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Legislative Update #3, January 26, 2001SIERRA CLUB - Grand Canyon Chapter To: Conservation Friends From: Sandy Bahr, Conservation Outreach Director, Sierra Club Date: January 26, 2001 Re: Legislative Update #3 Hi all! Thank you for making calls and sending emails and letters regarding the Sue Chilton appointment to the Arizona Game and Fish Commission. Unfortunately, her appointment was approved on Wednesday by a vote of 20-9-1. The senators who voted "no" were Cummiskey, Hartley, Mitchell, Nichols, Richardson, Rios, Solomon, Valadez, and Verkamp. Gerard was absent. Please call and thank your senator if he or she was one of those above. If your senator voted yes, please feel free to call and express your disappointment. As Senator Richardson said after the vote, "We know who our friends are." I have talked to a number of people who are so frustrated with the Game and Fish Commission and the direction of the agency. Many are interested in pursuing a future initiative on restructuring the Commission and the Department. Please get me your thoughts and ideas on this. In the meantime, I hope you will consider joining me at some of the Commission meetings, so we can remind them of their mission, and make sure they do not neglect Arizona's wildlife. Please call House Members this week and ask them to oppose HCR2009 clean elections act; repeal (May). It refers to the ballot a repeal of the clean elections act. This passed out of Judiciary Committee 5-3-2. We just voted on this in 1998 and without it Jeff Groscost would be a senator right now. That is just one reason out of many to keep it around. They should just get over it and get on with it. HB 2418 ballot measures; publicity pamphlet (Jarrett, Voss, Pearce, et al) passed out of the House Judiciary Committee without opposition. It prohibits a person, organization or political committee from sponsoring or paying for more than one argument for or against each ballot measure and limits the number of words per argument to 200. Often larger organizations will pay for arguments for smaller groups that do not have a budget. We continue to wonder if there are 1st amendment issues with this measure. The Supreme Court has said money is free speech, so how can they limit how much someone spends on a ballot measure via these arguments? Limiting the number of words to 200 is a good idea, however.
HB 2389 political committees; reporting requirements (Leff, Allen, Anderson, et al) repeals the requirement that political committees that make an expenditure in connection with any literature or advertisement to support or oppose a ballot proposition disclose in its literature or advertisement the four largest of its major funding sources. The disclosure as currently written is pretty meaningless, but complete repeal is probably not the answer either. This passed out of Judiciary 5-4-1. Don't forget to make appointments with your legislators for Environmental Lobby Day on February 19th. We will be in Senate Hearing Room 2 from 10am to noon that day. Rep Allen has agreed to stop by for a few minutes and I am trying to line up a couple more legislators. We will provide briefing materials, lobbying information, etc. at the gathering. I will send out an agenda next week. This is what's up in the legislature this week. Monday January 29th Senate Committee on Government at 1:30p.m. SB1153 ballot analysis; secretary of state (Cummiskey) gives the responsibility for writing the impartial analysis for ballot measures to the Secretary of State. Currently the legislative council is responsible for this and has demonstrated that it is unable to write an "impartial analysis." This is an improvement, although it might be a good idea to have the attorney general approve the analysis. The attorney general must approve the actual ballot language, so why not the analysis. WE SUPPORT THIS. Senate Committee on Finance at 1:30p.m. SB1122 sales tax exemption; pallets; containers (Hamilton) exempts the sale of reusable or returnable containers from sales tax. We have been asked to support the bill. I am doing a little research into it. The reusable pallets are returned to a pooling company that rents the pallets to farmers and manufacturers. The idea is that it will help cut solid waste and reduces the use of lumber by encouraging the reuse of these pallets. The American Plastics Council is pushing this. SB1227 county sales taxes for roads (Bundgaard) allows the sales tax for roads to be continued beyond 20 years subject to voter approval. Tuesday January 30th House Committee on the Environment at 1:00p.m. HB2070 Water quality monitoring; information access (Huffman, Binder, Carruthers) requires the director of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) to submit the Department’s annual report on groundwater and soils sampling in summary form with an analysis and to publish the information on its web site. WE SUPPORT THIS. HB2123 biodiesel; government fleets (Carpenter) allows biodiesel to be used by government fleets to meet the required alternative fuel goals. WE ARE NEUTRAL ON THIS. 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. The Land Department claims this authoirty already exists in Title 9, but I have been unable to locate it so far. It also eliminates the requirement for advertising the availability of expiring grazing leases in the newspaper.
Wednesday January 31st House Committee on Natural Resources, & Agriculture @ 9:30 a.m. HB2442 agricultural composting (Gleason) prohibits cities from regulating activities related to general agricultural purposes including composting. I suspect the cities will have a problem with this as it restricts local control of these activities. Thursday February 1st Senate Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Environment Committee @ 8:30 a.m. SB1194 appropriation; resin bush eradication (Arzberger, Brown, Guenther, et al) appropriates $185,000 from the state general fund in FY 2001-2002 to the State Land Department for distribution to the Gila Valley Natural Resources Conservation District (NRCD) for eradication of the sweet resin bush on state trust land in southeastern Arizona. Sweet resin bush (euryops subcarnosus) is a nonnative plant that was introduced for cattle and soil stabilization. The cows don't eat it and it crowds out native species and creates a monoculture. They are proposing a five-year herbicide treatment. I fail to see how this will eradicate this species if it is only addressed on state trust lands. I am also concerned about potential aerial spraying of the herbicide. There is no doubt this is a problem species, however.
Thanks for all your help! For more information on legislation go to the web page http://www.azleg.state.az.us. If you're outside the Phoenix area, you can call your legislator's office toll free at 1-800-352-8404. In the Phoenix area call (602) 542-3559 (Senate) or (602) 542-4221 (House). Correspondence goes to 1700 W. Washington, Phoenix, AZ 85007-2890. To email legislators use first initial + 7 letters of surname@azleg.state.az.us. Page updated: 1/26/01 Back to Legislative Updates page Sierra Club, Grand Canyon Chapter, 202 E. McDowell Rd, Suite 277, Phoenix, AZ 85004, (602) 253-8633 |