Tell your state Reps to vote "no" on bad bills that limit Tucson's ability to protect the environment and voting

A bill that prohibits cities from planning bike paths advances at the AZ legislature

Despite our best efforts with Request to Speak, some bills still advanced to the House for a vote. Please, sign the petitions the Sierra Club provided to reach out to your Representatives to ask them to oppose these bills. Adding a personal comment helps. For even more impact, you can email your reps directly - using some of the talking points included on the petition.

Keep up the pressure against bills that would impede efforts to reduce traffic and promote transit and biking. Use this link to take action to oppose SB1312, SB1313, SB1314, and SCR1018.

Don't forget to ask your representatives to oppose SB1278, a bill to limit cities' and towns' ability to protect their residents via local building code provisions related to affordability, energy, and public health. Use this link to take action on SB1278.

Ask your representatives in the Arizona House to oppose bills that prohibit consideration of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors when deciding on state investments. Use this link to ask them to vote NO on SB1139 and SB1500!

Most people in Arizona use early voting by mail as a safe and secure method of voting. Unfortunately, the Arizona Legislature is seeking to make that method of voting much more difficult and has introduced many bills to do so.

Ask your representatives to oppose SB1141 (early ballot drop off; identification).

It requires additional voter ID to drop off an early ballot. This is unnecessary as they already have the signature for verification. In the last election, people waited in lines for more than two hours to vote. This bill will make them longer. Use this link to reach out to your Representative on SB1141. 

Request to Speak about bills making a mockery of democracy #2

GOP is making a mockery of our democracy 

This week, the Arizona House and Senate considered a whole bunch of bills on the floor, most of which advanced from one house to the other. Among them were numerous bills that are significant attacks on both voting rights and direct democracy via the citizen initiative and referendum process. Please, weigh in on these bills before they go to a vote at their respective committees.

Republican lawmakers are refusing to hear Democrat-introduced bills unless 16+ Republicans sign on, essentially requiring a supermajority to pass legislation. This means that just a few Republicans can control whether legislation moves forward or not, even if it has bipartisan support from a majority of lawmakers. The rule is just another anti-democratic tactic the GOP is using in their power grab, because they know they aren’t truly representing the people of Arizona.

Since most Democratic bills aren’t even getting heard in committee in our current state legislature, it is important to protect our ability to propose bills through citizens’ initiative. The GOP is attempting to make that as difficult as possible. Please, use the Request to Speak system to speak out about this bill...

• SCR1015 initiative; referendum; signatures; legislative districts (Mesnard: Bennett, Kaiser, et al.) refers to the ballot a proposed constitutional amendment that would require a proportionate percentage of petition signatures from each legislative district to put a measure on the ballot. This would be extremely difficult and expensive.* OPPOSE

Sign in on RTS 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

Wednesday, March 8th

Senate Committee on Government at 9:30 AM

• HB2373 permits; automated permitting platform (Biasiucci: Contreras, L. Hernandez, et al.) allows for online solar permit compliance and removes requirement for a diagram. SUPPORT
  NOTE: I also sent this out in the previous call to action, so if you may have already weighed in on it. But it was the one good bill, so I thought it was worth sharing again. 

House Committee on Municipal Oversight and Elections at 2:00 PM

• SB1066 election mailings; third-party disclosures (Kavanagh) requires any nongovernmental entity that mails an official election-related document to include the disclosure not from a government agency on the outside of the envelope. OPPOSE
• SB1095 early ballot envelope; notice (Carroll: Gowan: Livingston) requires an early ballot envelope to include a statement that says the election will be delayed if you return your ballot after the Friday before the election, which could discourage people returning early ballots. OPPOSE 
• SB1141 early ballot drop off; identification (Hoffman: Borrelli, Farnsworth, et al.) requires additional voter ID to drop off an early ballot. This is unnecessary as they already have the signature verification. OPPOSE
• SB1144 electronic ballot adjudication; prohibition (Hoffman: Borrelli, Farnsworth, et al.) prohibits the county board of supervisors from using an electronic vote adjudication system and requires, for a ballot that is damaged or defective and cannot be properly counted by the automatic tabulating equipment, a true duplicate copy of the damaged or defective ballot to be made by hand. This looks like another “solution” in search of a problem and will just make life more difficult for election workers – and introduce more opportunities for human error.  OPPOSE
• SB1213 legislative council; procedures manual (NOW: legislative audit committee; procedures manual) (Kern: Kolodin) requires the Secretary of State's official instructions and procedures manual to be submitted to the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, in addition to the Governor and Attorney General, for review and approval prior to issuance. OPPOSE
• SB1565 ballot processing; electronic adjudication; limitation (Carroll: Bennett, Gowan, et al.) prohibits the use of machines, devices, firmware or software that contain artificial intelligence or learning hardware, firmware or software for an election. Why? OPPOSE
• SCR1015 initiative; referendum; signatures; legislative districts (Mesnard: Bennett, Kaiser, et al.) refers to the ballot a proposed constitutional amendment that would require a proportionate percentage of petition signatures from each legislative district to put a measure on the ballot. This would be extremely difficult and expensive.* OPPOSE

House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure at 2:00 PM
Members of the public may access a livestream of the meeting here.

• SB1312 vehicle mileage; tracking; tax; prohibitions (Hoffman) prohibits the state or any political subdivisions from developing land use or transportation plans that include vehicle miles traveled reductions, prohibits VMT tracking, and prohibits any per mile fees. This last item is being looked at as an alternative to the gas tax. This bill also runs counter to state implementation plans for reducing pollution. 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. OPPOSE

Thursday, March 9th

Senate Committee on Natural Resources, Energy, and Water at 9:00 AM

• HB2437 transmission lines; applications; exceptions (Griffin) exempts a transmission line that is entirely on private land from being required to obtain a certificate of environmental compatibility from the Arizona Power Plant and Line Siting Committee, so there would be no environmental review. OPPOSE
• HB2496 transmission lines; definition (Griffin) changes the definition of a transmission line to include lines that are more than one mile. This means they would have no review by the Arizona Power Plant and Line Siting Committee. We tried to get this amended to address our concerns, to provide a way to trigger review, but the bill sponsor would not even consider it. OPPOSE
  
  Also...If you haven't done it already, please,  contact your Representatives about these bills making it more difficult to get citizens initiatives on the ballot and to get them passed. 
  
  SCR1002 constitutional amendments; sixty percent approval (Kern) OPPOSE 
  
  SCR1015 initiative; referendum; signatures; legislative districts (Mesnard: Bennett, Kaiser, et al. OPPOSE
  
  Read more about these bills here.