Urge your legislators to vote NO on bills that attack environmental actions, water protections and a few innocent bystanders

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.    Take action against HCR2050 here. You can find contact information for all legislators here.

Protect Public Lands and Waters

https://act.sierraclub.org/actions/Arizona?actionId=AR0421094

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.

AZ Legislature Update and Report Card

On Wednesday, August 30th, Sierra Club along with Chispa Arizona issued an Environmental Report Card for the Arizona Legislature and Governor. Once again, the highly partisan session resulted in most Republicans earning a failing grade on the report card. The good news is 32 legislators earned an "A" on the report card and voted time after time against anti-democracy and anti-environmental bills.

The 2023 Legislative Session was the longest session on record, officially spanning 204 days and finally wrapping up on July 31st. The session included significant breaks as there were vacancies, negotiations, and reluctance by some in the majority to adjourn as they wanted to keep an eye on the Governor. Very little of note was accomplished, however, and Governor Hobbs’ veto stamp got a workout as legislators sent up a slew of bad ideas.

The attacks on democratic processes this session were again significant and frequent with more than 200 bills introduced seeking to limit early voting, make voting more difficult, and limit the initiative and referendum process, and other efforts to hinder democracy. A measure to require a proportionate number of signatures from each legislative district for initiatives and referenda, SCR1015, was referred and will be on the ballot in 2024. If passed, it would make it extremely difficult to qualify a measure for the ballot.

2023 brought new attacks on transportation as the majority in the Arizona Legislature sought to put a stop to light rail expansion and really any substantial funding for transit, bicycle and pedestrian safety or anything that did not involve concrete or asphalt. Senator Jake Hoffman led the way in introducing anti-transit, anti-bike measures with five bills – SB1312, SB1313, SB1314, SB1697, and SCR1018 specifically targeting multi-modal transportation. All of these bills died in either the Senate or House.

Some positive highlights of the session included important provisions in the budget, SB1720, including $6 million for the State Parks Heritage Fund, $7 million for the Upper Verde State Park, $3.5 million for planning passenger rail service between Phoenix and Tucson, $300,000 for trees for schools, and $9 million for Economic Transition Resources for capital projects, economic sustainability developments, renewable energy projects and broadband projects located within twenty miles of the Kayenta Coal Mine.

Nearly all of the Republican caucus earned an “F” on the Environmental Report Card this session as they pushed and supported bills to limit transit, consideration of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) issues, and to hinder voting. There were 32 senators and representatives and Governor Hobbs who earned an “A.” 

The Sierra Club report card is available on the website in English here and Spanish here.

You can also view the news briefing we conducted on YouTube here.

Urge your legislators to support Prop 400 on public transit and oppose SCR1015 making enacting citizens' initiatives harder

After a couple of weeks off, the Arizona Legislature will be back on Monday. The rumor is that after addressing a few bills, they may recess again until August 1st. 

It sounds like they may have an agreement on an affordable housing bill that could advance, but there's still no agreement on

Writes Laurie Roberts, "Next time you’re sitting in traffic, wondering if you’ll make it home before your loved ones forget what you look like, know that it could be worse." Legislative hard-liners who obtusely refuse to accept that a modern metropolitan transit system should support all residents, not just drivers, are rejecting compromise after compromise offered by the Governor and the Maricopa Association of Governments. 

Maricopa County is the only county in Arizona that needs legislative approval and the governor’s signature to call an election for a transportation sales tax. Unfortunately, the legislature has refused to approve a clean version of a bill and instead has been trying to limit the dollars that can go toward transit. After 500 meetings and feedback from more than 10,000 residents, Mayors and other elected leaders agreed on a plan that includes transit.  Tell state legislators: Let voters decide their transportation future.

https://act.sierraclub.org/actions/Arizona?actionId=AR0392210&id=7013q000001ojTmAAI

It's already so difficult to enact a citizens' initiative

Stop Attacks on Direct Democracy in Arizona!

It also looks like they are going to revive a referendum to require every legislative district to exceed a given percentage of signatures in order to put a citizen initiative on the ballot. That will make it a lot more difficult and more expensive and would allow one district to block an initiative. Ask your representative to vote NO on SCR1015 and to oppose efforts to make it more difficult to engage in citizen initiatives.

Use the Sierra Club’s action form.

https://act.sierraclub.org/actions/Arizona?actionId=AR0392209

HELPFUL HINT: It is always better to add a personal comment so it doesn’t seem so much like a petition. You can also get the contact information on the form and contact your legislators by email or phone. Some legislators are more inclined to read personal emails than group petitions.