Weekly Legislative Reports

Though the House and Senate advanced dozens of bills this week, policy debates were overshadowed by a dramatic – and unprecedented – vote to censure Senator Wendy Rogers (R-Flagstaff) for her recent comments on social media and at a controversial political action conference last weekend. Though an early draft of the censure criticized Rogers’ comments related to race and authoritarian governments, the final version only referenced her threats to her colleagues and those who disagree with her. Senator Rogers said the censure was a violation of her free speech, but only two members of the Senate joined her in opposition to the censure. All Democrats and most Republicans supported it.

Staff and legislators at the Arizona Legislature call this “Crossover Week,” the point at which the House and Senate rush to vote on bills so they can move to committee hearings in the second legislative chamber. Every legislative session, Crossover Week always includes long days of floor debates and votes and a rushed, unpredictable approach to bills. Last-minute amendments can pass before they’re even available for review to Capitol observers, and tempers run hot as lawmakers try to process hundreds of votes in just a few days.

The legislature can move very quickly and very slowly when considering legislation, and this week it did both. On Monday, leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties in the House and Senate introduced measures to raise the cap on school spending – thus avoiding cuts to school budgets later this spring. The language is carefully crafted to avoid any connection to the ongoing litigation about how the spending cap relates to Proposition 208 education funding. The House passed its version of the proposal within 24 hours, exceeding the necessary two-thirds majority with a bipartisan coalition of 45 votes.

The legislative session is barreling ahead, and this week committee hearings began early and ended late in the evening. The week began with Monday’s deadline for new bill introductions and headlines from some of the bills revealed just before that deadline – including a bipartisan effort to expand anti-discrimination laws, enhanced scrutiny of police shootings, and a bill to divide Maricopa County into four counties.

The 2022 legislative session has entered its second month, most lawmakers have adjusted to participating either in person or virtually from their offices, and hundreds of bills are moving through the House and Senate.

There are more than 1,400 measures introduced so far this session, and the number keeps climbing. With just three more weeks for bills to go through their first committee assignments, there’s an urgency driving legislators’ decisions and priorities.