NOT allow remote voting or any participation from home. If you want to vote, or participate in committee hearings, you must be at the capitol in person. Unfortunately, members keep getting sick.



We’ve had several senators out sick the last two weeks, and it’s impacted committee hearings. Members are having to be replaced with other members of their party to ensure they still have majorities.



It hasn’t been too big of a problem yet because we haven’t started floor debates and votes, but those should start later this week. For any controversial piece of legislation that is a party line vote, if one member of the majority is out sick, the bill will not pass. So if people keep getting COVID-19 and can’t come to work, that’s going to be a problem for the majority.



I haven’t missed any days and have thankfully been able to avoid contracting COVID-19 (knock on wood!). I’ll continue to be careful and continue to wish for good health for my colleagues and hope they can come back to work soon.



More bills! Since our last update, I’ve dropped several more bills into the hopper. Here’s some information about each of them:



SB 1213 – School Funding; Inflation Adjustment – This is a mirror bill to a House bill that my colleague Representative Pawlik is running. It would restore additional funding for something called District Additional Assistance (DAA), which is on top of the per-pupil funding that schools receive.



SB 1222 – Exempt Property; Tax Credit; Proceeds – This is a bankruptcy protection bill that I am excited about. Arizona is one of only four states where federal tax benefits like childhood tax credits and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) can be taken away during the bankruptcy process. We want to close that loophole and ensure that those dollars are staying with families instead of being garnished by attorneys.



SB 1223 – Pet Stores; Pet Dealers – Similar to a bill we ran last year, this would allow the state and local governments to enforce existing statute to regulate puppy mills, and the stores that purchase dogs from them.



I have my last batch of five bills on my desk and will be dropping them later this week. Several relate to greater protections for our LGBTQ community. I’ll have more on each of these bills in next week’s update!



That’s it for this week’s update! Thank you as always for reading, and for your continued support and encouragement. As always, you can follow me directly on Facebook and Twitter for more frequent updates.



Sean





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