Now that the Arizona state legislature is back in session, state lawmakers should take actions to reassert their power and demonstrate to the voters they are the actual lawmaking authority of the state rather than the governor, whose executive action whims related to his COVID-19 response were made through the lens of his 2022 senatorial hopes.
The Arizona legislature adjourned sine die in March, just as the coronavirus pandemic was picking up steam. Thousands of legislative bills died where they stood in committee, on the floor or in lawmakers’ desks, undebated.
Many lawmakers, at least those who were re-elected, will bring back these old bills to the floor, as well as a new host of bills drafted over 2020.
The vast majority of Arizona’s legislative bills — between two-thirds and three-quarters — die in committee or die without being heard, but this legislative session may be busier than most because last year’s was cut short.
Former Arizona Rep. Bob Thorpe [R-District 6] was notorious for drafting and introducing some of the dumbest bills in legislative history. Thorpe inexplicably decided to run for state senate this year but pulled out when it became clear he could not defeat incumbent Sen. Sylvia Allen and decided to run for a Coconino County supervisor seat, where he was summarily crushed. But because he was a legislative member of the party in power, each of his dumb bills had a higher probability of becoming law than smarter bills from newcomers and Democrats.
Fortunately, Thorpe’s replacement, Rep. Brenda Barton [R-District 6], is somewhat wiser and more level-headed, less ideological than Thorpe, Allen or her seatmate, Rep. Walt Blackman [R-District 6]. While no friend to liberal issues, most of her sponsored bills are concerned with water, land and property rights.
It will be interesting to see where Arizona Sen. Wendy Rogers heads now. After trying for a decade to get elected to something — anything really — she hitched her election hopes in 2016, 2018 and 2020 on the now-departing president. Politics being a fickle creature, it will be interesting to see how she redefines herself in this new era with a Democratic U.S. president.
Arizona lawmakers should first dedicate themselves toward reviewing and repealing Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey’s executive orders, through which he has ruled by fiat for 10 months.
The legislature can certainly codify in the law those executive orders with which they agree. But they should strike down and remove the others, especially the ones Ducey imposed because they were politically expedient or reactionary to some reporter’s question during a press conference, on which he then decided to act without any forethought, other than to not get embarrassed at the next press conference.
Let’s not be under any illusion that that is how our governor has led our state. For the last year, Ducey asked himself: What embarrassed me and how can I stop it? He didn’t ask what’s good for the people, what’s best for the state, what really fights the coronavirus nor what saves lives nor helps the economy other than his donors.
Ducey is conservative in the personal sense — too timid to make hard decisions, be it masks, or lockdowns or travel restrictions to slow COVID-19, instead splitting the difference, delegating authority which some judges have ruled he cannot legally do, or passing the buck whenever there was a buck to be passed.
Ducey has been concerned with not being embarrassed and looking toward his 2022 senate race.
State lawmakers need to hold him accountable and actually legislate the state’s laws as they are directed to by our state constitution to do.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
