A bill to punish people who claim military service or honors they do not have or did not earn has become one of the more contentious issues this legislative session. It passed the House without any opposition, but has stalled in the Arizona Senate. A compromise may be on the offing, though.
Howie Fischer of Capitol Media Services joined The Show to talk about what to expect this week at the state Capitol.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Good morning, Howie.
HOWARD FISCHER: Good morning. Are you expecting compromise? Have you met these lawmakers?
BRODIE: Well, you've met more of them than I have, but it sounds like there may actually be a compromise on this so-called stolen valor bill. What's going on with that?
FISCHER: Well, the original bill was introduced to suggest that there are people running for office, or doing other things who are claiming military honors, military service they didn't do. Now there's a little bit of a personal backstory on this, not for me, but for [Rep.] Walt Blackman, who introduced the bill. He was running against a guy named of Steve Slaton. And Mr. Slaton had claimed that he had been a combat helicopter pilot in Vietnam, and that there were certain awards and medals that he had earned.
Well, it turns out that some of those awards and medals didn't exist, and B, his DD214, which is the military record, shows in fact he was a helicopter mechanic in Korea. And so Mr. Blackman, who was actually was in the military and did serve in the Middle East, said, you know, this isn't right, and he introduced a bill, as you point out, it got to the House OK. Go to the Senate, goes to [Sen.] Wendy Rogers' bill. Now Wendy Rogers was a supporter of Mr. Slaton against Mr. Blackman in the last election, and she said, well, you know, it really isn't right and it's too broad and everything else.
And so they're doing a workaround where they're going to use somebody else's bill for what they call a strike-everything amendment to come up with something that they think is more acceptable. For example, one of the things that they're taking out is that the original bill said it was a felony to try to get any certain kinds of benefits from misrepresenting military service, and a benefit would include campaign contributions, would include trying to get votes. Well, that is gone. There were some specific medals that were listed as being verboten, if you will, that would get you into trouble. That specific list is gone.
Instead, they've got more of a generic thing in terms of knowingly misrepresenting themselves to be a veteran, knowing this misrepresenting certain awards, and, they, they also have clarified something that was in the original bill, which is, does somebody who was an elected official who was convicted of this automatically get bounced from office? Rather than put that specifically in the bill, they went ahead and simply referred to the fact that if you're convicted of a felony, you lose your office. I mean that goes back to what happened to Fife Symington years and years ago.
So there's a belief that this may in fact get out. I don't know. Obviously we'll get to see when the bill goes to the floor, whether Ms. Rogers or some of her other allies will try to go ahead and kill it.
BRODIE: Interesting. Howie, there's also a bill dealing with the taser maker company Axon, which has its headquarters in Scottsdale. There's been a lot of controversy in that city about a proposed development plan that Axon wants to build a new headquarters, some other things, and also specifically housing, specifically multifamily housing that a lot of residents don't want. They got enough signatures to put it on the ballot.
Axon has since said maybe they're going to leave Arizona, at least leave Scottsdale because of this, but there seems to be maybe a legislative, I don't want to call it a fix, but maybe an answer to some of this.
FISCHER: Well, I think the term is workaround, if you will, as you point out, the residents gathered enough signatures to refer the measure to the ballot. In general, legislative actions, including at the city or the county level, can be referred to the ballot. And under the way the law works, the measure is held up until voters get to vote on it, and that would be November of 2026.
Axon figures, look, we've been trying to work on this for years. We have a corporate office here. We want to build some housing for our employees and we're not willing to work. So they've got this bill, which is, I, I won't call it special interest legislation, but consider, it affects only municipalities between 200,000 and 500,000 persons. It has to be located within an international headquarters campus, solely owned by a single entity, where you've got more than 2,000 full-time employees and average annual composition of 125% of the median income.
And then has certain things about restricting the occupancy to former employees and friends and families of employees and things like that. It's an Axon bill. It says essentially it doesn't matter because what would happen is if you met all that, the city would be required to issue the permits for the housing for everything that they want there, making it, making the referendum totally moot, and I think that's really ticked off a lot of people for different reasons. A, you're overriding what the what folks want and B, then there's some folks in a particular group who talk about quote unquote 15-minute cities.
In other words, you're trying to build places where people can walk to work and that is raised a whole bunch of issues of folks who are saying, you know, why are we social engineering and everything. So there's perhaps enough opposition on different corners to kill this. I don't know, however, whether the desire to keep Axon here. And you know, this company as you point out, makes tasers, you know, is will override all that.
BRODIE: Yeah, Howie, very briefly, about 30 seconds left, I'm curious, you mentioned it ticked off a lot of people. Did it tick off, do you think, enough people at the Capitol to potentially kill this proposal?
FISCHER: Well, I think what they did is in wording it that it only affects, you know, cities between 200,000 and 500,000, there could be a lot of lawmakers who represent other cities and say, it doesn't affect us, sure, let's go along with it. I think there's a lot of loss of revenues that they're concerned about there, and it's just, you know, a black eye for the state to lose a corporate headquarters.
