Saturday, February 11, 2023

Request to Speak to protect Tucson's Environmental Initiatives

Arizona Legislature's power grab       

This week at the Arizona State Legislature the agendas are much longer as it is the last week to hear bills in committee in the house of origin. That means that with the exception of bills that are assigned to Appropriations, any bill that is not heard in committee this week is dead. Sadly, that includes most of the good environmental bills with the exception of those that relate to parks and trails. But there are some new bills on financing solar, water and energy capital improvements, and supporting a program that supplies produce for SNAP.

The agendas are also filled with amendments called "strike-everything amendments." These amendments cause confusion for many in the public as they allow legislators to take a bill and strike its entire content and replace it with a brand-new bill but keep the same bill number. If you see S/E, that means a strike-everything amendment will be offered.

This week there are several bills that are direct attacks on environmental initiatives. They include bills that would prohibit cities from putting in walking and biking paths or more public transportation. It would outlaw all the effort the city invested in Move Tucson. Another bill prohibits utilities from installing charging stations for electric vehicles. This is crazy! Please, sign into the Request to Speak system to weigh in on them while they are still in committee.

Sign into your RTS account here:

https://apps.azleg.gov/account/signon

Directions for navigating the RTS system here:

http://desktopactivisttucson.blogspot.com/2018/03/request-to-speak-time.html

Helpful hint: Copy the bill number (ex. HB2505) and paste it into the SEARCH PHRASE box.

NOTE: At least five bills from last week's RTS action have moved on to other committees. If you have already weighed in on them, your position is already in the system. No need to do that again. If you haven't, it's even more important that you weigh in now as they are closer to a vote on the floor. I have indicated those bills in red.

Also, there are also some bills that make it difficult to vote or allow the state legislature to grab power from municipalities and other government agencies. You can find them here:  https://desktopactivisttucson.blogspot.com/2023/02/request-to-speak-to-save-our-democracy.html

Monday, February 13th

Senate Transportation and Technology at 9:00 AM

  • SB1122 transportation tax; election; Maricopa county (Farnsworth: Cook) directs Maricopa County to hold an election for the sales tax for transportation and prescribes how much it will be and what it will be used for, including that 80% will go to freeways. OPPOSE
  • SB1245 VLT; cities and towns; counties (Farnsworth) diverts vehicle license tax distributions from counties to the State Treasurer to be apportioned to counties by population and requires distributions to incorporated cities and towns to be used for any purpose related to transportation. This is another erosion of local control and priorities.  OPPOSE
  • SB1313 general plan; transportation; independent study (Hoffman) prohibits general plans from including policies or projects that reduce vehicle traffic and removes element from the general plan regarding multimodal transportation. This in outrageous restriction on the ability for municipalities to reduce vehicular congestion and plan for public transportation.  OPPOSE 
  • SB1314 transportation system performance; ADOT (Hoffman) changes performance factors to de-emphasize congestion relief and connecting with multi-modal transportation, plus prohibits adopting a motor vehicle travel mile reduction target or any other transportation demand-management policy or project. It would outlaw all the effort that has been put into Move Tucson. OPPOSE
  • SB1340 toll roads; conversion; prohibition (Mendez: Burch, Anna Hernandez, et al.) prohibits the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) or a county board of supervisors from converting a publicly funded or maintained street or highway into a toll road. SUPPORT
  • SB1697 highways; bicycle paths; walkways; prohibition (Hoffman) prohibits ADOT from planning, designing, or constructing bicycle paths or pedestrian walkways and accepting federal monies conditioned on the design and construction of a bicycle path or pedestrian walkway. OPPOSE
  • SCR1018 prohibit tax; monitoring; vehicle (Hoffman) refers to the ballot a proposed constitutional amendment to prohibit any fees based on vehicle miles traveled. What a dumb proposal! OPPOSE

House Committee on Land, Agriculture, and Rural Affairs at 2:00 PM
Members of the public may access a livestream of the meeting here.

  • HB2142 produce incentive program; annual appropriation (Dunn: Carbone, Gress, et al.) appropriates $5 million to the Arizona Department of Economic Security to implement the Produce Incentive Program which helps those receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to purchase produce at farmer's markets and similar venues. SUPPORT
  • HB2376 agricultural land; foreign ownership; prohibition (Biasiucci: Bliss, Cook, et al.) prohibits selling, leasing or subleasing agricultural state land to a foreign entity. This is not the answer to the water issues on state trust lands. We need to prohibit over pumping by any entity leasing state land, not just foreign.   Neutral with comment
  • HB2441 state tree; residential planning (Griffin) says cities and counties cannot limit by ordinance the planting of our state tree, the blue palo verde. Is any community actually doing this? Perhaps it should be directed at HOAs? SUPPORT
  • HB2644 appropriation; wolf depredation investigator (Cook: Smith) appropriates an unspecified amount to have a "peace officer" investigate the killing of livestock by wolves. Why would you have someone who knows nothing about wolves or livestock investigate this? OPPOSE
  • HB2806 state parks heritage fund; appropriation (Carbone: Biasiucci, Blattman, et al.) makes a one time appropriation of $10 million to the State Parks Heritage Fund. While we support this, we would rather see SB1224 adopted as it includes ongoing funding for the Heritage Fund from the lottery. SUPPORT

Tuesday, February 14th

House Committee on Natural Resources, Energy, and Water at 2:00 PM 

Senate Committee on Appropriations at 2:00 PM

Wednesday, February 15th

Senate Committee on Commerce at 8:30 AM

Senate Committee on Government at 9:30 AM

  • SB1500 government investments; fiduciaries; pecuniary benefit (Carroll: Bennett, Gowan, et al.) requires a fiduciary to take into account only pecuniary factors when evaluating an investment, so they cannot consider environmental or social factors. Prescribes requirements and prohibitions relating to the State Treasurer's investments. OPPOSE
  • SB1611 public entities; contracts; prohibition (Kern) prohibits government entities from entering into contracts with an entity that might consider social and environmental factors. OPPOSE
  • SB1651 water; energy; financing program (Borrelli) establishes a commercial property assessed clean energy program, which provides a financing mechanism for water, energy efficiency and other energy saving and renewable energy investments. SUPPORT

House Committee on Appropriations at 2:00 PM

House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure at 2:00 PM

  • HB2411 water supply; elimination; reduction; damages (Cook: Martinez, Toma, et al.) seeks to force Scottsdale to serve water to Rio Verde, thus rewarding irresponsible development. It requires a city that provided water to customers outside the city's service area and reduced or terminated that service to make the same reduction or termination of water supply to the mayor and members of the city council and says the city is liable for damages incurred because of the termination of service. OPPOSE

Thursday, February 16th

Senate Committee on Natural Resources, Energy, and Water at 9:30 AM

  • SB1390 water infrastructure finance authority; amendments (Kerr) is a "clean-up" bill for last year's massive bill on the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority that set up an augmentation program and provided some funding for water conservation. It includes several provisions we are concerned about, including a conflict of interest and who is eligible for conservation grants. OPPOSE
  • SB1392 appropriation; state park; Verde River (Kerr) appropriates an undesignated amount for a state park at the headwaters of the Verde River. It is good to see legislators supporting parks again. SUPPORT
  • SB1502 corporation commission; electric generation resources (Carroll: Kerr, Griffin) seeks to pre-empt the renewable energy standard at the Arizona Corporation Commission with one that is weaker and requires the lowest cost resource. It includes nuclear power on the list of clean resources. OPPOSE
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