Brace yourself. There are so many bad bills advancing at our state legislature that I am including the Sierra Club's recommended actions in this post. Next week, the House will start hearing Senate bills and the Senate will start hearing House bills. They will continue to vote on the hundreds of bills on the Floor of each house, too. No new Request to Speak actions this week - if you've been keeping up. If you haven't, please, check last week's post for the bill numbers. See the Call-in and Petition actions from the Sierra Club below... The "Billapalooza" of bad policy advanced an incredible number of bad bills on multiple levels, including racist measures, prohibitions and preemptions on climate action, anti-democracy bills, and a plethora of harmful water bills. In addition to all of that, they advanced the bills to try and remove protections from public lands and objected to sustainability goals such as ending poverty. HB2788 United Nations; sustainable development; prohibition (Jones: Biasiucci, Bliss, et al.) prohibiting Arizona or any of its political subdivisions from adopting the sustainable development agenda of the United Nations, which means they are objecting to support for ending poverty, support for achieving food security, ensuring healthy lives, achieving gender equality, and protecting the planet and our ability to live on it by objecting to action on climate change and promoting water sustainability. Passed House Committee of the Whole (COW) and awaits a Third Read vote. HCR2040 public monies; prohibited expenditures (Smith: Biasiucci, Carbone, et al.) was amended in House COW to add a prohibition on the floor to add prohibitions on any kind of affirmative action in hiring. HCR2040 refers to the ballot a measure to prohibit the state or any political subdivision, including universities, to do anything to help reduce global temperatures, have a climate action plan, participate in anything related to reducing meat consumption, etc. It wraps this up with a bow related to prohibiting "furthering Marxist ideologies." It is clearly intended to connect all of these issues and motivate voters who fear that there is a vast conspiracy to make this a better world. It awaits a Third Read vote. Two comparable measures, SCR1015 and SB1195 are on the Senate COW calendar for Monday. Call your representatives and ask them to oppose HB2788 and HCR2040 and call your Senators and ask them to oppose SCR1015 and SB1195. Speaker Toma's anti-immigrant measure, HCR2060, which expands the provisions of the horribly racist SB1070, passed out of the House along party lines. You can read more about it here. It sure would be nice if some of those businesses would speak out against this. Please also ask your representatives to vote no on HCR2050 energy source; restriction; prohibition (Griffin: Biasiucci, Bliss, et al). It refers to the ballot a proposed constitutional amendment to prohibit a city, town, county or any other political subdivision of the state from restricting the manufacture, use or sale of a device based on the energy source that is either used to power the device or consumed by the device. Device is not defined, but this is clearly intended to preclude any limits on fossil fuels, including gas. This will make it harder to protect our air, our water, our health, and our communities. Thank you to Representative Oscar de los Santos for speaking up against this bad policy. You can hear his remarks and the ridiculous response to them here. You can find contact information for all legislators here. |
Protect Public Lands and Waters |
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The Arizona Legislature is again launching an attack on public lands and waters via a series of bills and memorials (messages to Congress and the President) asking that no more lands or waters be protected and that current protections be rescinded, and seeking to require legislative permission to protect any additional federal public land. Please send a message to your Arizona Representatives asking them to vote NO on all of these bills! The Arizona Legislature also has a large number of bills that weaken water protections. Please send your representatives a message to oppose bills that create more loopholes and that allow for more pumping of precious groundwater. Ask your representatives to vote NO on harmful water bills. |
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