The winnowing begins
Checking in on your local legislators … Dodging financial bullets … And file this one under “it’s not our fault.”
The window to introduce bills at the state Legislature closed yesterday, which means we’re entering a new stage of the legislative session.
If a bill hasn’t been referred to a committee by the end of this week, then it’s in trouble, basically dead. For the bills that are still alive, we’ll start seeing them pop up in a flurry of committee hearings next week.
So expect to start seeing chaos descend on committees, along with a deluge of news stories about bills. On top of all that, you’re also going to see a ton of video clips on social media from lawmakers calling their opponents’ bills atrocious.
As we enter this next stage, let’s check in on the lawmakers from the Tucson area and see how their bills are doing.
With more than 180 bills introduced by Tucson lawmakers, they tackled a lot of different topics, like abortion, water, elections, and housing, as well as repeals of old laws. Freshman Democratic Rep. Kevin Volk even tried to make “howdy” the official state greeting.
Most Tucson lawmakers are Democrats, so their bills generally have a harder time getting traction in the GOP-controlled Legislature. At this stage in the session, the vast majority of their roughly 160 bills may still have some life in them, but that’s likely to change quite a bit in the next few weeks.
As for local Republicans, all but two of their 35 bills are headed to committees.
One of Tucson’s Democratic lawmakers, Rep. Betty Villegas, has struggled to get some of her housing bills heard in previous sessions as a member of the minority in the House, but she is having a good session so far.
On Monday, Villegas dropped several bills, including one that focuses on the state’s landlord tenant act, the state law that primarily governs evictions.
The bill would require courts to set up a settlement conference between the tenants and their landlord at least five days after a writ is served. This would serve as an intermediary step before a hearing, which is the last step in the legal process before an eviction.
Villegas, who has spent a lifetime working in Pima County in housing, says the legislation has the potential to be a “win-win” situation for both sides, with landlords keeping paying tenants without having to turn over a property and tenants avoiding an eviction and the stigma associated with having a judgement on your record.
Noting she has been in the position of being a landlord in the past, most recently as the executive director of the South Tucson Housing Authority, Villegas said she had the ability to negotiate with tenants facing eviction, rather than forcing them onto the streets if they can’t immediately pay all of their outstanding back rent, fees and fines.
"I've worked with tenants, I’ve been empowered to let tenants stay with payment plans in order to work their way out of their situation," she said.
The measure would only cover financial disputes, not for tenants who are being evicted for criminal behavior or an irreparable breach of the lease agreement.
Bills headed to committees
What else do Tucson lawmakers have cooking? We took a sampling of the bills they introduced that still have a shot at becoming law.
HB2017: Republican Rep. Rachel Keshel. Prohibits the use of countywide voting centers, requiring polling places with no more than 1,000 voters. Counties cannot establish on-site early voting locations.
SB1254 / HB2479: Democratic Sen. Priya Sundareshan / Democratic Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton. The Director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources is required, instead of allowed, to designate an area not currently within an active management area as a subsequent active management area if it meets specified criteria.
SB1049: Republican Sen. Vince Leach. The Arizona Department of Revenue is required to report when revenue collected from nonresident real estate sales for the prior fiscal year exceeds $3 million.
HB2438: Keshel. Prohibits a judge or commissioner from issuing an order to amend a birth certificate.
HB2466: Stahl Hamilton. Allows candidate committees to use campaign funds to pay for direct caregiving expenses for children or other individuals for whom the candidate has caregiving responsibilities.
HB2670: Keshel. Requires sex education instruction for students in grades seven or eight that must include information on "the growth of an unborn child during each trimester." Parents can opt out.
HB2262: Democratic Rep. Consuelo Hernandez. Prohibits railroads operating in Arizona from running or allowing trains exceeding 8,500 feet in length on any main track or branch line.
SB1338: Democratic Sen. Rosanna Gabaldón. Establishes a compact among the states to elect the President of the United States by national popular vote. The agreement takes effect when states that cumulatively have a majority of the electoral votes have enacted the agreement.
HB2775: Democratic Rep. Chris Mathis. Expands historic preservation responsibilities to include community college district governing boards. Requires district boards to preserve historic properties they own or control and to consider using historic properties before acquiring, constructing, or leasing buildings.
HB2475: Hamilton. Makes it a misdemeanor for a person to knowingly interfere with a voter or engage in conduct that constitutes harassment towards individuals delivering or attempting to deliver a voted ballot to a lawful recipient or receptacle.
As part of our ongoing series detailing how the City of Tucson wants to spend the estimated $800 million that would be raised if Proposition 414 passes next month, today we’re looking at some of the environmental work that would be funded.
Proposition 414, the half-cent sales tax measure that’s on the ballot on March 11, has $500,000 set aside each year for what officials call "urban forest maintenance.“
Funding from the initiative would bolster the Tucson Million Trees initiative, launched by Tucson Mayor Regina Romero. The city would largely focus on drought tolerant trees on the south and west sides of Tucson, prioritizing areas with fewer trees.
While more trees can help provide more shade, mitigate the heat island effect and help with stormwater runoff, the city doesn’t have funding to properly maintain the trees on public property, said Tucson City Manager Tim Thomure.
"Traditionally we've not had dedicated funding to our urban forests, which means all the urban trees that we manage, and we've never really managed them as infrastructure with all the benefits that they provide, we basically just allowed them to degrade," he explains.
The money wouldn’t go simply to buy and plant trees, he said. The city would also use funding to create new jobs to help maintain those trees.
"It's really about increasing tree canopy across the community, which has zillions of benefits to it, and then assuring that we're able to maintain that canopy over time,” he said.
Prop 414 is not specifically focused on managing heavily forested areas to make them more resistant to urban wildfires, but Thomure believes that better management of the city’s green infrastructure will have indirect windfall.
By having teams regularly removing dead trees and branches and cutting down overgrown weeds, it will remove potential fuel for wildfires.
Tucson voters only get to weigh in on the entirety of Prop 414, but you can weigh on this part of the proposal below.
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Dodging a $24 million bullet: A lawsuit filed by Arizona and 21 other states led to a temporary halt to a Trump administration plan to cut medical research funding at universities, including the University of Arizona, the Arizona Daily Star’s Prerana Sannappanavar reports. The UA gets close to $200 million every year and they would have taken a $24.6 million hit without a recent order by a federal judge in Massachusetts.
Following through: Mexican officials sent 400 National Guard troops to Nogales, Sonora as part of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s deal with President Donald Trump to stave off 25% tariffs on Mexican goods, Arizona Public Media’s Danyelle Khmara reports. Nogales, Sonora officials also announced the opening of a shelter that can house 3,000 people in anticipation of a sharp increase in deportations from the U.S.
Literary first: For the first time, Pima County Libraries has a Black author in residence, KGUN’s Claire Graham reports. Adiba Nelson works with aspiring writers, leads workshops, and shares her success with writing children’s books “about things that I needed when I was growing up,” like a sense of belonging, she said.
New digs: Downtown Tucson’s Barrio Viejo is getting 12 townhomes and a four-plex that are ready to be sold in the historic neighborhood on West 18th Street, the Star’s Gabriela Rico reports. The townhomes in The Row, as the project is called, are priced around $500,000 each.
No one is saying that the planned Cinco de Mayo Bull Run Festival at Old Tucson in May is going to be dangerous.
But you will have to sign a legal waiver and pay for the experience (prices range from $99 to $129) before you can run a quarter-mile with 12 bulls chasing you.
And even though the event will be held on Pima County-owned property, county officials went on record last week that they are in no way responsible for injuries.
“Full responsibility for the event ultimately rests with American Heritage Railways (the leaseholder for Old Tucson) and the event promoter, and not with Pima County,” writes County Administrator Jan Lesher in a memo to the Pima County Board of Supervisors.
Can I pay $99 to have a bull chase someone? Someone who didn't even know he was going to be chased by a bull?
You can get pro-bono legal representation to fight waivers. They are largely worthless.