Legislative Update #2, January 19, 2001

HB2372 multistate highway transportation agreement (Cooley Hatch-miller, Marsh, et al) looks like it would allow larger trucks on Arizona highways. It also makes several other changes to this agreement that appear more technical in nature.

HB2030 air pollution; jurisdiction; Indian lands (Allen) is a vehicle bill that will likely be used for one of the Brown Cloud recommendations. Vehicle bills are bills that are filed and are usually subject to a strike everything amendment at some point. That means they gut the original bill and add entirely new language.

HB2094 town eminent domain; open space (Huffman) allows towns to acquire through eminent domain and for preservation purposes, major tracts of vacant land that are within the town or adjacent to the subject town. This bill is for Marana and a fight involving Connie Wolfswinkle. It seems fine to me as long as it is specifically for preservation.

HB2123 biodiesel; government fleets (Carpenter) allows biodiesel to be used by government fleets to meet the required alternative fuel goals.

HB 2258 election law amendments (Jarret, Voss, Pearce, et al) amends candidate and ballot petition requirements to require a signer's "actual" place of residence rather than residence. This one may be a problem. I need to talk to some folks about this, but it appears that legislators are trying to make it more difficult to qualify initiatives and referenda. What a shock!

HB 2418 ballot measures; publicity pamphlet (Jarret, Voss, Pearce, et al) limits publicity pamphlet arguments for ballot measures to one person and prohibits payment by one person for multiple arguments. The initiative sponsor only gets one argument. According to one of my lawyer friends, this may have constitutional first amendment problems. WE OPPOSE THIS.

HB 2389 political committees; reporting requirements (Leff, Allen, Anderson, et al) is intended to clarify some of the reporting and disclosure requirements for political committees, but I am not sure that it gets there. It exempts from some of the reporting requirements committees that spend less than $500, strikes language regarding candidate disclosure requirements, and requires that committees report within 24 hours when they have exceeded contributions or expenditures of $10,000. I doubt whether this is a real improvement. It does nothing to address the problem with disclosures, which is basically if you raise tons of money, you can say just about anything you want on the disclosure statement.

HB 2419 publicity pamphlets (Jarret, Voss) allows arguments for and against bond elections.

HCR2009 clean elections act; repeal (May) refers to the ballot a repeal of the clean elections act. WE OPPOSE THIS.

HB2040 power transmission lines; committee; procedures (Hatchmiller, Valadez) requires every entity that is contemplating construction of any transmission line or power plant within the state during any ten year period to file a ten year plan with the commission on or before January 31 of each year. These plans must also include the power output of the plants, expected capacity factor and the type of fuel to be used. This seems like a positive measure and one that is needed considering there are plans to put at least 13 new plants in Arizona.

HB2020 groundwater exemptions; management periods (Gleason) extends exemptions from irrigation water duties, conservation requirements, and portions of groundwater withdrawal fee for portions of Phoenix active management area (Buckeye) to the fourth management period. This is probably okay as Buckeye has this waterlog problem. A good question is what are they going to do with the water considering its poor quality.

HB2362 state land department business enhancements (Flake, Cooley, Gleason, et al) allows the state land selection board at the request of the land commissioner to approve or reject the inclusion of state land in the corporate limits of a particular town or city. It also eliminates the requirement for advertising the availability of expiring grazing leases in the newspaper. There are problems with both of these measures.

HB2364 northeastern Arizona environmental projects; appropriations (Flake, Brown, Allen, et al) is pork for Rep. Flake and Senator Brown. It appropriates $350,000 in 2001-2002 and 2002-2003 to the state land department for distribution to Greenlee, Graham, Gila, Navajo and Apache counties for planning and implementing of environmental programs impacting economic development in those counties. This is really a blank check for mischief.