Why are Republicans Supporting These Bills?
By Lisa Wolfe
Republicans want small government and less regulation. Why then are they supporting these bills in the AZ Legislature?
- Teachers cannot honor students’ requests for confidentiality.
- Parents cannot allow gender-affirming medical treatment for children.
- Tax cuts overriding the education surcharge voters enacted.
- Expand vouchers, sending taxpayer money to charter and private schools, some of which are owned by State Legislators.
- Give gun owners more freedom to use deadly force.
- Exempt guns from taxes.
- Allow guns on school campuses.
- Cities and counties must follow State-mandated spending on law enforcement and minimum wage.
- Hand count ballots.
- Ban civic organizations from helping with voter registration.
- End mail ballots.
- Mandate one day only voting.
- Require supermajority to pass voter initiatives.
There are many more like these. Call your state legislators or Senate President Fann (602) 926-3424 and House Speaker Bowers (602) 926-3128. Ask them to reject these awful bills.
Is the Right of the People to Govern a Fiction?
By Merrill Eisenberg
In response to the letter about restoring government by the people in Arizona, the AZ Constitution provides citizens with the tools to refer laws passed by the legislature to a vote of the people (Referendum) or to propose their own laws (Initiative). Both require collecting hundreds of thousands of petition signatures. But the legislature has adopted rules for signature gathering that are unnecessarily onerous and the news media does not provide public information about the topics of these petitions or when and where citizens can sign them. Unless a petition effort is bankrolled by some deep pocket sponsor, referenda and initiatives have little chance of success to make it to the ballot, making our constitutional right of the people to govern a fiction.
Ask them to support the bill helping low-income women post-partum.