Aaaaand they're off!

Legislature is back … Some Tucson lawmakers get busy … And you better pick the right twin.

It’s that time of year again.

The high-stakes game of lawmaking kicks off on Monday, so get ready for months of head-scratching news from the state Capitol.

This year, the stakes include hundreds of millions of dollars for schools, which will set up budget discussions at Tucson Unified and other local school districts.

Lawmakers also will wade into the long-running battle over groundwater, including a recent move by Gov. Katie Hobbs to set up groundwater-pumping regulations in the Willcox area.

And of course, billions of tax dollars will be up for grabs as lawmakers and Hobbs figure out the budget, which has seesawed between surplus and deficit in recent years.

Local officials will have their eyes on the state Capitol, where they fear Tucson’s portion of state-shared revenue will be cut by another $27 million this year. That shortfall was one of the reasons Mayor Regina Romero said earlier this week that Tucson voters need to approve a new half-cent sales tax.

The Tucson area is sending one new face to the Legislature this year: Kevin Volk. The Democratic newcomer knocked off Republican Rep. Cory McGarr in a hotly contested race in Legislative District 17, which spans from Marana to Vail around the edges of Tucson.

Local lawmakers have been slow to file their bills – though a few have already “co-sponsored” legislation, essentially signing their support for other people’s bills.

So far, the busiest local lawmakers are the Republicans from LD17. They’ve filed bills aimed at changing the rules for elections and enshrining parental rights into law.

Sen. Vince Leach, a Republican who won back his old seat in LD17 in November, co-sponsored a bill that would bar voters from dropping off their ballots at polling places during early voting, and require them to vote in-person instead. (Ballots could still be mailed in or dropped off directly at the county recorder’s office.)

Leach appears to be easing back into the legislative game after a two-year hiatus. But his fellow LD17 lawmaker, Rep. Rachel Keshel (formerly Rachel Jones), has been the busiest local lawmaker so far, by a wide margin.

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Legislators will run wild this year, as they always do. But an informed citizenry can help keep their wildest impulses in check.

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Most of the dozen bills she’s introduced or co-sponsored are reincarnations of failed bills from previous years. And about half of them were introduced by Rep. Lisa Fink, a first-term Republican from Glendale who as an activist opposed sex education in schools and tried to ban books from public schools she thought were too sexual.

• Keshel signed on to a bill that would require federal elections in Arizona follow the same rules as state elections, including requiring voters to show proof of citizenship rather than simply attest to their citizenship. She also introduced a bill that would limit the size of voting precincts to 1,000 voters.

• She co-sponsored a bill that would give parents complete access to their children’s medical records, even for medical services that don’t require parental consent. Another bill would let students who are at least 18 years old attend school even if they don’t consent to immunizations.

• She introduced a bill that deals with a member of the clergy’s duty to report child abuse. It appears the bill would restrict the obligation to report to those who are providing a confession. Other forms of communication wouldn’t necessarily trigger the reporting requirement.

• Another bill Keshel co-sponsored would require state law to only recognize two sexes. It includes laughably contorted phrasing like, “‘Female,’ when used in reference to a natural person, means an individual who has, naturally had, will have or would have, but for a developmental anomaly or accident, the reproductive system that at some point produces ova.”

Local Democrats are getting a slower start on filing their bills for the year.

The only bill that carries the name of a local Democrat came from Rep. Nancy Gutierrez, who won a second term representing Tucson’s east side and northern edges.

Gutierrez co-sponsored HCR2001, which says “no person shall be sentenced to death in this state.”

The death penalty is under a lot of scrutiny right now. The state paused executions for two years, but Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is asking for execution warrants again and Hobbs is taking heat for trying to bury a report that showed how terrible Arizona officials are at conducting humane executions.

HCR2001 is a proposed amendment to the state Constitution, so even in the unlikely event that lawmakers approved it, the change would have to go on the ballot for voters to decide.

To help you know what to expect as the legislative session gets underway, let’s take a look at the rhythm of Arizona’s Legislature.

Getting started

Today, what is known as “hell week” comes to a close. Lobbyists aren’t allowed to donate to political campaigns during the legislative session, so they have to get it done before the session starts. There’s always a flurry of fundraising the week before. As the Republic’s Mary Jo Pitzl put it last January: “Think of it as a whirl of happy hours on steroids, often with a check attached.”

Lawmakers will kick off the legislative session on Monday, the same day that Gov. Katie Hobbs will give her State of the State speech and lay out her priorities. It’s kind of an opening salvo in what will be months of negotiations over bills, whether she’ll use her veto stamp as much as she did last year, and how the budget will shake out.

Silly season

After that, the Legislature will be in “silly season” for the next month or so. That’s when you’ll hear about the kookiest bills. Lawmakers will throw around ideas to please their base and see which ones get traction this year. In other words, the culture war will be at its rhetorical peak for the next few weeks.

Quiet death

The beginning of the session is the heavy season for legislative committees, so you’ll hear about debates at hearings and start seeing video clips of those hearings on social media over the next few weeks. This is also when most bills either survive to get a floor vote or suffer a “quiet death” as powerful committee chairs decide which bills won’t get a hearing at all.

Crossover week

Lawmakers will have to introduce all their bills by early February. Later that month, the Legislature will go through “crossover week.” That’s when bills that passed the House go to the Senate, and bills that passed the Senate go to the House. If a bill hasn’t passed one chamber by that point, then it’s dead (even if bills are never really dead).

Those floor votes bring the drama, like the emotional days when Arizona’s abortion ban was at stake last year.

Budget talks

The really high stakes come in budget negotiations. Those are usually done behind closed doors with the House speaker, the Senate president, and the governor. Budget negotiations can start immediately, but they’ll really heat up in mid-April, after the state has a full quarter of economic data for the year to help shape decisions about future revenue and spending.

Wrapping up

The session is supposed to end before 100 days are up in late April, but that’s often not the case. Don’t be surprised if you’re still seeing headlines about legislative wackiness in June.

However, after May 12, lawmakers’ per diem gets cut dramatically, offering a little extra incentive for them to wrap up their work and go home to their districts for the year.

Really, the Legislature is a lot like high school. Everybody’s part of a clique or two and they’re all jostling to sit with the popular kids.

In fact, it’s so much like high school that our colleagues at our sister newsletter, the Arizona Agenda, imagined what Capitol High School would look like.

Click on over to the Agenda to see lawmakers get the Mean Girls treatment.

Nothing to refund: Residents of Marana, Oro Valley and other incorporated areas won’t be able to get a refund on their property taxes under a voter-approved measure, the Arizona Luminaria’s John Washington reports. Prop 312 allows residents to ask for refunds if local officials neglect to deal with public nuisances, mostly activities related to homelessness. But Marana and other incorporated towns don’t levy property taxes, so there’s no tax dollars to get refunded.

All hands on deck: Firefighters from the Tucson Fire Department, Northwest Fire District, and Golder Ranch Fire District are heading to Southern California to help out with the wildfires raging there, KVOA’s Jafet Serrato reports.

Reaching out: The City of Tucson is trying to get feedback from the public about Plan Tucson, the city’s general plan that will go to voters later this year. They’re hosting a forum at the Miller-Golf Links Library on Saturday and a virtual meeting January 13.

Backing the bill: Both of Arizona’s Democratic U.S. senators are backing a hardline immigration bill that would require federal officials detain undocumented immigrants who were arrested for crimes like theft or burglary. Sen. Mark Kelly told Politico he plans to support the Laken Riley Act, days after Sen. Ruben Gallego announced on Twitter that not only does he support the bill, he’s a co-sponsor. The bill already passed the House.¹

There’s an app for that: In light of the looming immigration crackdown by the Trump administration, the Mexican government will launch an app this month to help Mexican citizens who are detained in the United States get in touch with their family members in Mexico, KYMA’s Valeria Rodriguez reports.

The Pima County Democratic Party briefly gave an at-large delegate position to local Democratic politico Ted Prezelski when they wrote up new leadership changes within the organization recently.

Unfortunately, it was his twin, local Democratic politico Tom Prezelski who actually ran for and got the position last month.

While these mix-ups are embarrassing, that isn’t what we’re laughing at.

We’re laughing at the fact that this isn’t even the first time.

The Pima County Democratic Party actually put out a primer – Know Your Prezelskis! – the last time they mixed up their names.

“(T)he easiest way to tell them apart is hair. Tom has a beard and a pony tail; Ted is clean shaven with short hair. We won’t make that mistake again!” the party wrote in 2019.

1. Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated how Rep. Yassamin Ansari voted on the immigration bill we mentioned in Other News.