Cathy Sigmon spoke at the LD18 general meeting on January 24, 2023. Her slides plus an edited transcript, are below.
LARRY BODINE, Chair: Our first speaker tonight is Cathy Sigmond. She is a co-founder of Civic Engagement Beyond Voting, which is CEBV for short. If you’re not on their newsletter list, you should absolutely join it. Cathy is also a co-founder of Save Our Schools, Arizona. She will explain the effects of the propositions we all just voted on in November that voters approved.
CATHY SIGMON: Thank you so much, Larry, and thank you so much for inviting me. I feel an affinity for LD 18, even though I live in Tempe because 18 used to be my legislative district. I am now LD 12, so even after redistricting, I still feel like I’m part of both legislative districts.
It’s nice to be here. Seeing the active and engaged people you have here is great. It’s just fabulous. I was invited to come and talk about the propositions that were on the ballot this year. Unfortunately, we passed a proposition that limits our democratic powers, so that really frustrates me. It really surprised me.
I didn’t think voters would fall for it, but they did. With the passage of Prop 132, any proposition on the ballot with tax implications needs a 60% majority — a super-majority rather than simply 50%. So, the legislators are passing what are called concurrent resolutions that can bypass the governor and go straight to the ballot.
So they will crowd the ballot with all kinds of things in the coming year. I think we’re just going to have more and more of these propositions. So if you’re not familiar with civic engagement beyond voting, we’re a group that seeks to make your voices heard in both state and local government.
We have been organizing around the Arizona legislature for seven or eight sessions and are just starting to branch out beyond the legislature. We’re taking a lot of action around school boards now as well. We register people for Request To Speak at the legislature. So we can create accounts for you and we give training sessions.
We also have a weekly happy hour, which if you haven’t attended, is actually fantastic. It’s Zoom happy hour. We have anywhere from 150 to 200 people from around the state, all over the state. We have great speakers, and this past week we had Lieutenant Colonel Dana Almond, who ran in LD 17 and has just now been appointed by Governor Hobbs to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs.
And she talked about her journey into activism. And we, as a group, actually prepped her and helped her testify last year at the legislature. And we were able to get a. Media coverage for her too. So those are some things we have branched out to do. There was a lot of advertising around the propositions on the ballot.
Prop 128 power grab defeated. You may have seen some of the absolutely inscrutable street signs. I could not figure out what they meant, but I’m just going to walk through what the propositions were on the ballot.
What we gauged was the appropriate way to vote. Vote how the voters actually voted. So this is one of several propositions that asked us to vote our own rights away. Proposition 128 would let the legislature rewrite or repeal voter-enacted laws, and you may know that we have what’s called voter protection.
When voters pass an initiative or referendum, the legislature is not allowed to tinker with that, and they hate that, frankly. So they’re always trying to find ways to strengthen their own power and weaken. So this failed. Thankfully, according to the Arizona Constitution, we, the people, all power is invested in the people.
Misleading Prop 129 impedes public initiatives
We should be the ones to make these decisions, but the legislature is always trying to limit our powers on the ballot. Prop 129 was an SCR that would restrict initiatives to a single “subject.” This was an attempt by the Legislature to delay and discourage citizens’ initiatives. It was referred to the ballot by the legislature, and the implications are not as simple as they appear. Of course, you shouldn’t vote on ten different things in one initiative. You should just vote for one thing.
But the definition of a single subject means that it has to be a single section of the law. There are many initiatives, including, for example, the minimum wage initiative that was passed a few years ago, that would not have been able to pass. It would’ve been knocked off the ballot because it often applied to more than one area of law.
An initiative will do that because it’s trying to wrap several things up under what we would consider one subject. However, it applies to more than one small law section. So this was another sort of innocent-sounding, but very bad initiative. However, it passed.
Now, this is truly going to have severe results on the type of initiative we will be able to get on the ballot in the future. I know that a group is trying to field another abortion rights proposition. They will have to be extremely careful in terms of how they word that initiative because this will limit them severely.
Anything with budget implications is automatically a second section of the legal codes. And virtually everything has financial implications. Unfortunately, we weakened our own rights for propositions on the ballot with Prop 129.
Misleading Prop 130 enables tax loopholes
Proposition 130 sounded good by offering tax cuts for disabled veterans. But we recommended against it because revising our tax laws bit by bit and piece by piece, just piecemeal, is a very bad idea. What the Republicans love to do is cut taxes, and they will do it every single way they can. And what this does is limit the revenue that we can have as a state to provide our essential services.
Such as our schools. Arizona already has a very small budget for a state this size. It is the equivalent of a state like Rhode Island or Wyoming. And we have a much larger population, so our revenues are already very low. And this past year, of course, the flat tax was instituted.
And we will see a nose dive in revenues because of that. That was enacted in the prior legislative session and has gone into effect now. So just continuing to cut taxes by exempting this group and that group creates an extremely inequitable situation. Taxation system, but this one passed. So again, we are carving holes in the state tax code for special interests.
And a lot of the time, the particular interest may be somebody you have sympathy with, such as veterans or senior citizens. But in fact, what this does is lighten the taxes. So if we were able to cut back on all the carve-outs, every single person would be able to get a big tax cut. Creating a tax code piecemeal is just always a bad idea.
Prop 131 benefits only the party in power
Prop 131 to create the office of Lieutenant Governor is something the legislature has been trying to pass for years and years, and voters have rejected it time after time. It would set up a two-person governing structure.
Right now, of course, when the governor steps down, the person who fills that position is the secretary of state. So if the people want a split government, then that is what we should get. However, this benefits whichever party is in power, and I think this will go into effect in 2026.
I may be wrong about that, but I think so. So not for not until the next. Gubernatorial election. We advised against this, but people thought, oh, sounds good to me. Why not? So I think it’s unfortunate that that did pass.
Prop 132 makes approval of propositions nearly impossible.
Proposition 132 creates a 60% vote requirement for ballot measures to approve taxes. This is one that I was referring to, and this is another one where the legislature asked us to vote our rights away, and they succeeded.
So any ballot measure that includes a tax element will require a super majority— a 60% threshold at the ballot. We are a very closely divided state, and expecting virtually any ballot initiative to surpass this threshold is a huge lift. Now, Stop Dark Money did go over 60%, so that would’ve passed.
But very few other ballot measures would be able to pass with a 60% threshold. And as we say here, our motor voter law allows people to register to vote when they register their car and the ban on smoking indoors. The minimum wage and the initiatives that, theoretically, before it was struck down would fund public schools.
None of those passed with a 60% threshold. I really am extremely sad. The predatory debt collection proposition, which forbade anyone from being driven into abject poverty because of medical bills, happily did pass. So that was a good thing. The voter’s right to know Stop Dark Money, third time, fourth time, whatever it was, is the charm.
Prop 308 allows in-state tuition for non-citizen residents. Voters also passed Prop 308 tuition for DACA recipients. The voters, when they are allowed to vote on something, they do have compassion. So this gives me hope.
Prop 309 voter ID burden fails
Prop 309 would have created a huge problem at polling places. It won’t make you show your ID if you drop off your ballot at the polls happily. That failed. I am not quite sure why that failed, and the others passed Prop 310, which would’ve helped restore funding to rural emergency services. Unfortunately failed as a 0.1% statewide tax supplement. Unfortunately, people really don’t like taxes, so this is who we are. I really appreciate being able to go over the propositions.
PAT WIEDHOPF: We have a question: What is Save our Schools doing about lifting Arizona’s Aggregate Expenditure Limit (AEL) on schools, and what can we do to help?
CATHY SIGMON: There are a lot of bills. Something like a dozen bills have already been introduced to lift the AEL cap, the school spending cap.
I believe we just saw a bill that was introduced yesterday on a bipartisan basis. And we think that the bill will have legs and finally make it through. We do not doubt that the legislature will pass this. So we are stepping back. We are letting other organizations take the lead, such as the AEA and the school board association.
There was a whole variety of different lobbying groups. We feel that there is lots of publicity around this. When the right bill comes up, we will support it wholeheartedly, but frankly, I don’t think we need to do much other than support the correct bill. When it finally starts moving, none of those bills have moved yet.
They’ve all just been. So as soon as they start moving, we will start rallying people to support them. All right. With that, Cathy, thank you very much for coming to our program. It was very enlightening and very informative. We wish CEBV all the best of luck. How can people find out more about CEBV?
You can go to our website CEBV.us. I hope to see some of you at our happy hour on Sunday. We’ll hear from two people who ran in very red districts and why it is incredibly important for us to field candidates in those districts and their experiences.
So I’m really excited about it.
LARRY BODINE, Chair: All right. Thank you very much. We wish you all the best.
Useful Links:
|