Arizona lawmakers are in a bit of a tricky situation: They don’t want to send bills to the governor, who’s threatened to veto anything she gets until there’s a compromise on a funding package for a program that helps residents with developmental disabilities.
At the same time, committee work is largely done, meaning much of what’s left for the Legislature to do is vote on bills in the full House and Senate, and send the bills that pass to the governor. So, what’s the plan?
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.
HOWIE FISCHER: Good morning. Why do you always assume there's a plan?
BRODIE: I was hoping you had an answer to that. Like, what, what is the plan?
FISCHER: Well, things were already difficult enough. I mean, today is day 99 of the “100 day legislative session.” We already knew we were gonna blow past that one with the budget and everything else going on. And then we had this tiny little dust up last week over developmental disability funding, and the governor said, “not on my watch, not only, I don't like your plan, but everything else you send me from now on, I'm going to veto. And by the way, I've got 33 more. I just have to veto, you know, on Friday just because, because!”
BRODIE: On the merits?
FISCHER: On the merits. Well, we can discuss that, you know, as to what the merits are as opposed to sending messages. So, we're in this situation now, as you point out, where lawmakers are hanging around. There is, there are some bills that need to be handled, but you've got a tricky part in there in that there's actually a state Supreme Court ruling that says once a bill is through its entire process has been approved by the House, same version has been approved by the Senate, you have to send it to the governor. Well, if you send it to the governor, she's going to veto it.
So, I don't know whether they're gonna hold everything back just one step before that final approval and then we'll have some, you know, massive clearance, at some point when everything is, is hunky dory again assuming we ever get back to that point. I, we almost may get to the point, not only with the DDD, which is the immediate funding which needs to be done by May 1, but with this state budget for the new year that begins July 1, where they will send some people home for a few days they'll work two or three days a week, try to get the budget out obviously by June 30.
And then, whatever else is left over, we actually had some sessions that went into August where they said we'll just come in, you know, once a week, maybe once every two weeks, and we'll figure out how to get everything done. So much for the part-time citizen Legislature.
BRODIE: Well, so Howie, does it seem as though like what's going on with the developmental disability plan because, I hate to keep using the word plan because last week, of course, the House and Senate Appropriations Committees approved funding bills with some, depending on your point of view, guardrails or restrictions in place there that the governor, that sort of precipitated this whole thing. The governor says, "I don't like that."
So what, like, is there an idea of what's going to happen next? Because that's, as you mentioned, May 1, that money runs out.
FISCHER: Exactly. I believe we will get up to that. We may get a few days after that. I think there'll be a solution. The question is, who gives up what? We already know that the House majority whip, who's Julie Willoughby, was willing during the Appropriations Committee this past week to say, “look, let's give the Democrats some of what they want. Let's get this behind them.”
Now, her opposition to the Republican plan, the “do it our way or the highway,” also had picked up some support from the Republicans. So, Rep. David Livingston, who chairs the committee, said, “I know, I'll just add some more Republicans who will vote my way to the committee,” which made a 21-member committee just so we could get it out the way he wanted.
I think they recognize this as an interim solution. Something has got to give. I think the governor's willing to look at some guardrails and I use that word very loosely because, you know, they use the same thing with vouchers, and we haven't figured out what those are supposed to be. And so, somebody's gonna have to give something, whether it's an interim solution, but I don't think that the developmental disability funding is going to suddenly come to a screeching halt, you know, 10 days from now.
BRODIE: OK. Howie, let me ask you about at least one bill that is up for debate. We'll see how far it gets, based on what we're just talking about.
But, this is a proposal that would let private school students play on sports teams in the public school in the in in the area that they live in, basically a way to let, you know, if, if you're homeschooled maybe and you know, your homeschool doesn't have a baseball team to play on your public school's baseball team.
FISCHER: Well, this is interesting because to a certain extent, homeschoolers are already covered by a prior law. The idea is, if you're homeschooled, it's not like you have an opportunity to find eight of your best friends and create a baseball team, as you point out. This gets to the question of, if you're going to a private school, you, you want, you didn't like the public school, you wanted what the private school, the Catholic school, the Jewish school has to offer, then that's fine. But now to say, “OK, and by the way, I want to play baseball, but I don't want your education. I don't want your schooling. I'm willing to pay some per capita fee,” I think this is rubbing a few people the wrong way.
I mean, to a certain extent it's supported by the people who support vouchers. They just see this as an extension of vouchers, you know, the kids are paying and the parents are paying some sort of taxes, but I think a lot of the schools think, “why are we doing this? And are we going to have a situation where a kid who's actually attending this school is knocked off the team because of roster limits because somebody else comes in and says, ‘no, I want to play baseball, I want to play basketball, I want to play softball,’ and they don't even go to the school.”
They, I'm not saying that you have to go to the school to fully understand the team, but it raises an interesting sense of fairness there. So, far the bill has gotten through with, you know, it's pretty much party-line votes and it may get out in party-line votes.
I'm guessing that whenever the governor is willing to listen to bills again, I think that's gonna result in a veto. So, and remember, she's, she's got a long way from her record of 143, which she said her first year in office. If she wants to get there, she's gonna have to, you know, warm up her pen again.
