The Daily Agenda: A surge with a faulty surge line
We've lost count of which wave we're on ... Let's talk about the weather instead.
ICYMI Arizona isn’t very good at pandemic management. More than half of states put measures in place that prevent public health officials from exercising their power since the pandemic began, according to health news outlet Kaiser Health News. These include restrictions on mask mandates, vaccine requirements and quarantine rules. You guessed it: Arizona did all three.
Meanwhile, Arizona’s urban hospitals are filling up, meaning rural patients can’t transfer to the specialty care facilities they need. Rural doctors are making numerous calls to find facilities that can accept their patients and people are dying in the meantime, the Arizona Daily Star’s Patty Machelor reported.
The “surge line” officials set up early in the pandemic to find hospital bed availability is only for COVID-19 patients. Local health officials want to change that, but the Department of Health Services hasn’t made up its mind, Machelor reported.
“We’re rationing care but not in a rational way,” Stephen Harris, CEO of Santa Cruz Valley Regional Hospital, told the Star.
Part of the reason hospitals are so full is because people put off seeking treatment during the height of the pandemic. People poisoning themselves with snake oil cures — like horse dewormer ivermectin, which has become a favorite for vaccine conspiracists — is also complicating things.
Meanwhile Gov. Doug Ducey’s newest public health yes-man, former Surgeon General and Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Richard Carmona, penned a blog post saying he’s not a yes-man. Carmona complained that not enough people are vaccinated, but didn’t explain his position on vaccine mandates, and the post focused not on the lives lost from COVID-19, but the money lost.
As schools are in full swing — maskless if they want some of those sweet COVID bucks Ducey is passing out — the virus is spreading.
In Pima County alone, 1,600 children have contracted the virus, KJZZ reported. Arizona’s universities aren’t faring much better.
So is it any wonder that Arizona has moved into the seventh-worst slot in terms of states’ per capita deaths from COVID-19? The national average is one-in-500 deaths. Arizona’s average is one-in-375.
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A never-ending stream of vacancies: Arizona has its newest state senator. As expected, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors appointed Raquel Terán to the Senate seat left open when accused child molester Tony Navarrete resigned. That leaves another vacancy, since Terán will leave the House of Representatives to serve in the upper chamber.
Democrats want another vacancy: The Maricopa County Democratic Party called on county attorney Allister Adel to resign, saying they’re sympathetic to her fight, but she can’t run the office from rehab.
Better than Christmas: Senate President Karen Fann told Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan to turn over audit records yesterday, a day after the Arizona Supreme Court declined to hear her appeal about trying to keep the records secret. If you need to know how to file a records request and want to join in on the bonanza, our guide to public records can be found here. And Cyber Ninjas blew another deadline for its audit report, which was supposed to be delivered yesterday.
The third time was not the charm: The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors met in an executive session yesterday, but didn’t make any decisions about outstanding subpoenas that call for them to turn over routers or lose a substantial part of their revenue.
This is the song that never ends: Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s lawsuit that claims Arizona State University violated the gift clause by making a deal with the Omni Hotel that exempts the hotel from paying taxes is still alive. The Arizona Supreme Court said it will hear arguments from Brnovich that the suit wasn’t too late and is within his authority.
New governor south of the border: Sonora’s new governor, Alfonso Durazo, has been making the rounds after being sworn in Monday, pledging to fight corruption and strengthen security. Ducey had a very close relationship with the last governor, Claudia Pavlovich, but it’s worth noting she came from the center-right PRI party, which had a stranglehold over Mexican politics for nearly a century. The new governor comes from the leftist Morena party of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
You’ve gotta wait in line now to pay $20 for a sandwich you don’t even want: Food service workers with HMS Host at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport went on strike yesterday to protest understaffing. The Republic’s Melissa Yeager reports that the strike closed two of the 25 open restaurants for the day; the rest of them were able to stay open because of managers and workers from other businesses.
The countdown begins: Details continue to trickle out about Stephanie Grisham’s tell-all book, including that Melania Trump nearly slept through chunks of election night. “I knew by now how much sleep meant to her, but still, I couldn’t imagine being asleep at a time like that,” Grisham wrote, according to Politico. “Maybe she thought that someone would wake her up if Trump won.” Her book also now has a cover, which is, appropriately, an empty podium. (It’s possible this happened a few days ago, but we just noticed while pre-ordering our copies so we can host a book club once this book is published.)
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This is what light regulation looks like: The Republic found a lax system overseeing massage therapists accused of misconduct, meaning complaints don’t keep therapists from working. People who allege sexual abuse by massage therapists face an uphill battle with the industry’s oversight board to get the therapists’ licenses taken away, Anne Ryman reported.
Weather is still hard to predict: The Washington Post explains that while monsoon prediction has come a long way, this year’s hyperactive Southwest storm season shows it’s still as much an art as a science.
Except for heat — that’s pretty easy: A new study states the obvious: If you work outside, it’s hot as hell. If we don’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions, outdoor workers will be exposed to four times as many days that “feel like” 100 degrees by 2050, the study says.
Let’s end on an uplifting note: Arizona teacher Sian Proctor became the first Black woman to pilot a spacecraft when she climbed aboard the SpaceX mission that launched yesterday.
We love the Arizona State Library. The librarians are routinely the fastest and most helpful people we deal with at the Capitol. And they’ll answer questions from the public, too. They have a website where you can ask a question about Arizona, and one of their experts will respond. Have at it!
We’re so terrified just sitting inside courtrooms that we try not to breathe too loud. But that’s not the case for a man who called himself “Hanson” at the trial against alleged blood scammer Elizabeth Holmes — he whipped out a Rice Krispie bar and loudly went to town, NPR reports. Holmes is familiar to some Arizona lawmakers, who met her on her lobbying tour and decided to change state law to help her company, Theranos. “Hanson” told reporters he was a concerned citizen who loved cars who was attending the trial to see how journalists covered it. But reporters caught on soon enough that he was something of a scammer himself: He donned an everyman costume — a baseball cap and a puffer jacket — but forgot to not wear his expensive loafers. He turned out to be much more than a random concerned citizen: William "Bill" L. Evans, whose name is not actually Hanson, is the father of Holmes’ partner and a very wealthy man. The bit about loving old cars was true, though. There’s already a Holmes movie in the works; we hope this scene gets added to the screenplay.
Outside U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s office tomorrow at 4 p.m., Arizona Jews For Justice and Phoenix Animal Save will rally to encourage the senator to vote for the reconciliation package.
Meanwhile, FreedomWorks is hosting a rally to “stop the spending” outside U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly’s office today at 5:30 p.m. in hopes of convincing Kelly to vote against the reconciliation package.
UPDATE ON UNEMPLOYED WORKERS UNITED v. DUCEY
From the attorneys on the case
As you know, a lawsuit was filed last week on behalf of Unemployed Workers United and the nearly 100,000 unemployed workers in Arizona receiving pandemic-related unemployment benefits, alleging that Gov. Ducey and the Director of DES unlawfully refused to accept and pass on the $300 weekly Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) benefit for nine weeks from July 10, 2021, to the week beginning on September 6, 2021 (up to $2,700 per person). Arizona law requires the state to “Take such action as may be necessary to secure to this state and its citizens all advantages…that relate to unemployment compensation…” A.R.S. § 23-645 (“State-Federal Cooperation”). The lawsuit claims that “all” means “all” and by turning down these FPUC benefits completely paid for by the federal government, Gov. Ducey and the DES Director violated Arizona law and, ineffectively changing this law, violated the Arizona Constitution’s separation of powers principle by unlawfully taking power that belongs to the Legislature.
Today, we are filing a motion for a preliminary injunction and we are requesting an expedited hearing on the matter because the end of the CDC’s eviction moratorium coinciding with the end of the pandemic-related unemployment benefits has created a crisis for many Arizonans who should have received the FPUC benefits. To the extent that state officials have claimed that the lawsuit is too late since the program has ended, we just learned that on September 3, 2021, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), which oversees the contracts with the states to provide these benefits, issued guidance to all fifty states (including Arizona) on how states that canceled benefits can go about retroactively reinstating those benefits. There is an urgency to doing this, however, as the DOL has set October 6, 2021, as a deadline for reinstatement of these federal benefits.
We are aware that some individuals have spoken negatively about this lawsuit. Any time there is a legal action affecting so many people, there will be people with different opinions and everyone is entitled to their opinion. However, this lawsuit filed by Unemployed Workers United and three individual unemployed workers is the only lawsuit that has been filed on this issue and, therefore, the only opportunity for Arizonans who unfairly lost these benefits to recover them. Of course, there is always the chance a court will disagree with us about how to interpret the law and there is no guarantee of a win, but if the court interprets the law as written, finding that “all” means “all”, we strongly believe this lawsuit should be successful. Gov. Ducey himself is a “strict constructionist” meaning he believes the courts should interpret laws as they are written. In any case, it makes sense to us to continue to fight for these federal benefits for so many Arizonans who need them and which come at no cost to the state of Arizona. As you fight for your rights through Unemployed Workers United, we will continue to fight in the courts and will keep you up to date on what is happening with the lawsuit through UWU. Dominick Corey and team with We The People, For The People United! We have a Facebook group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/azpul2.0
Sheila Maddali and Chris Williams, National Legal Advocacy Network