John --

Good morning, and welcome to our latest weekly update.

Some somber news this morning: one of my dearest friends and in many ways the heart and soul of our Legislative District 18 Democrats, CJ Briggle, passed away this weekend.

I first met CJ when I first got involved in politics in our community back in 2006. CJ served as chair on several occasions and dedicated so much of her free time to growing our district and helped flip the district blue in 2016 and 2018.

CJ was the life of any room she walked into. Loud and boisterous, she always greeted you with a hug and made you feel welcome, whether she knew you for ten minutes or ten years. Her vivacious personality, infectious laughter, and wicked sense of humor was always the life of the party.

As an introverted person who still struggles with my self-confidence to this day, I regularly relied on CJ to introduce me to people and be my safety blanket if I didn’t know anyone at an event or meeting, especially when I was new and just getting started.

She was one of my biggest cheerleaders, most supportive volunteers, and one of my closest friends. She struggled with her health recently, so the news did not come as a complete surprise, but it is still devastating nonetheless to know that she will not be there at our next legislative district meeting or bringing energy and enthusiasm to our next district office.

I miss her dearly, and our legislative district is in the strong position it is today because of her leadership and hard work.

I’m working with CJ’s family on holding a memorial service next month; I will share the details with you when I have them.

(CJ is pictured on the very right)

Later this morning I will be speaking on a panel with my colleague Senator Paul Boyer at Paradise Valley Community College where we will be discussing philosophy, the role of justice, bipartisanship, and more. The event starts at 9am and you can watch it live online here.

This week is the final week of committee hearings outside of Appropriations (we get an extra one next week). The end of committee hearings means most of our time moving forward will be spent on the Senate floor, where we will debate and vote on House bills that will be sent to the governor if we pass them out (and they don’t get amended in the Senate. If that happens the bill would go back to the House before it could be sent to the governor).

We did create some headlines last Monday because we may have set a state record in the process. We had a long floor calendar that contained many controversial bills, mostly around elections and changes that would make it harder to vote or add unnecessary requirements for counties running elections.

Now, going into the floor session, I knew we had the votes to kill a lot of bills. Usually what happens is the Senate president will hold bills that do not have the votes to pass to save the sponsor embarrassment or delay it to give the sponsor more time to whip up the votes necessary for it to pass.

Last Monday, however, the president did not pull any of the bills in question, so we proceeded to kill FOURTEEN bills in one floor session. This may be a record; it’s rare for bills to die on the floor, and even when they do there may be one or two in one day. But fourteen?! That may be a new state record.

Add those fourteen to the near dozen bills we killed the week before, and the several more we defeated later in the week, and I’d say we’ve been busy.

I do have some good news on my bills in the House! SB 1222, which would add bankruptcy protections in law for Arizonans who receive federal benefits like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC), will be heard in the House Appropriations committee on Wednesday afternoon. Good news!

My other major bill over in the House is SB 1018, which would create a state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). I am continuing to work to get this bill heard in House Appropriations the following week for the last hearing of the year. I hope to have more good news on this next week!

Finally, you may have heard about this PC issue that has taken up a lot of attention in recent weeks. Long story short, we quickly approved a bill a couple of weeks ago to clarify the election of precinct committee (PC) members for the new 2022 election cycle with the new legislative districts created by the Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC). We ended up debating and voting on the bill in one day. The bill passed unanimously with an emergency clause (meaning it goes into effect immediately and doesn’t have to wait until ninety days after our legislative session), and the governor signed it into law.

What people didn’t realize until after the governor signed the law is an unintended glitch that impacted those elections of PC’s. PC’s in the Republican Party were much more incensed about it than PC’s in the Democratic Party, and they demanded a quick fix to resolve the issue before PC’s could get elected later this year.

The problem? Any fix would also need to have an emergency clause, meaning it would need a two thirds majority in both chambers. With razor thin margins in both chambers, that meant that some Democratic votes would be needed.

Many of my colleagues in the minority saw this as an opportunity for leverage, and as a result asked for WAY too much in negotiations with the majority.

As you may have heard, we voted on the replacement bill last week and I was the only Democrat in the Senate to vote yes. The bill passed with 17 votes, three short of the necessary 20 to ensure an emergency clause.

I voted for it because I saw it as the responsible thing to do and knowing full well that my vote would not make a difference either way in the final outcome.

There are persistent rumors that the governor will call a special session this week to address this issue. Calling a special session would mean that we could adjourn it later this week and move the general effective date up to ninety days after adjournment. This still doesn’t really solve the problem, however, because it would still need an emergency clause to go into effect in time!

I work well with members in both parties, and I will continue to talk to members about ways to resolve this issue and pass the bill with an emergency clause. I will also continue to vote yes on the fix if the bill comes up again in a special session.

Thank you as always for reading and stay tuned to my social media feeds for more regular updates throughout the week.

Sean

http://www.seanbowieforaz.com/

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