Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs is expected to issue her first veto of the year this week. As lawmakers send her a bill they argue would lead to faster election results, she’s already signaled her opposition to the measure.
Howie Fischer of Capitol Media Services joined The Show to discuss what to expect this week at the state Capitol.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Howie, the governor is going to dust off that veto stamp in the coming days, huh?
HOWARD FISCHER: I'm telling you she's falling behind. If she's gonna hit that 140-plus that she did her first year, she's gonna have to up her game here. Of course, the other half of it is they haven't sent her a lot of bills.
I think what the Republican Legislature is hoping to do is send a lot of stuff to the ballot and say, “sorry governor, we don't care about you.” This is one that is going to be an issue on the ballot, specifically. The question is, do folks want election results earlier, or is that just the TV and radio stations?
And are they willing to give up being able to drop off their early ballots on Election Day by just walking in, putting the little green envelope into the slot, and walking away? The belief of Republican lawmakers is that we really need earlier results. But it comes down to a philosophical question of is it important enough for people to be able to drop off their ballots on Election Day without having to stand in line with everyone else?
The governor's made it clear, and sometime today she's going to veto the bill, and then sometime later today, the House is going to pass out their ballot measure version, and I'm sure it has the votes, it'll go to the Senate, and then it will go on the 2026 ballot.
BRODIE: So, Howie, also later today, there's going to be some discussion both at a press conference and in a committee about a bill that would allow law enforcement to basically shoot out drones from the sky, is that right?
FISCHER: That's why it says, that it, it would allow law enforcement to intercept, capture, disable, shooting, destroying, or otherwise rendering inoperative an unmanned aircraft, i.e. a drone, within 15 miles of the border without having any liability. Now, the, the concern by law enforcement is that folks are using these drones to, if nothing else, to spy on police, to find out where they are, to find out how to get people across the border to, they may even be smuggling the drugs on them. I mean, it's sort of the Amazon-style of delivery of what they're doing with, with drones in some cases.
The question becomes, where is the line about what is reasonable? If you've got an officer firing up into the air and shooting down a drone and it not only damages the drone based only on their quote unquote reasonable suspicion that the drone was doing something illegal, or if it hurts somebody on the ground, should they be entitled to immunity? And, you know, this comes down to a law and order question versus a really kind of question to me.
BRODIE: So Howie, also later today there's a committee in the House that's going to be taking up a bill that would ask the federal government to allow the state to deny recipients of SNAP, basically food stamps, to use that, those benefits to buy soda?
FISCHER: Yes, this is an extension of something that Leo Biasiucci, a state representative from Lake Havasu City, is doing about school lunches, where he says, why are we filling kids full of chemicals, you know, red dye number 30 and green dye number 6.
This says that if we're gonna have government subsidized food, and there's a lot of reasons for the what they call Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, why should we let it be spent on something that has no nutritional value and may have some negative value?
Now, originally, Rep. Biasiucci also had added candy to that list. I think the tricky part there is, there are a lot of quote unquote nutrition bars that could be classified as candy based on, I don't know, the sweeteners that they have, so we decided, I'm not gonna pick that fight. I'm gonna go after the low-hanging fruit, which is sodas.
BRODIE: Sure. Howie, let's talk a little bit about a potential change to the death penalty. This of course has been a pretty big issue since the, the little controversy over the governor removing the retired judge that she had asked to review the state's death penalty before he was able to to file his, his full report. This is a bill that would replace the state's current method of execution, which is lethal injection, with a firing squad.
FISCHER: This is in some ways a repeat of what happened years and years ago. We used to use, well, way back when, you know, you, you would hang people and that was the end of it. The state replaced that with a gas chamber, and then there were some incidents there where people were choking to death literally. But folks said, is it, if the idea of putting somebody to death is to keep them from bothering society, if you will, again, there have to be more humane ways to do that.
So the idea was lethal injections. Well, what we've seen is, on occasion, lethal injections have also proven to be perhaps less inhumane. So, what the, Judge Duncan said is, if you want something that's humane, that's gonna be instantaneous is very simple, you know, firing squad. That has raised a lot of issues. I think it's a question of, you know, are we ready to go back to something that seemed to be, you know, from the 18th century, if you will.
What [Rep. Alexander Kolodin] proposed is, it's real simple. If in fact we're concerned about the gas chamber, if in fact we're concerned about lethal injection, if we're we're concerned about hanging. Let the voters decide. Let, let's make this the legal method and the only legal method, and let the voters vote on it.
BRODIE: So, Howie, finally, another issue that might go before voters, and this one's also gotten a lot of attention, especially recently, a proposal to eliminate legislative immunity just for traffic violations. So if a lawmaker during session is stopped for speeding, they could in fact get a ticket.
FISCHER: That's exactly it, and obviously this keeps coming up. I mean, we saw just this past week with Rep. Jake Hoffman out on the, on the superstition getting ticketed for 89 [mph] in a, in a 65 zone. He did not ask for immunity, but the officer recognized who he was and said, “OK, I'm, I'm gonna note that in my book and you get to go on your way.”
I think the public is a little fed up with the idea that you get to kind of just say, sorry, officer, you, you can't ticket me. And so Rep. Quang Nguyen from Prescott Valley said, let's put this on the ballot. Let's let voters decide whether we need legislative immunity.
The whole purpose of legislative immunity from arrest was to make sure that some rogue sheriff's deputy did not stop a lawmaker from getting to the Capitol to vote on a certain bill. Rep. Nguyen says, look, you know, everybody has a cellphone now. You know, we can call up the speaker and say, delay that bill until I, I get in there. It seems to have been abused over the years, and I think voters may have finally had enough.
Now the question becomes can Rep. Nguyen get enough votes in the House and Senate to do that? Because I think there are a few lawmakers who say, well, you know, we really don't want to go ahead and disturb this here and do we really want to put this on the ballot? As you say, it'll face its first test today in his committee, I assume he believes he has the votes. And then now we see, can it get out of the full House? Can it get out of the Senate?
