Lawmakers will be taking to the floor and heading to one all-important committee to see what proposed legislation will make it out of the chamber in the weeks to come.
Howie Fisher of Capitol Media Services joined The Show to to fill us in on all of the happenings to come this week at the state Capitol.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Good morning to you, Howie.
HOWIE FISHER: Good morning. Another day in paradise.
GILGER: So it sounds like mainly floor action this week, not many committees meeting.
FISHER: The House and Senate have a schedule. Essentially, they take the first couple of weeks to take bills through committees, and I'm sure they say that they thoroughly examine them, although some bills only get three, four minutes apiece.
And then at this point in the session, each house takes what is passed with a few exceptions that we'll talk about and takes it to the floor for floor debate. So all the lawmakers who didn't get a chance to look at it because they weren't a member of the committee now get a chance to debate it, talk about it, and more to the point, they find out are the majority votes there to put it forward and send it over to the other chambers.
And that's what pretty much this week is full of. It's taking all of the bills that came out of committee. Some of the stuff, you know, we've, we've heard about on the air here and say is this going to survive?
GILGER: OK. All right. So as we head into that, let's talk about a few of the bills that will be discussed this week. One bill you're watching is going to be revived, is one to do with shielding utility companies from liability in the case of a wildfire and in the case that that wildfire may be started by that utility company's equipment, as we've seen happen in other wildfires around the country. Tell us a little bit about where this stands now.
FISHER: Well, right now the bill is, shall we say it's sleeping, or it's, it's perhaps in a light coma. This is a proposal that was raised by the utilities who say, well, look, if we follow certain plans we shouldn't be held liable if in fact our power lines touch trees, you know, and as you know, power lines sag in the, in the summer because of the heat of the of the wires and everything else, or if we don't turn off the power in a high wind event. And so they say, well, if we follow our plan, why should we get sued?
Well, the problem becomes, you know, who does pay for the damages, you know, if in fact, you know, my home is burned up because in the case of California with Pacific Gas and Electric here it might be Arizona Public Service or SRP, well then who is liable? Do I go to my insurance company and the insurance company is gonna say, wait a second, it wasn't the fault of the homeowners, it wasn't the fault of the insurance company. And so they want to get the ability to go ahead and go back to the utility company and say, you caused this problem. You should be responsible for it.
And in cases where you did things like failing to turn off the power during a high wind event, you should be subject to punitive damages for an intentional action. The bill failed this past week. I think a lot of folks were concerned about liability.
The other fact is we have a provision in the Arizona Constitution, almost unique to Arizona, that says you cannot limit the rights of people to sue and collect for damages. So that I have to figure out a way of bringing it back to find out if can, can, A, get votes, and B, can you make it constitutional?
GILGER: One bill that you're also watching for, this is HB 2926. This would make some pretty significant changes to access, which is, of course, Arizona's Medicaid program. We're hearing a lot about Medicaid on the federal level right now. What would this do on the state level?
FISHER: Well, access officially covers everybody up to 100% of the federal poverty level. About a decade ago under Jan Brewer, they said, look, there's federal money out here and we can cover people up to 133% of the federal poverty level, and do it at very minimal expense. There's a lot of concerns that the feds are going to cut back on that money.
And so one of the things would be a trigger the feds cut back, all those expanded programs go away, but it would also add things like a requirement to work at least 20 hours a week to get this state-provided Medicare, Medicaid program, you know, maybe doing volunteering, participates in workfare requirements, and then a few other things, there will be some exceptions, for example, if you're at least 64, if you're pregnant, if you're medically incapable of working.
But it raises the question of is Medicaid an insurance policy and should you have to work for that if you are in fact eligible, and that becomes a perennial philosophy around here. We've seen the same thing with food stamps and, and at what point do you decide, OK, you know, people should be required to put in some effort on their own behalf.
GILGER: This sounds like it could be very affected by what happens at the federal level too, right?
FISHER: Oh, this is definitely the case because what's funny is, I hate to use the word funny, is that while Trump has said, oh we're not going to cut Medicaid, and meanwhile, Elon Musk is running around saying, well, we've got to cut Medicaid because you know, you can nibble around the edges on all of these programs that his Department of Government Efficiency is going after, but it's the big programs like Medicaid, like Medicare, which is a different program, like Social Security, where all the money is, and unless you're going to make some changes there, in some ways I know that they're saying there's hundreds of millions of dollars that we've saved. I'm not particularly buying it, but if you want to save the real money, those are the programs.
GILGER: All right. Last minute for you here and one more bill I want to bring up that might get, you know, some chatter this week. This would allow golf courses to let people, you know, BYOB. Where's this coming from?
FISHER: Well, this is an interesting question because right now state law says if you want to let people bring their own booze, you have to have a certain state kind of license, and in fact it prohibits an outdoor event like that from doing that. What happens is that people like, you know, what happened at the open is you have your own license and you cannot bring other people's booze in.
So this would say to a golf course, if you want to, you may allow people to bring in their own booze. Now, I don't know why a golf course would want that because, you know, you're selling, you know, make money off of what you sell, but it raises a fascinating question of once people are just wandering around with open bottles that they brought in and, you know, vodka and rum and making their own, you know, cocktails and everything else, you've got not just rowdy patrons.
But then you've got this fascinating question of, you know, if you want to call it golfing while intoxicated, and, and Lord knows I've seen some people at some golf courses where it's hard to tell whether that slice was due to just bad golfing or maybe a little bit of inebriation.
