Let’s begin this morning at the Arizona Capitol where lawmakers are getting ready to vote on some controversial issues — from cameras in nursing homes — to protecting historic neighborhoods from development.
Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services joined The Show to talk more.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Let's begin this morning, Howie, with nursing homes. This is an interesting measure.
Lawmakers are advancing a proposal to say that a person living in a nursing home or an assisted-living facility is entitled to put live cameras in it. What would this measure do?
HOWARD FISCHER: This is designed to recognize the fact that while we all hope that we'll end up in a nursing home or an assisted-living facility where everything is just great, it doesn't always happen that way.
So what this says is there should be a way that if I go into a nursing home facility, I can put up a camera that A, could videotape what's going on a 24/7 basis. Or B, send a live feed to my relatives and they could watch out.
Because if in fact I am being abused, I am being neglected, I'm being abandoned, as a case of one lawmaker said, that the relatives can actually do something about that. Now this has provoked some controversy with the industry where they say, "Well, this is our private property and you can't tell us what to do."
Well, to which Rep. [Kathleen] Winn said, "Hey, we tell you to put in fire protection and feed the residents. So this is no different."
Now, there are some protections built in, right. If you have a roommate, you need the roommate's consent. This is not in the public areas. It allows the residents to turn off the cameras if in fact they're doing something that they really don't want streamed out on the World Wide Web. But it does seem to have very broad support, although similar bills have failed the last couple of years.
GILGER: OK. I want to turn now to some of Phoenix's and Tucson's most sought after, name neighborhoods. These historic neighborhoods. And they have that kind of official designation.
This is all about creating an exemption basically for these neighborhoods from the so called middle-housing legislation that passed through just a few years ago.
FISCHER: Exactly. There have been various efforts by lawmakers to make housing more affordable. And so, for example, we have a bill on casitas. So if you have a home and you have sufficient property, you can put one or two or to grandmother houses, if you want to call them mother-in-law houses, on your property and you can rent them out.
There are things to require cities to speed up construction of homes and get through all of the permitting process. This is designed to say if you have areas within the inner city — which means bus service, maybe light rail service — that if it's zoned for single-family homes, that you also have to allow duplexes, triplexes for fourplexes, townhomes there.
... Makes a lot of sense. If you have vacant land, the concern is that you have certain areas — think about, you know, Willow, Encanto, you know, F.Q. Story, things like that here in Phoenix. Where somebody may say, "Well, heck, if I buy this old house, I can tear it down and put up a fourplex."
And that has caused, obviously, some great concern. So they're trying to work out a compromise to say, OK, we'll amend last year's law and say we'll give cities some ability to say you can't just tear down historic homes, but yet preserve the idea that we do want urban infill because it makes more sense than building things on the west side of Buckeye.
GILGER: Right, right. And they're looking at some kind of middle ground essentially there, because there is an affordable housing problem in the city.
FISCHER: Exactly. And, you know, whether this is a solution, I don't know. I mean, there's other market forces at work. We know, for example, right now that what landlords can demand for rent is down. Is that an overbuilt market? You know, hard to say. You know, there's no one solution to all of this.
GILGER: OK, let's talk quickly, Howie, about another. Another measure from Republican Sen. T.J. Shope. He wants to raise the ages that judges are allowed to serve. Right now, they can serve until they're 70. This would raise it to 75. What's the thinking here?
FISCHER: Well, prior to 1974, when they put in merit selection of judges for Supreme Court, Court of Appeals and the larger counties, there was no age limit. You go out, you'd campaign, and if people liked you, you got reelected. The U.S. Supreme Court, obviously, federal courts have no age limit.
The thinking is, when did we decide that 70 was the point at which the cheese falls off the cracker?
I mean, look, I'm 75. I'd like to believe that you're not going to put me out to pasture or send me to a farm upstate, as the old saying would go.
GILGER: We would never do that, Howie.
FISCHER: Because I've reached that age. So at the very least, I think there's a belief that 75 is an appropriate age. Should it be 80?
Again, I'm 75. I'm now too old to serve as a justice on the Supreme Court or any court at all. Interesting question, given we have an aging population, but a lot of people are living longer and they're not necessarily just sitting in nursing homes waiting for something to happen.
GILGER: Yeah. All right, last 30 seconds. Howie, before we let you go, have a quick question about Easter. I have a whole lot of these other hated marshmallow Peeps sitting around at my house now, and I hear you got some advice on what to do with those from a certain former Arizona governor.
FISCHER: Yes. When Janet Napolitano was governor back in 2008, and we were talking to her during Easter and she was having regular press briefings, you know, they used to do that as opposed to current governors.
She said, look, if you've got leftover Peeps, I know something you can do. Take a pair of these Peeps, usually chicks, although it works with the rabbits. And you put a toothpick in each one, put them on a paper plate, and the toothpick has to be facing forward like a lancet, like you were jousting. And you put them in the microwave and they tend to blow up. And you can have a contest between the peeps, and depending on how they heat, one will probably lunge forward and impale the other, and that is the winner.
GILGER: All right.
FISCHER: Of course, you're just as likely to be left with a mess on your plate.
-
The marijuana holiday 4/20 is on Monday. It falls about 10 weeks before the deadline to submit enough signatures so Arizona voters could decide in November whether to outlaw dispensaries. -
President Donald Trump showered praise on several Arizona candidates he’d already endorsed at a campaign event in Phoenix on Friday and gave shoutouts to several candidates for the first time. -
Arizona, which has a population of 7.6 million people, received $61 million through the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program in 2023 compared to $287 million for Michigan, population 10.1 million. -
The Arizona Senate passed a bill Thursday that would require the state’s major utilities to file a report every six months detailing new extra high load users, like data centers. -
A Florida congresswoman accused Arizona’s Ruben Gallego of misconduct, claiming without evidence that the U.S. senator was involved in an incident with former Congressman Eric Swalwell and a sex worker.
