This week at the Arizona Legislature: Lawmakers to debate Starter Homes Act, newspaper notices

Housing has been a big issue of discussion and debate at the Arizona Capitol over the past few years. And lawmakers are expected to consider a proposal this week that’s been front and center in many of those conversations.

Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services joined The Show to talk more about the upcoming week.

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: Howie, let’s start with an issue that’s been debated for the past few years; it’s become known as the Starter Homes Act. Basically trying to encourage developers to build less expensive homes. What is in this bill and how is it different from years past?

HOWARD FISCHER: Well, as you point out, there has been a long effort by lawmakers to figure out how to make homes more affordable. Now remember they passed in the past accessory dwelling units, encouraging people to build little casitas on the side of the house. They have this middle housing bill to encourage more duplexes and triplexes in the downtown area. They’ve even told cities you have to speed up development in terms of approval and all that.

One of the things in this bill would say cities can’t require garages, paved driveways, backyard patios or even fencing between new homes or even main streets. You couldn’t have specific exterior designs or specific exterior lighting, roof pitches or floor plans, or, you know, even requiring they be red tile versus, you know, shingles or things like that.

And then the other thing that would be gone are requirements for developers to put in things like neighborhood parks, common areas that would require an HOA, a homeowner association. So it’s pretty comprehensive, although it’s a little less than what they’ve tried to get through before.

MARK BRODIE: Now Howie, in past years housing bills including this one have had both bipartisan support and bipartisan opposition. Are we seeing that again this year with this bill?

HOWARD FISCHER: Well we are, definitely. There are a lot of folks who are saying we need affordable housing. And a lot of them are Democrats who sometimes are a little hesitant to be telling cities what to do. I mean you’ve got people like Analise Ortiz who has said over and over again, you know, "I hope to be able to own a home someday." And then there’s the other piece of the concern, which is, will this really make housing more affordable or just make more profits for developers who will continue to charge half-million dollars and they’ll just pocket the difference? There is nothing that says you will reduce the prices.

MARK BRODIE: Interesting. So Howie, there’s another bill, another issue that seems to come up year after year, and this one relates to how cities and towns have to advertise notices for things and whether they have to buy those ads in local newspapers or if they can publish them online.

HOWARD FISCHER: Well, exactly. This has been a fight by a lot of papers, particularly rural papers who are heavily dependent on legal notices. So if you live in Bisbee and the Bisbee City Council wants to put something up like a new ordinance or notice of a meeting, they have to go to the local paper. It used to be the Bisbee Daily Review, now it’s the Sierra Vista Herald which is combined with the Review, and say this is what we need to tell people.

Now it’s raised two questions: No. 1 is cost, and No. 2 is, who’s reading the paper anymore? As much as I hate to say it as a kid who grew up on newspapers, fewer and fewer people are actually taking a hardcopy paper. The cities have been able to beat back efforts to eliminate the requirement entirely, and what they seem to have coalesced around, at least some of the cities, is saying look, we won’t force you to buy advertising in our printed edition, but you can do it if you put your notices A, on your own website, which is what the cities want ... on the newspaper’s website, which is bound to be less costly and it does meet some of the requirements of the newspapers in terms of that revenue stream and it does ensure that there will be a publication beyond what the city does.

That seems to be gathering enough support among enough cities that this may finally be the year, and they’ve been fighting about this, heck, probably since the 1980s when I first started covering the Capitol.

MARK BRODIE: All right, Howie, one more bill I want to ask you about today, and this has to deal with sort of private property rights as it relates to businesses and whether or not they can tell people who haven’t had medical interventions to do business there. What’s this one about?

HOWARD FISCHER: Well, if you use the term medical interventions, it makes it sound like, did you have a gallbladder surgery or something like that. What we’re really talking about here are vaccines. This is the question of, should you be able to say as a business owner, "No you can’t come into my store unless you’re vaccinated. You can’t come into my city office unless you’re vaccinated. "

This has been as you point out a perennial ever since COVID, and folks are saying we don’t believe vaccines work, or it’s being presented by Rep. Fink as a Personal Medical Freedom Act; that should the government be able to tell you or should a business be able to tell you you have to have something inserted into your body in order to go in and, you know, see if they remake "Rooster Cogburn" a third time or something like that.

That’s the way it’s gotta be for those of you who really want to do something really unusual. It says you can’t keep someone from coming in; you can’t require certain situations in terms of masking, etc.

There are some interesting exceptions. For schools, it says you can keep a child out who is not immunized during an outbreak of a communicable disease, presumably something like measles, or if the person has acute conjunctivitis, a scabies infection or some sort of infection with lesions.

The other exception is for medical facilities for obvious reasons. You know, you do want your doctors and nurses who are working at a hospital to not only be vaccinated so they don’t spread things, but also be able to wear masks, personal protective equipment and everything else.