Welcome to the seventh episode of Prickly, a podcast from KJZZ’s Politics Desk. Subscribe here or wherever you get your podcasts, and don’t forget to subscribe to the Prickly newsletter.
A new year means a new legislative session for Arizona lawmakers returning to the Capitol in Phoenix. Political editor Ben Giles catches up with field correspondents Camryn Sanchez and Wayne Schutsky for a debrief on the topics and issues — some prickly — that will likely dominate debate this year.
- Another Maricopa County sales tax is set to expire, unless state lawmakers agree to refer a measure to county voters to renew it.
- Lawmakers must act quickly to refer Proposition 123, a measure that draws dollars from the state land trust to boost funding for education, back to voters statewide. If the Democratic governor and Republican leaders can't find a compromise, K-12 schools will lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding.
- Republicans have plans to alter how votes are cast, part of an effort to speed up the process of determining winners and losers on election night. But Democrats warn they'll oppose any measure that adds new limits on when and how voters vote.
More Prickly podcast episodes
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Every two years in January, after voters statewide cast ballots in November, members of the Republican and Democratic parties hold their own elections for their party leaders. Those party chairs will set the tone for their respective parties for the next two years.
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Political correspondents Camryn Sanchez and Wayne Schutsky dig into both sides’ perspective on the issue and the politics that could motivate lawmakers in the upcoming legislative session next month.
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The Arizona secretary of state officially certified the results of July's primary elections, meaning Arizonans now know the candidates who will be running in the handful of competitive legislative races that will determine which party controls the Arizona House and Senate next year.