John --

Greetings from Week 3 of the legislative session, where bills are flying and talk of an early session hangs through the air.

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Things are pretty hectic at the capitol at the moment. Even though we’re not doing final votes on bills yet, the deadline for bill submissions is next week (Monday in the Senate, later in the week in the House), so members, including yours truly, are racing to get their bills ready so they can be submitted and considered for committee hearings in the following weeks.

So that means a lot of uncertainty about which bills and which issues will dominate hearings over the next couple of weeks. So if you’ve heard of a bill or two that you either really like or don’t like…there could be more coming!

I covered many of the bills I’m working on in last week’s update, and I’ve already dropped a few of them. The most important ones so far are SB 1215, which would expand our Arizona Teachers Academy (a program at our state universities that helps pay tuition for teachers who commit to teaching in Arizona schools) to cover counselors and social workers, and SB 1216, which would allocate additional dollars to add more counselors to our K-12 schools. Arizona has the worst student to counselor ratio in the country, and this bill would appropriate dollars to cut our ratio almost in half in five years.

I’m working on a few more bills, including three centered on mental health support in our K-12 schools. We just finalized the language on all three yesterday, and I will start passing them around to my colleagues to co-sponsor later today. I’m excited about all three bills, and expect to have bipartisan support on all three.

Later this week we will also be dropping two very important bills to support our LGBTQ community here in Arizona. One is a bipartisan bill to expand statewide non-discrimination protections, and another would ban youth conversion therapy. You may have heard that the state of UTAH, a state far more conservative than Arizona, recently became the 19^th state to ban youth conversion therapy, with a Republican governor leading the charge.

As I stated above, our deadline to submit Senate bills is Monday, so in next week’s update, I’ll go through each of my bills and tell you more about each!

SO ARE WE ADJOURNING SESSION EARLY?

I get a lot of questions about my job, but the most common question I’m receiving these days is some variation of, “are we adjourning session early?!”

My short answer: maybe?

This is my fourth session, and every year there is optimism that this particular session will be a quick one. It’s an election year, they say, so naturally folks want to adjourn early so they can go out on the campaign trail. (And then there are folks like me who knock on doors every weekend even during session…)

What I’m hearing, from colleagues on in the inside and folks on the outside, is increased optimism about this year. There is a general feeling in the air that leadership wants to limit the number of “controversial” bills and seek to get in and get out, which I am naturally skeptical of, but I do think is a genuine desire from some of my colleagues in the majority.

There is also a lot of agreement about items included in the governor’s budget proposal, mainly the K-12 priorities and infrastructure. However, we are always on the lookout for “poison pills,” or policy ideas that get into the budget that destroy any attempt at bipartisanship.

As far as a timeline for the budget actually moving, “Crossover Week” is often mentioned, which is the week where Senate bills pass the Senate and move over to the House, and vice versa. There are no committee meetings that week except for Appropriations, so that leaves a lot of free time for us to potentially tackle a budget.

I’ll believe it when I see it, because I’m hearing there is still some disagreement between the Senate and House majority caucuses on some of the larger elements of the budget. Tax cuts are being mentioned more and more, but there aren’t many details around what those cuts would be. There is a lot of emphasis on infrastructure investment this year, mainly with bridges and rural roads throughout the state. Which projects will get funded, and which ones won’t make the final budget?

My priorities are the same they have always been: our K-12 schools, our universities and community colleges, and support for our most vulnerable. I consistently bring up our developmentally disabled community (otherwise known as DD funding), and also mention our lack of funding for affordable housing programs. A significant investment in our state housing trust fund would go a long way towards ensuring more affordable housing options throughout the state.

So assuming the best case scenario in terms of time, a budget could be completed towards the end of February, then the month of March would be dedicated towards passing House bills out of the Senate and Senate bills out of the House. But with perhaps 2,000 (!) bills introduced this session, it’s going to take a LOT of time to go through that many bills and give them all the time they need to be heard, debated, and eventually voted on.

My prediction for adjournment? Mid-April. My birthday is April 21^st, which is on a Tuesday this year, so adjournment before my birthday would be a good guess in my opinion, considering all of the insights and news I’ve received in recent weeks. A lot can change of course between now and then, so stay tuned. J

I hope you enjoyed this week’s update – stay tuned every Tuesday morning for more updates! And on Monday mornings, I post a weekly video on social media outlining the week ahead at the Senate.

Thank you for all your help and support – please consider a contribution today as we gear up for this fall!

Sean

http://www.seanbowieforaz.com/

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