Gloria Gomez, Arizona Mirror

An attempt by Arizona Republicans to rebuke Gov. Katie Hobbs for vetoing a bill aimed at expanding the sale of homemade foods failed after most legislative Democrats sided with her, slamming the move to override her veto as just another effort to undermine her.

Last week, Hobbs rejected House Bill 2509, dubbed the “Tamale Bill,” which would have relaxed the rules around food products Arizonans can make in their own kitchens to sell. Currently, perishable foods that require refrigeration are prohibited, but the bill would have removed that ban and allowed the sale of products like tamales, cheesecakes or other time and temperature-sensitive goods.

The Arizona Department of Health Services registered its opposition to the measure changing the rules for the sale of so-called “cottage foods” shortly before it won approval from the state Senate, and Hobbs cited public health concerns in her veto letter.

“This bill would significantly increase the risk of food-borne illness by expanding the ability of cottage food vendors to sell high-risk foods,” she wrote.

The decision prompted outrage on social media from lawmakers who touted its widespread approval. It won supermajority support in both legislative chambers, earning a 45-11 vote in the House and a 26-4 vote in the Senate. Republicans accused Hobbs of not caring about hard-working Arizonans trying to make ends meet and vowed to override her dismissal, billing the effort as a defense of food vendors — and those in the Hispanic community, in particular.

But Democrats were quick to criticize the veto override as political theater and promised to vote against the effort.

On Tuesday, Republicans in the state House of Representatives put the override up for a vote anyway, undeterred by its certain doom. A two-thirds supermajority in both legislative chambers is required for a veto override to succeed, and in the end the House fell short of the necessary 40 votes; only five of the 17 Democrats who initially voted for the bill supported the override.

Republicans criticized Democrats who had previously voted to pass the bill, denouncing them as cowed by their party.

“If you’re afraid of Governor Hobbs, vote no,” said Rep. Travis Grantham, R-Gilbert, who authored the bill.

“(The opposition to) this bill is about control, it’s about (not) embarrassing the governor. It’s about her trying to walk back a veto that she knows she was wrong. And rather than tell the emperor she is wearing no clothes, you double down?” asked Rep. Teresa Martinez, R-Casa Grande.

Rep. Alma Hernandez, who vociferously supported the bill and opposed Hobbs’ veto, shared that, growing up, her mother baked and sold cakes to support her family. The Tucson Democrat criticized her fellow Democrats for switching their positions. Her allegiance, she said, was to Arizonans, not Hobbs.

“We were elected by our constituents, not by Governor Hobbs,” she said. “I will never forget where I came from. I will never forget the community that works hard in my district, the single mothers that I personally know.”

Rep. Steve Montenegro, R-Goodyear, whose mother sold tamales to support her family and later help him pay for college, accused lawmakers voting against the override of not caring about the Latino community or immigrants.

“If you’re voting no on this bill today, don’t ever come tell me that you support Latinos, don’t ever come tell me that you support the immigrant community,” he said heatedly. “These are the issues that matter to them: Being able to put food on their table, being able to take care of their kids and put their kids through school.”

Democrats rebutted that the override attempt was nothing more than political pandering. Rep. Cesar Aguilar, who also outlined his immigrant roots, pointed out that the original bill isn’t specific to tamales or immigrant vendors. It expands the list of permitted foods to all meat-based products, but Republicans have latched onto the imagery of the tamale vendor to garner public empathy, Aguilar said.

“Don’t let this bill fool you,” the Phoenix Democrat said. “This bill will impact all meat products, but for some reason the only meats we want to talk about are tamales. Nobody is talking about barbecue, nobody is talking about hamburgers, nobody is talking about hotdogs, et cetera, because they want to target the Latino community.”

Aguilar sought to contrast Arizona Republicans’ championing of tamale vendors with their history of anti-immigrant policies, including SB1070, but was immediately interrupted by an uproar from GOP lawmakers, who used a procedural move to stop him.

Also cut off was Rep. Mariana Sandoval, D-Goodyear, who questioned why the majority party refused to hear pro-immigrant bills if it was committed to the welfare of immigrants.

“If we are serious about helping indigent immigrant communities, why didn’t we give undocumented individuals driver’s licenses?” she asked, before being stopped.

Sandoval is a co-sponsor of House Bill 2604, which sought to eliminate the proof of citizenship requirement for driver’s license applications.

She noted that there is still ample opportunity for the legislature to expand the list of food products sold by Arizonans, echoing a statement issued by Senate Democrats that voiced a willingness to help craft an improved version. Additions that have been proposed include allowing the Department of Health Services to inspect home kitchens and implementing an annual revenue cap — both of which were lambasted by override supporters on Tuesday as nonstarters.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Katie Hobbs has resigned after Republican backlash erupted when she tweeted an image implying violence against transphobes.

On Monday, a shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville left three children and three adults dead. Later that night Josselyn Berry, Hobbs’ press secretary, tweeted a gif of a woman wielding two handguns from the 1980 movie “Gloria” with the caption “Us when we see transphobes” in a Twitter conversation about transphobia from progressives.

The tweet has since been removed for violating Twitter’s guidelines.

Berry did not respond to requests for comment.

The Hobbs administration and the Republican-majority legislature have been at odds this session, chafing especially over a number of anti-LGBTQ bills unanimously supported by GOP lawmakers that Hobbs has vowed to veto.

Arizona Republicans responded with outrage to Berry’s tweet, calling the social media message reprehensible. The far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, whose members have authored a number of anti-drag measures this session, demanded her dismissal.

“Calling for violence is NEVER acceptable,” the caucus’ official account tweeted. “@GovernorHobbs Press Sec. tweeting about shooting political opponents on the same day a trans activist shoots up a school is nothing short of vile & heartless.There is no room for this in AZ. Fire @joss_berry now.”

The 28-year-old Nashville shooter was identified by local authorities as being transgender, based on information from their social media and LinkedIn account. Conservative politicians and pundits immediately seized on that news as proof that transgender people are prone to violence, despite the fact that the data overwhelmingly shows that the vast majority of gun violence has been perpetrated by cisgendered white men. There have been over 100 incidents of mass shootings in the United States this year alone, and only four perpetrators since 2009 have identified as transgender or nonbinary.

Some felt the tweet amounted to a threat against Christian values.

“Is anybody on the Arizona news media going to discuss @GovernorHobbs press Secretary @joss_berry tweeting out that she oughta shoot practicing Christians?!,” asked T.J. Shope, R-Coolidge.

On Wednesday morning, the Hobbs administration announced Berry had resigned on Tuesday night, a day after she posted the offending tweet. In a statement, Hobbs said she doesn’t condone violence in any form.

“This administration holds mutual respect at the forefront of how we engage with one another. The post by the Press Secretary is not reflective of the values of the administration,” she wrote.

Republicans celebrated the move as a win on social media.

“Good! #MissionAccomplished,” tweeted Rep. Travis Grantham, R-Gilbert.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.

Last year, a record wave of book bans swept across the country when the GOP moved its culture war into school libraries, and Arizona Republicans this year are pushing to expand on that by outlawing books that “promote” gender fluidity or pronouns.

To do so, they want to give parents the power to request the removal of any book that “promotes” gender fluidity or the use of gender pronouns, includes content they deem too lewd for their children to be exposed to, or that would “groom children into normalizing pedophilia.”

The legislation does not define “gender pronouns,” but the term is generally understood to mean words that reference someone’s gender, such as he/him/his or she/her/hers. Non-gendered or nonbinary pronouns, which are not mentioned in the bill, are not gender specific and are most often used by people who identify outside of a gender binary.

The term “grooming,” which generally refers to a manipulative process used by pedophiles to prey on minors, has been co-opted by far-right politicians and pundits to accuse LGBTQ people of pedophilia.

The Arizona Senate on Monday approved Senate Bill 1700 on a 16-12 vote, with Republicans providing all of the votes in favor. The measure heads next to the state House of Representatives, where its fate is unclear.

But even if it does win support in that chamber, It is unlikely to become law. Gov. Katie Hobbs has repeatedly denounced anti-LGBTQ measures in the past, and during a March 19 speech at a gala for an LBGTQ youth organization, she said that any such proposals will “meet my veto stamp.”

Critics of the bill have worried it could lead to the removal of important literature that includes adult themes, such as “The Color Purple” or “The Great Gatsby.” A law passed last year that banned the use of “sexually explicit materials” in classrooms, and initially included homosexuality in its definition, faced a similar risk when it resulted in a Glendale school district considering the removal of LGBTQ books.

Sen. Anna Hernandez on Monday objected to the inclusion of gender fluidity in the list of prohibited themes. The Phoenix Democrat said that gender fluidity, which can be defined as a gender identity that isn’t fixed and may change over time, isn’t something that is spread via books, but rather a human characteristic that’s unlikely to stop by excluding books that mention it.

“Gender fluidity is not a thing promoted,” she said. “There are no brochures trying to sell it. Gender fluidity is a naturally occurring phenomenon some people experience. It is part of the human condition. You might as well (ban) books that promote left handedness or curly hair.”

State Sen. Christine Marsh, D-Phoenix, warned that banning books would only serve to encourage students to seek them out. Marsh, a former Arizona teacher of the year, added that procedures already exist for parents to review which books their children read.

The new proposal builds on a law passed last year that requires all public school librarians, with some exceptions that SB1700 would eliminate, to post every newly purchased book on the school’s website and provide parents with a detailed list of books their child has checked out.

Granting individual parents the authority to decide which books all students can access is unfair, Marsh said.

“There is absolutely nothing wrong with a parent deciding a certain book is not right for her child. There is a colossal problem with a parent deciding that, therefore, no child should be able to read that book,” she said.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Justine Wadsack, framed it as a protection of children, ignoring criticism about its inclusion of gender fluidity. Parents, the Tucson Republican claimed, have been given little recourse to protest books they don’t agree with.

“This bill gives parents the ability to have a say in what their children read,” she said.

State law currently mandates that school governing boards review, have public hearings about and make available all textbooks and supplemental materials used in schools. And parents already have the right to review learning materials and pull their children out of a class or activity if they disagree with the materials being used due to sexual, violent or profane content.

Wadsack, a proponent of the violent QAnon conspiracy that a global cabal is sexually abusing children, has focused intensely on the “grooming” myth in her first year as a legislator and has sponsored other anti-LGBTQ legislation.

She has claimed that Arizona schools are exposing students to harmful sexual content. To back up those claims, she has pointed to a book of interviews from transgender and nonbinary youth found in some Arizona high school libraries, titled “Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out,” that includes brief discussions of underage sex. It has been a frequent target of book challenges and has been banned from as many as 11 school districts across the country.

Wadsack criticized Democrats for advocating on behalf of books instead of children, accusing them of sanctioning the presence of sexually explicit materials in schools.

“They all want to defend the books,” she said. “But they’re not defending the rights of the child to have an innocent childhood.”

***UPDATE: This story has been updated to clarify that SB1700 refers only to “gender pronouns,” like she/her/hers, and not non-gendered pronouns that are most often used by people who identify outside the a gender binary.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.

A Scottsdale-based law firm is hoping to reinstate a near-total abortion ban from 1864, filing an appeal on Wednesday to overturn a court ruling that allowed limited access to the procedure.

Alliance Defending Freedom wants the Arizona Supreme Court to void the decision of the state appeals court that determined a 2022 law outlawing elective abortions after the 15-week mark supersedes the near-total ban originally written in 1864.

Among their arguments is that the state’s history of Republicans winning elections is evidence enough that both the legislature and citizens side with the 1864 law and want to abolish abortion in Arizona nearly entirely.

“Arizonans deserve to have their laws fully enforced. They made their voice heard at the ballot box — electing Legislature after Legislature to protect life as much as possible. And lawmakers delivered,” the attorneys wrote.

A quick recap

Shortly after the constitutional right to an abortion was struck down in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization last year, then-Attorney General Mark Brnovich went to court to remove an injunction holding back the state’s territorial-era abortion ban. A trial judge in Pima County conceded that the injunction was no longer relevant in a post-Roe Arizona, but her decision to reinstate the near-total ban was reversed in December by a three-judge appellate court panel that restored abortion access up to 15 weeks.

Brnovich argued in court that a provision in the 2022 law stating it didn’t repeal any restrictions that came before it meant the 1864 law should reign supreme, but advocates pointed out that logic meant 50 years of more recent laws heavily regulating the procedure were also preserved — implying that abortion should remain in some form.

The appellate judges sided with abortion advocates, noting that if the legislature, which passed the 2022 law, intended to completely eliminate instead of just restrict abortion, they would have said so more explicitly. Erasing the 2022 law based on its non-repeal provision would be “nonsensical,” they concluded

Before the clarity offered in that ruling, the state had been roiling from conflicting messaging and shuttered clinics as state leaders vied over which of the two bans was the law of the land and doctors refused to provide the service, fearful of the mandatory prison sentence attached to the 1864 law.

The state appeals court’s decision was widely regarded as the final say, especially after voters elected Democrats to state leadership in the November midterms, including current Attorney General Kris Mayes, who has repeatedly reiterated her refusal to take on her predecessor’s hard-line stance against abortion.

But Alliance Defending Freedom filed an appeal on behalf of Dr. Eric Hazelrigg, the medical director of anti-abortion clinic chain Choices Pregnancy Center. Hazelrigg was allowed to intervene on behalf of the state’s unborn children — a position that was added to the case in 1973 when the Civil War-era ban was first litigated.

What does the appeal say?

Attorneys for Alliance Defending Freedom argue that the appeals court wrongly interpreted the Legislature’s intent. Decades of abortion restrictions going back as far as the state’s territorial days hardly mean lawmakers approved of the procedure. The bulk of those laws, passed after 1973, were the result of attempts to inhibit abortion care as much as possible under the “shackles” of Roe. The 1864 law and the 15-week limit passed in 2022 both outlaw abortion, and the appellate court’s conclusion that the latter allowed it to some extent was illogical, attorneys said.

“Multiple restrictions do not make a contradiction, much less allow a doubly condemned act,” reads the brief.

A topmost concern for the appellate judges was the danger of arbitrary prosecution posed by two laws with very different punishments.

The 1864 law mandates between two and five years of prison time for doctors who perform an abortion that wasn’t provided because the mother’s life was in danger, while the 15-week limit carries a class 6 felony if a non-emergency procedure was performed outside of its time parameters. A class 6 felony is the least severe type, and can result in fines, probation or a prison sentence as short as 4 months.

Neither law includes exceptions for pregnancies arising from rape or incest.

While judges worried that prosecutorial discretion could lead to uneven punishment across the state, attorneys rebutted in the appeal that it’s a groundless concern. Other crimes, like writing bad checks, are governed by more than one law and that hasn’t presented a problem before. What matters is that both laws at their core prohibit abortions. The details are resolved on a case by case basis. If a doctor performs an elective abortion, they can be prosecuted under the 1864 near-total ban, and if that abortion was provided after 15 weeks, then they may also be liable under the 2022 law.

“The statutes are clear: no one may perform an abortion except to save the mother’s life. And physicians have no right to limit the menu of charges they may face,” attorneys wrote.

The other side speaks

Planned Parenthood of Arizona, which runs four of the state’s nine abortion clinics and fought in court to keep the 1864 ban at bay, decried the appeal as a “last-ditch effort” from those with extremist ideologies who are ignoring what is best for Arizonans.

“This archaic abortion ban (Alliance Defending Freedom) is trying to revive is cruel, harmful and unpopular with the majority of Arizonans,” Brittany Fonteno, the organization’s president and CEO, said in an emailed statement. “This Civil War-era law should not dictate our reproductive freedom and how we live our lives today.”

Fonteno expressed gratitude that the appeal won’t be strengthened by Mayes’ involvement, as, unlike her predecessor, the Democrat is staunchly pro-abortion. But the challenge is still a threat, and she promised that Planned Parenthood Arizona will work to defeat it and defend abortion access.

“This harmful ban has no place in Arizona and we won’t stop fighting for our patients until true reproductive freedom is achieved in our state,” she said.

Amy Fitch-Heacock is the co-founder of Arizonans for Reproductive Freedom, one of several pro-abortion organizations putting together a ballot initiative for the 2024 election that would ask voters to enshrine abortion access in the state’s constitution.

Fitch-Heacock vowed to continue those efforts and slammed ADF’s appeal as out of step with the public consensus in Arizona. A February 2022 survey conducted by NARAL Pro-Choice America found that 90% of Arizonans agreed that family planning should be free from government interference, and 80% were opposed to punishing doctors for procedures the patient requests.

“(This) is just the latest attempt to undermine the wishes of Arizona’s voting majority and put pregnant people at risk,” Fitch-Heacock said. “We will continue to work together with our statewide reproductive freedom partners to ensure that Arizona voters, not extremist groups, determine our reproductive futures.”

Zoom out

Since Dobbs returned the regulation of abortion to the states last year, Arizona has dealt with a constantly changing reproductive health landscape characterized by threats of additional restrictions. For now, women in Arizona can receive elective abortions up until the 15-week mark, but that access has been increasingly cut off, and is set to see renewed challenges in the near future.

In January, a federal judge reinstated a ban on abortions performed because of a fetal genetic abnormality. That ban is part of a 2021 law that includes a fetal personhood assertion which is currently blocked. The injunction holding it back is set to expire in July, and while Mayes is unlikely to defend the law in court, GOP leaders in the state legislature, with the help of Alliance Defending Freedom, have requested to intervene.

The law firm is also representing an anti-abortion medical association seeking to reverse the FDA’s approval of abortion pill mifepristone in a Texas lawsuit that advocates fear will succeed.

Access in Arizona has long been hampered by a myriad of laws regulating the procedure, and Dobbs has only worsened the burden. One of the state’s nine abortion clinics is facing closure after months of intermittent service, and others have been struggling to meet increased demand from both local and out-of-state women. Arizonans are making the trip to nearby states as well, but they join a growing wave of women in need whose own clinics have been strained or shut down.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.

Drag artists who perform in front of children would be forced to register as sex offenders and face a minimum of 10 years in prison, under the latest measure Arizona Republican lawmakers have advanced in their vendetta against drag performers.

The proposed law would punish anyone who performs for or allows a minor to view an “adult-oriented performance,” or even enter a business in which one is occurring. Drag shows would be included in the definition of adult-oriented businesses, which has historically applied only to strip clubs and porn shops.

Any adult who violates the bill’s provisions would be charged with a class 4 felony, potentially netting them up to 3 years in prison. But if the child is under 15 years old, it is prosecutable as a dangerous crime against children, which increases the penalty to a 10-year sentence, and requires those convicted to register as sex offenders.

Sen. Justine Wadsack, R-Tucson, said her Senate Bill 1698 was the result of meetings with members of the Log Cabin Republicans and the far-right anti-LGBTQ organization Gays Against Groomers while drafting the legislation. Both groups espouse anti-trans talking points. The latter was formed specifically to campaign against gender-affirming care for trans minors and family friendly drag shows, which it characterizes as the “sexualization and indoctrination of children,” and it has orchestrated harassment of school boards and hospitals that provide gender-affirming health care.

Jeanne Woodbury, a lobbyist for LGBTQ advocacy organization Equality Arizona, noted that the language used to define a drag show is too broad and risks looping in family-friendly drag shows and even actors who aren’t drag performers. If the bill’s intent is to outlaw sexually explicit content, it fails to do that, she said.

“This would include every kind of drag performance,” Woodbury warned at a Feb. 16 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the bill. “It includes a lot of things that aren’t even drag.”

The bill defines a drag show as a performance meant to entertain during which one or more performers sing, dance or act and use clothing, makeup or other “physical markers” opposite of their biological sex to exaggerate gender roles.

Wadsack acknowledged that the issue had been brought up by legislative attorneys and is one she is interested in addressing with a future amendment.

“I’m not here to hurt people’s businesses because they teach dance,” she said. “I’m not here to change people’s livelihood. It’s a matter of the protection of children.”

Despite its glaring flaws, the measure was moved out of the Republican-controlled committee along party lines.

Wadsack’s bill is far from the only anti-drag proposal forwarded by a contingent of far-right Republicans this session. Another bill threatens the withdrawal of state funding from schools who host drag shows and two others attempt to add prohibitions that are generally only applied to strip clubs, restricting where and when drag shows can occur. The latter two were sponsored by Glendale Republican Anthony Kern, who, like Wadsack, is a member of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus.

One of Kern’s measures, Senate Bill 1030, was also approved along party lines on Feb. 16 by the Senate Government Committee, which is chaired by Arizona Freedom Caucus leader Sen. Jake Hoffman. While the proposals might be approved by the Republican-majority legislature, Gov. Katie Hobbs has warned that her veto pen will be at the ready to reject any bills that fail to earn bipartisan support, and her chief of staff has dismissed other anti-LGBTQ measures as dead on arrival.

Kern’s bill places drag shows under the legal definition for “adult-oriented business”, which are not allowed to operate between the hours of 1 a.m. and 8 a.m. Monday through Saturday or 1 a.m. and 12 p.m. on Sunday — likely affecting popular drag brunches. In a previous hearing, Kern acknowledged that the impetus behind his anti-drag bills was the family-friendly drag brunch in Texas, an event that attracted protests from white nationalists and has spurred similar anti-drag measures in other states.

Adult-oriented businesses are also prohibited from being located within one-fourth of a mile from schools, childcare facilities, homes or churches. Violations of those rules are punishable with a class 1 misdemeanor, which can result in up to a six month jail sentence and a $2,500 fine. Every day the rules are violated merits a separate misdemeanor charge.

Elijah Watson, a member of student coalition Keep Arizona Blue, criticized the measure on Thursday as discriminatory.

“This bill is a clear and divisive attack against the drag and queer community,” he said. “It perpetuates the myth that has been pushed this legislative session by Republicans that drag is a form of sexual entertainment, and that drag is an art form that promotes pedophilia and grooming.”

Hoffman rebutted that the bill deals only with sexually explicit drag shows. An amendment authored by the Queen Creek Republican sought to exclude family friendly shows by adding the term “sexually explicit” to any mention of drag shows in the bill, defining it as a depiction meant to arouse or simulate intercourse, or as broadly as simply the act of touching a person’s “clothed or unclothed genitals, pubic area, buttocks or breast”.

But Sen. Priya Sundareshan, D-Tucson, pointed out that a drafting error failed to add the term before a mention of “drag performer,” meaning that any performer would also be subject to the bill’s regulations and punishments. And because the bill’s definition of drag performers is as broadly defined as Wadsack’s, it risks falling afoul of the same issues.

Hoffman conceded the omission but said that Kern, who accepted his amendment, would likely be open to another.

Jeff Perales, a managing partner of local Kobalt Bar, which is a frequent host of drag shows, said that, even in its revised form, the bill presents a redundant and unnecessary burden on small businesses. Kobalt Bar, and every other nightclub across the state, are already highly regulated. Those under 21 are not allowed to enter and, in the 16 years the bar has been in operation, he’s never had a problem with minors being present during adult-only shows.

“Instead of focusing on real issues like education funding, that are truly meant to inform and help, you’ve insisted on targeting already marginalized communities,” he said.

Perales urged lawmakers to reject the bill, warning that it only serves to encourage the kind of anti-LGBTQ sentiment that resulted in tragedies in Colorado and Florida, when shootings targeted the LGBTQ community in bars like his.

“Using this to blunt self-expression and free speech is un-American,” he added, likening it to comments from a previous hearing in which Hoffman accused totalitarian governments in China and Iran of doing the same.

That accusation incensed Hoffman, who immediately cut Perales off and threatened to have him removed from the room.

“In those countries, they throw homosexuals off of roofs and kill them,” he shot back.

Lydia Burton told lawmakers that approving the proposal would amount to violating her inherent parental rights and dismissing her culture as a part of the LGBTQ community.

“I have the right to celebrate my history and my culture with my child in alignment with my values, and there is no governing body — here or elsewhere — that will ever change that,” she said.

Burton cited Arizona’s Parents’ Bill of Rights — a law used often by Republican lawmakers to criticize masking policies and social agendas in schools — as giving her the sole power of directing her daughter’s upbringing.

“This bill is an egregious violation of my rights as a parent to raise my child in the way I choose,” she said. “I do not share custody of my child with the government, and I do not intend to allow you input into her upbringing.”

Hoffman once again reiterated the bill’s intent to address only sexually explicit shows, but Burton wasn’t convinced, noting that “sexually explicit drag shows” is a newly created category. When Hoffman rebutted that the definition for “sexually explicit” he added to the bill is grounded in statutes from 1961, she asked if he would like to return to the rampant criminalization of LGBTQ people that was common in that time.

Burton then asked if Hoffman had ever attended a drag show, and questioned his ability to legislate them when he replied that he had not — which prompted him to dismiss her from further testimony.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.

Republicans, still stung by Arizonans rejection of the party’s top nominees in the 2022 midterm elections, are calling for a hand-count audit of the election — but only in Maricopa County.

Legislation approved by a Senate panel on Feb. 13 orders election officials in a “county with 2 million persons or more” to select four precincts in which to conduct a 100-ballot recount of every race on the November 2022 ballot. The only county that describes Maricopa County, which has been a focal point of baseless accusations of election fraud since the 2020 election.

The state’s largest county has in recent years gone from a reliable GOP stronghold to backing Democratic candidates, fracturing the Republican Party’s longtime hold on the state. In the last several elections, Democratic statewide candidates like President Joe Biden, Gov. Katie Hobbs and U.S. Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly have won in Maricopa County, propelling them to victory over their GOP opponents.

Those outcomes have spurred numerous conspiracy theories about why Republicans are losing races in Maricopa County, and drove GOP state senators in 2021 to conduct a partisan election review of Donald Trump’s 2020 loss in search of supposed fraud. The so-called “audit” found no evidence of fraud, but did nothing to snuff out the conspiracies.

Issues with on-demand printers during the 2022 election that led to hundreds of rejected ballots only worsened suspicion and conspiracy theories from election deniers.

The proposal, Senate Bill 1471, requires a hand-count of all 2022 ballots in each precinct to be compared to a tally of the same ballots by a tabulation machine. If a discrepancy of more than 0.10% is found between the two counts, the ballots will be recounted by a different group of volunteers and a different tabulation machine.

Election skeptics have long looked to hand-counts as the solution to an allegedly fraudulent system. Tabulation machines are at the center of those allegations, with election deniers accusing them of incorrectly counting ballots or changing the votes altogether. The claims dismiss, or outright ignore, the numerous state and federal standards tabulation machines must meet, the extensive logic and accuracy tests that are performed, and the limited hand-counts used before and after elections to verify their accuracy.

The post-election limited hand-count audits conducted last year found no significant errors in any Arizona county.

Critics of the GOP push to hand-count every race on every ballot have cited research that human error contributes to margins large enough to sway close elections and the difficulty of counting so many ballots quickly. During the 2022 midterm elections, more than 1.5 million ballots were cast in Maricopa County alone, and each of those had 80 contests on them.

Fountain Hills Republican Sen. John Kavanagh, who sponsored the legislation, told his colleagues on the Senate Elections Committee that double-checking a small portion of ballots could help dispel some of the qualms from hand-count critics. The results, he said, would finally show whether or not hand-counts can be feasibly performed, and the data could be extrapolated to determine how many volunteers would be needed to recount the entire 2022 midterm election over 16-hour days.

“It basically…blows away some of the controversy over what’s accurate, what’s not accurate and how long it would take to do a (full) hand-count by using a controlled experiment,” Kavanagh said, during a Monday night hearing of the bill.

The measure moved forward along party lines, with all three Democrats on the panel in opposition. If that lack of support continues, it’s unlikely that Gov. Katie Hobbs, who vowed to sign only bills that earn bipartisan support, will approve it.

Sen. Juan Mendez, D-Tempe, said that, while he would welcome an example of the flawed nature of hand-counts, he doubted even that would convince election deniers.

“This is not going to put an end to conspiracy theories,” he said. “We’re just going to see another bill next year demanding a thousand ballots, or people are going to share all kinds of anecdotes about how they talked to somebody who was there and saw things that they thought shouldn’t be happening.”

That sentiment was quickly proved by Sen. Sonny Borrelli, who said the bill’s parameters don’t go far enough. The Lake Havasu Republican claimed that tabulation machines are infected by an algorithm that allows them to change the votes at a certain threshold — though he couldn’t say at what threshold — and called them a “scam”. His future support, he said, would be contingent on increasing the number of ballots being audited.

“There’s an algorithm that’s embedded in these machines — possibly, possibly not — but there’s no way for us to verify that,” Borrelli said. “One-hundred-percent accuracy is what the citizens demand. There’s an algorithm in there that’s programmed to change things.”

The voters who sent Borrelli, and the other 89 legislators, to the Capitol had their votes counted by electronic tabulators.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.

The Republican Cochise County supervisors who refused to certify the election results should be investigated and criminally prosecuted, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said in a letter to state and county attorneys.

Without repercussions, Hobbs wrote to Attorney General Mark Brnovich and Cochise County Attorney Brian McIntyre, the decision of supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd to flout Arizona election law could encourage future violations, further eroding election integrity in the state and trespassing over the will of Arizona voters.

“Supervisors Crosby and Judd’s actions not only demonstrate a complete disregard for the law but also jeopardize Arizona’s democracy,” she wrote. “Had a court not intervened, the failure of these two Supervisors to uphold their duty would have disenfranchised thousands of Cochise County voters. This blatant act of defying Arizona’s election laws risks establishing a dangerous precedent that we must discourage.”

Crosby and Judd threw the state certification process into disarray last month when they delayed their official canvassing of the midterm election results in Cochise County, citing bogus claims that electronic tabulators didn’t meet state or federal standards. It was only after a court ordered them to complete their statutorily mandated duties that they did so on Dec. 1, days after the Nov. 28 deadline.

Their actions put the official statewide canvass in jeopardy, as Hobbs must meet a Dec. 5 deadline to certify the results. She can only push that deadline as far as Dec. 8. If she decided to go ahead with the process without the results from Cochise County, a heavily Republican region, more than 47,000 voters could have seen their ballots ignored and a number of races would have flipped in favor of Democratic candidates.

The responsibilities of county supervisors are clearly laid out in state law and the state’s Election Procedures Manual, Hobbs said, and they are non-negotiable. As well, Crosby and Judd were given ample notification of the consequences, both from her office and McIntyre.

“Supervisors Crosby and Judd knew they had a statutory requirement to canvass the election by November 28, but instead chose to act in violation of the law, putting false election narratives ahead of Cochise County’s voters,” Hobbs wrote. Hobbs, who was elected governor in the election, wrote that the two Republicans violated several state laws, with penalties ranging from a class 3 misdemeanor to a class 6 felony.

If Crosby and Judd were convicted of a felony, their right to vote would be revoked. They also stand to lose their elected office: State law deems an elected office vacant if the officeholder is convicted of a felony or any “offense involving a violation of the person’s official duties”.

This is the second call for an investigation: Earlier this week, former Attorney General Terry Goddard and Maricopa County Attorney Richard Romley wrote to Brnovich and McIntyre requesting they hold Crosby and Judd accountable for their actions.

In an emailed statement, Brnovich spokeswoman Katie Conner said their office had not yet received Hobbs’ letter.

It’s likely that Attorney General-elect Kris Mayes will make the final decision on whether to prosecute, as she takes office in January. In a statement, she said she agrees with the request from Hobbs’ office to begin an investigation and said that it is through that process that a decision on what response, if any, should be made.

“This investigation should determine whether any Arizona laws were violated, and if so, what appropriate enforcement actions should be taken,” Mayes said.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.

Hamadeh filed a lawsuit last week challenging the election, which he lost to Democrat Kris Mayes by 510 votes. State law allows candidates to contest election results, but only within five days after the official statewide canvass has been completed and a winner has been declared.

This year, the canvass is scheduled to happen Dec. 5, although that might be pushed back as far as Dec. 8, given that Cochise County refused to certify its countywide results by the Nov. 28 deadline.

Hamadeh’s attorney, Kory Langhofer, argued that the challenge should proceed because the outcome of the statewide canvass is already known.

Attorneys for Mayes and Secretary of State Katie Hobbs requested that the lawsuit be thrown out, saying it violated the laws which guide the processes for election challenges.

Late Wednesday afternoon, Judge Randall Warner agreed with that assessment. He noted that a new filing could be submitted after the statewide canvass has been certified, because it’s only through that certification that a candidate is officially “declared elected,” as the statute requires.

“The Court concludes that this matter is premature under the election contest statute, and therefore dismisses it without prejudice to the filing of an election contest after the canvass and declaration of election results have occurred,” Warner wrote in his ruling.

Warner rejected Langhofer’s argument that the lawsuit was ripe, even before the canvass, because it is inevitable that Mayes will be declared the winner. The judge noted that, because an election contest is a remedy afforded to candidates via state laws that have specific requirements, the court must abide by them.

Hamadeh’s suit alleged that the on-demand printer issues in Maricopa County, which affected around 70 polling sites, cost him the race, and that a combination of illegal votes for Mayes and thwarted votes for him led to an undeserved win for the Democratic nominee. Notably, his lawsuit did not include any evidence to back those claims and Langhofer admitted during an initial hearing on Monday that he would need a myriad of records from counties across the state to prove the alleged wrongdoing.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.

In light of the past year’s anti-LGBTQ legislation and political rhetoric, LGBTQ parents and advocates are worried Tuesday’s election could bring more of the same unless voters choose pro-equality candidates.

Derrick Fiedler moved his family from Iowa to Arizona when his 10-year-old son came out as trans, looking for a safer and more welcoming community. Confronting even more anti-trans sentiment after that was disappointing and exhausting, and he fears it still isn’t the end.

“I feel like what they accomplished this year is just the beginning. It’s just a foothold to start passing more and more extreme bills,” he said.

Over 200 anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced in state legislatures across the country. Arizona’s GOP-controlled legislature passed several of its own, including bills barring trans girls from participating in school sports, prohibiting trans minors from receiving gender-affirming surgeries and allowing parents access to any school records of their children, which critics say puts LGBTQ students at risk of being outed.

As bad as the new laws are for trans children, it could have been worse. The law banning surgery on trans youth initially would have banned all gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, which have been found to help improve mental well-being among trans youth. That version was blocked, in part, by a lone Republican vote.

But that Republican, state Sen. Tyler Pace, was defeated by a Trump-endorsed right-wing candidate, and Fiedler is worried GOP lawmakers will now have the votes to ban all health care for trans children. If that happens and his son can’t access treatment, the Fiedler family would consider moving — again.

“It just feels like it’s going to always be a fight,” Fiedler lamented.

Bridget Sharpe, director of Arizona’s branch of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, said the record wave of discriminatory legislation is a hostile move against the LGBTQ community and the only solution to prevent it from gaining further traction is to elect candidates who will support legislation that protects the LGBTQ community.

“There have been several pieces of legislation passed that are clearly anti-trans youth, anti-LGBTQ altogether,” Sharpe said. “There’s clearly a move to try and eliminate our community or at least scare us back into the closet. Our goal is to elect leaders in positions that have the opportunity to support our community and pass legislation that’s positive.”

At the federal level, that means enough Democrats to make good on the party’s promise to pass the Respect for Marriage Act into law, which would codify the right to same-sex marriage. That would preempt any future attempt from the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the right, as it indicated an interest in doing when it overturned Roe v. Wade and struck down the constitutional right to abortion. With enough support, Sharpe hopes the Equality Act, which would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, sexuality or gender identity in public accommodations like housing, employment, education and federal funding, could be successfully passed. Multiple versions of the act have been introduced since 2015, but all have failed to move forward.

Losing the Democratic Party’s tenuous foothold in either congressional chamber would mean not only wasting all the work pushing through the Respect for Marriage Act, but would also open the way for anti-LGBTQ legislation at the federal level, Sharpe warned. Last year, a Republican-led effort threatened to withhold funding from athletics programs allowing trans students to participate and in August, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene introduced legislation making it a federal crime for doctors to provide gender-affirming care to trans minors.

“There’s this push towards creating legislation that we haven’t had to worry about because of the makeup of Congress, (and) that’s very concerning,” Sharpe said.

At the state level, legislation discriminating against trans youth is just the beginning, warned Abby Jensen, the legal director for the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance.

Jensen, who is a trans woman, fears Republicans will pass additional laws designed to make it increasingly difficult to exist as a trans person by adding more hoops to gender identity and name changes on legal documents. That’s a dangerous prospect when as much as 40% of trans people who don’t have an identification that matches their perceived gender experience harassment.

“Making it simple to access those kinds of changes has a significant effect on trans people to live as who they are,” Jensen said. “Their ultimate goal is to erase us from existence.”

The most direct way to rebuff attempts to introduce more roadblocks into the lives of LGBTQ people and repeal laws passed in the spring would be for Democrats to win control of state government.

But that’s a tall order in Arizona, where Democrats have controlled the Governor’s Office for only six years since 1991 and haven’t controlled both legislative chambers since 1966.

For 15-year-old Daniel Trujillo, however, voting in more pro-LGBTQ candidates is imperative to creating a safer future for him and other trans minors.

“Having legislators and elected officials that are committed to trans youth matters because it gives us hope that we will live in a discrimination free world and that kids like me can live safely in the state of Arizona,” he said at a Human Rights Campaign event in early October.

Daniel’s mother, Lizette Trujillo, is keenly aware of how in jeopardy her son’s rights are if the political landscape stays in the status quo. She and Daniel became fixtures at legislative hearings on anti-trans bills in the spring, calling on legislators to vote against them. Lizette is particularly concerned with the rhetoric that makes up the discussions. She worries that the continued ramping up of anti-trans talking points from Republicans will result in violence in the same way that anti-immigrant rhetoric contributed to the El Paso shooting.

“I worry that this harmful portrayal that they’ve painted of trans people will lead someone to harm trans people — people who are already marginalized and already experience violence at higher proportions,” she said.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.

From 2016 to 2020, 63,857 people were naturalized in the state, according to a report released by the National Partnership for New Americans, a coalition of immigrant and refugee rights groups. While this represents a slight drop from the more than 73,000 naturalized between 2010 and 2014, NPNA maintains that it still outperforms the 10,457 vote margin by which President Joe Biden won his election in the state.

This influx of newly naturalized voters promises to throw a wrench into the plans of anti-immigrant politicians, advocates say. Studies indicate that newly anointed Americans from minority groups — which comprise the bulk of new citizens — have a higher rate of political participation than their native-born counterparts. Latino and Asian immigrants, especially, have higher rates of political participation than native-born Latinos and Asian Americans. And among Latinos, immigration is a top concern, with 82% of them in favor of pro-immigrant policies.

“With so many anti-immigrant sentiments lingering across our nation and the current attempts to restrict our voting and civil rights, the stakes cannot be higher. This powerful multiracial, multigenerational voting bloc will be driven to the polls by different viewpoints, experiences, and issues that impact our communities, truly making them an electoral force to reckon with,” said Nicole Melaku, executive director of NPNA, which also works to encourage new citizens to vote.

In Arizona, the new voting bloc skews younger, female and Latino.

Approximately 56% of newly naturalized citizens are of voting age and under 45 years old, and 57% are women.

They come from multiple countries, but lean heavily Latino. As much as 55% of newly naturalized citizens are from the Americas, which include Latin America and the Caribbean. The top country represented among them is Mexico, with just under 29,000 hailing from the southern neighbor. The second largest region of origin is Asia, at 29%, with India as the highest contributor after Mexico, at 3,197. Iraq and the Philippines follow closely behind.

The authors of the report note that the number of newly naturalized citizens ready to vote in the midterm elections would be greater if not for an immigration processing backlog. More than 10,000 applications were pending in Arizona at the end of December of 2021, which is the most recent time for which data are available.

The national average processing delay is 11 months, but delay averages at both United States Citizenship and Immigrations Services offices in Arizona outstrip that. In the Phoenix Office, 80% of applications take 13 and a half months to process and in Tucson, 80% of them take a full 14 months to complete.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.

When the dust settled, the Arizona Free and Fair Elections Act, which sought to make sweeping changes to Arizona’s election and campaign finance laws, fell just 1,458 signatures short of qualifying for the November ballot.

A day earlier, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Joseph Mikitish ruled the ballot had 2,281 more valid signatures than the 237,645 it needed to appear on the general election ballot.

But late Thursday, the Supreme Court said it was unable to verify Mikitish’s math and ordered him to clarify it on Friday morning. When he did, Mikitish revised his calculations and concluded that the initiative fell short, disqualifying it from the ballot. The Supreme Court affirmed that ruling a few hours later, despite an appeal from Arizonans for Free and Fair Elections, which backed the bill, claiming that Mikitish’s new math was flawed.

Stacy Pearson, the group’s spokeswoman, said the outcome was disappointing, and serves as evidence that the provisions in the ballot initiative are sorely needed in Arizona. Among the measure’s many proposals were ones that would make it harder for opponents to use the courts to remove initiatives from the ballot.

“It would have prevented judicial interference in direct democracy, and judicial interference literally ended this option for direct democracy,” she said.

In an emailed statement, Pearson said the court’s decision to invalidate the initiative was the direct result of conservative backlash.

“Voters turned in 475,000 signatures — double the 237,645 requirement. But, Governor Ducey’s expanded and stacked Supreme Court found a way to invalidate over 50% of the signatures,” she said.

In 2016, Ducey and the GOP controlled legislature expanded the Supreme Court from five to seven judges. Pearson noted that the decision was out of step with both voter sentiment and previous rulings, given how many signatures were gathered in support, and the approval ofthe Secretary of State, 14 county recorders and Mikitish himself

The Arizona Fair Elections Act would have struck down several GOP-backed election laws and practices that critics say have led to voter disenfranchisement. Its many reforms included a ban on legislative audits of elections (like the so-called state Senate “audit” of Maricopa County’s 2020 election), automatic voter registration when people apply for drivers licenses or state IDs, and the restoration of the Permanent Early Voter List, or PEVL — weakened last year by a law requiring election officials to kick voters off the rolls when they miss multiple elections. As much as 90% of registered voters in Arizona use the system to vote by mail.

The initiative also proposed dramatic changes to funding streams for candidates running for political office. It slashed campaign contributions from individuals and political action committees from $6,250 to $1,000 or $2,500, depending on which office a candidate is aiming for. At the same time, the initiative boosted the funding of publicly financed candidates using the state’s Clean Elections system by twice the current amount.

Scot Mussi, president of Arizona Free Enterprise Club, called the initiative “radical” and said the included provisions would threaten election integrity in the state. Same-day voter registration, which was included in the initiative, is particularly dangerous, he said, because it could allow people to vote multiple times or even vote when they’re not eligible.

The initiative included guidelines for registering on Election Day. It required that voters certify via signature and under penalty of perjury (punishable by three years in prison, under state law) that they haven’t voted elsewhere. They would have also been required to meet current registration requirements, which includes providing a voter’s name, address, date of birth and some form of identification.

Mussi also took issue with increasing the Clean Elections financing system to support publicly financed political candidates, which he said forces voters to subsidize campaigns they may not back.

“It’s forcing taxpayers to pay for speech that they may or may not believe in,” he said.

Arizona voters created Clean Elections in 1998, making the state one of the first in the nation to implement a publicly funded campaign finance system. Almost all of the funding for Clean Elections comes through court fees; none of it comes from taxes.

Mussi said the restoration of PEVL also harms voters, as it costs money to send early ballots to voters who don’t use them or have moved.

“We should not just be sending ballots out in perpetuity,” he said. “We need to clean up the system.”

Current law directs county recorders to verify voter addresses by May 1, ahead of an upcoming general or primary election. If a voter has moved, recorders update that information and send a mailed notice of the change. Voters have 35 days to respond. If they don’t, their registration is put under inactive status and ballots won’t be mailed. Multiple years as inactive will require voters to re-register.

Ultimately, relaxing voter access to the ballot box isn’t a good idea, despite what supporters of the initiative may say, according to Mussi, who said Arizona’s existing election laws dissuade fraud.

“(They) ensure we have an easy to vote, hard to cheat system,” he said.

Arizonans for Free and Fair Elections, however, disagrees with Mussi’s assessment. The work will continue, Pearson said, especially because efforts to stifle voter-led democracy are ongoing. She pointed to the measures that Republican lawmakers sent to the November ballot as proof. Proposition 129 requires ballot initiatives to be limited to a single subject, while Proposition 132 requires initiatives to garner 60% supermajorities for voters to enact tax changes. Both make it harder for Arizonans to add initiatives to future ballots that voters themselves approved.

“Despite this setback, Arizona voters will never give up our fight to protect our freedoms and the will of the people. We will turn out in November to vote NO on Propositions 128, 129, and 132 to safeguard future ballot initiatives in Arizona, and continue organizing in support of the pro-voter policies in the Free and Fair Elections Act,” Pearson said in an emailed statement.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.

Matt Gress, a candidate for the state House of Representatives aiming to represent District 4 in northeast Phoenix, announced his “Pay Teachers First” plan on Monday, centered around an immediate and permanent $10,000 pay raise for Arizona teachers. Gress, a former teacher who now works as Gov. Doug Ducey’s budget director, said salaries are a pressing concern for teachers in Arizona, which consistently ranks near the bottom in teacher compensation.

“When I was a teacher, I struggled to make ends meet and was (paying) out-of-pocket (for) many resources needed for my students. Teachers don’t go into this profession to get rich, but they also aren’t expected to live in poverty, either. Our students rightfully deserve the best education, and our teachers rightfully deserve to be valued,” Gress said in a statement on his campaign website.

But Marisol Garcia, president of the Arizona Education Association, has heard politicians make promises before — particularly in election years.

“Every even year, this happens. Potential candidates decide to say something, propose something that sounds amazing. What happens is that, once they’re elected, they change their tune very quickly,” she said.

With as much as 88% of voters in support of increasing teacher pay, campaign announcements to do so are easy bait, Garcia said. Her organization remains skeptical of the follow-through, especially when legislators have historically worked against school funding initiatives.

“The folks that (Gress) labeled as being very much in support of this are the same people that did everything they could to stop (Proposition) 208,” she said.

Prop. 208, a tax increase approved by voters in 2020 to increase school funding, was struck down by the Arizona Supreme Court after GOP legislative leaders challenged it. Before the case was decided, Republican legislators in February stalled on a vote to allow schools to spend money in their budgets, which would have shut down Arizona schools, out of concern it would allow Prop. 208 to go into effect.

The AEA, Garcia said, has proposed solutions to resolve the state’s ongoing teacher shortage, with little support from legislators. In May, it proposed a $1.7 billion increase in school funding that gained no traction. Schools later faced a frustrating uphill battle when legislators were initially unwilling to mobilize the state’s record surplus to benefit schools.

Another point of contention for Garcia is that Gress’ statement appears to take aim at administrative spending, declaring that the money wouldn’t go to “bureaucracy.”

The stance that teacher salaries have suffered because of rising administrative costs is misinformed, Garcia said. School administrators make decisions that affect everyday functions.

“They’re the folks that make sure my son crosses the street safely, or who make sure my son gets a healthy lunch. (They) make sure my son has technology that works, and that he has a counselor available,” she said.

In an interview with the Arizona Mirror on Tuesday, Gress acknowledged that school administration plays an important role in the education of students across the state. But the greatest resources for students are their teachers, he said, and that resource is endangered.

“We have a teacher workforce shortage. We have a teacher crisis. The state needs to step up with some bold action. The most effective input into a child’s education is at the front of the classroom,” he said.

There are as many as 2,000 teacher vacancies and 800 unfilled special education teacher openings.

To qualify for the extra funding in Gress’ proposal, schools must report information about academics, budgeting and spending to the auditor general. Garcia said this is simply another example of villainizing public schools over a supposed lack of transparency. (School budgets are approved by school boards at public meetings, and boards make regular reports on what education or budgeting decisions are being made.)

“That information is readily available to anybody who requests it,” she said, “That’s another example of politicizing this, saying that we don’t know how the money is being spent. Yes, we do — it’s a public institution.”

Requiring schools to compile data in yet another format, Garcia said, takes administrative manpower that incurs time and money, which Gress’ plan doesn’t include funding for.

Gress disagreed, saying that the data that schools currently compile is too difficult for parents to understand. Fiscal jargon and complex spreadsheets combine to make school budgets “opaque” to the average reader, he said.

Asked whether he would consider including funding in the plan to pay schools for the extra responsibility or create a new position, Gress pointed out that schools already have plenty of employees and the information should be easy to gather, given that it’s state law to compile it. He added that the legislature increased school budgets a record amount this year, allowing them to theoretically cover the cost.

“Schools have extensive business offices, and they’re already required to report this data,” he said.

The only difference, Gress said, is that the report will be sent to the Auditor General.

Among the supporters of Gress’ plan is an elementary school board president, but no teachers. Garcia said the AEA, which represents thousands of educators across the state, wasn’t consulted to help draft the plan. And she said Gress didn’t respond to the AEA in May when the organization reached out to every candidate with a questionnaire and interviews for endorsement consideration.

Gress argued that he has ample enough experience to craft a successful proposal without input from the AEA. Five years working with stakeholders as a budget director at the state Capitol and time as a school board member — he was on the Madison Elementary School District board from 2017 until 2021 — means he understands all sides.

“I’m very familiar with working with teachers and stakeholders, having been a former school board member. I understand this issue very well and have been able to hear from thousands of Arizonans who want their teachers paid more,” he said.

Despite her concerns, Garcia said she’s still willing to sit down and work with anyone interested in making a difference for Arizona classrooms.

“The table is big and wide of people that have ideas for helping end this teacher exodus and keep people here,” she said, “We will sit at any table with anyone that is focused on great public schools for every Arizona student.”

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.

The measure is one of a host of conservative responses to the false idea that rampant voter fraud occurred in the 2020 election. The bill’s sponsor, Sen. John Kavanagh, said its intent is to increase transparency.

“Nothing like a little bit of sunshine to allay people’s concerns that things are not being totally above board,” Kavanagh told the Senate Government Committee Monday.

The Fountain Hills Republican said he developed House Bill 2780 with former Secretary of State Ken Bennett, who served as the Senate’s liaison for the so-called “audit” last year. Bennett claimed that work alerted him to weaknesses in the system that have led to a lack of confidence in elections.

“Our elections need to be transparent, trackable and publicly verifiable,” Bennett said on Monday.

Republicans in Arizona and in state legislatures across the nation are pushing hundreds of measures to add barriers to voting and make it easier for them to overturn results they don’t like, often under the guise of stopping the exceedingly rare election fraud that they falsely claim is the reason why Democrats won close races in 2018 and 2020.

Former President Donald Trump has loudly and falsely asserted that his 2020 loss was due to rampant fraud, though numerous election audits and examinations across the country have failed to turn up any evidence.

Under Kavanagh’s bill, county recorders would be required to post a list of the names and addresses of all eligible voters on the county’s website 10 days before primary and general elections. That list would include both active and inactive voters.

When the bill was approved last month by the House of Representatives, county election officials would have also been required to publish the names, addresses and method of voting for every voter who cast a ballot after every election. But Republicans on the Government Committee amended the bill to shift that responsibility to the secretary of state, who would publish that information for all Arizona voters after each election.

The bill would also require all ballot images to be published, along with a way to link those ballot images to the post-election publication of voters names.

Currently, ballots undergo a complex multi-step process to be counted and verified which includes everything from public live streaming to individual barcodes for personal and official tracking.

Jen Marson, executive director of the Arizona Association of Counties, said that posting ballots online, as the bill’s original language indicated, could put election officials at risk of lawsuits because their content isn’t being redacted.

“You would be surprised what people write on their ballots,” she said.

There’s also no protection from people using the documents to accuse the counties of malfeasance, Marson said. The bill instructs county recorders to provide an identifying indicator for each ballot image to check against the actual vote record and confirm the tabulation results by ballot batch. That means anyone could potentially download an image, alter it and claim that the counties purposely miscounted it.

The committee approved the bill on a 4-2 party-line vote. Its next stop is the Senate floor, where it will be considered by the full chamber.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.

Legislation which would make it illegal to film police officers within eight feet of them is closer to becoming law, despite concerns that it could hinder efforts to document misconduct.

“We believe that this bill stacks the deck against the public check on officer misconduct,” Timothy Sparling, a lawyer and legislative advocate for Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice, said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday.

Sparling spoke against House Bill 2319, saying it leaves too much up to the discretion of the officers. The bill states that a person may not film an officer within eight feet without the officer’s permission, and allows both bystanders and those involved in the interaction to film only if such an action is not “interfering” in law enforcement activity.

“When officers have such wide discretion to determine, say, what is lawful conduct or what is unlawful conduct on the ground and that is not properly defined … it’s ultimately up to whatever the officer wants it to be,” Sparling said.

Originally, the bill prohibited filming within 15 feet, but was adjusted to reflect eight-foot moving buffer zones upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court 14 years ago between protestors and abortion clinic patients. K.M. Bell, an attorney for the Arizona chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that ruling doesn’t apply because the situations aren’t equivalent.

The clinic buffer zones were implemented around one area, and only after an extensive record of issues between patients and protestors, Bell said. Officers aren’t constrained to one location, and a similar record of conflict with people filming doesn’t exist.

“In that case they were private citizens seeking medical care. Here we have officers who are out in public performing their taxpayer-funded public duties,” Bell said.

The eight-foot buffer zone also doesn’t account for movement from the officers towards the person filming, which may shorten the distance and lead to them being found in violation, Bell pointed out. Neither does the bill accommodate a lack of knowledge from the person filming — not everyone can accurately judge what eight feet looks like.

Filming an officer while less than eight feet away after being asked to stop could earn a person a class 3 misdemeanor, which comes with a minimum of 30 days in jail.

Rep. John Kavanagh, who previously served as a Port Authority officer in New York and New Jersey, sponsored the bill, and called it a measure in support of law enforcement safety.

“This is about preventing violence and misunderstandings, preventing the destruction of evidence and preventing police officers from harm,” he said.

The Fountain Hills Republican responded to concerns about officers moving closer to people filming by saying that if they’re acting lawfully and standing still, there’s no reason for the officers to move towards them because they’re not considered suspicious.

Sen. Martin Quezada, D-Glendale, called that explanation “laughable”.

“I have participated in efforts to film police officers that are doing their jobs and you are absolutely a suspicious person to law enforcement at that point. And they aggressively come towards you to see why you were filming,” he said.

Quezada warned that the measure would restrict public oversight of police misconduct, and constitutes a restriction on actions that need transparency the most.

Sen. Sonny Borrelli, R-Lake Havasu City, brought up body cameras as efficient alternatives. Research about the ability of body cameras to reduce police use of force is uncertain, and a reduction of complaints may be the result of a reduction in complaints filed, and not so much a reduction in officer misconduct.

Ultimately, Borrelli said, filming by members of the public puts officers in jeopardy. He noted that the space between his seat on the panel and the speakers at the podium was about 15 feet, and even that, in his opinion, was far too close. There was no formal measuring of the distance.

“There needs to be some distance, the officers need to secure the scene for their own safety, for the safety of the public,” Borrelli said.

Sen. Warren Petersen, a Gilbert Republican who chairs the committee, agreed with Borrelli that distance was the matter of safety. He said that his distance from Borrelli on the panel, separated only by Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, mirrored the eight-foot requirement in the bill.

“I can’t think of any compelling reason why you would need to be closer than that. In fact, you definitely lose a lot by getting closer. You’re missing the big picture, especially with how clear cameras are,” he said.

The measure was approved by the five Republican members of the committee, with the three Democrat panelists voting against it. If the full Senate approves it, the bill will go to Gov. Doug Ducey’s desk.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.