The Daily Agenda: Don't let housing bills die again

We're desperately seeking some political will around here ... Pinal County sets the worse example of transparency ... And sexual orientation doesn't affect voting eligibility.

With the legislative session winding down, an unexpected bipartisan coalition is again pushing for housing reforms they say are needed to address Arizona’s ongoing housing crisis.

But even the few piecemeal housing law changes for cities and towns will struggle to get enough votes to pass.

We’re feeling near-constant déjà vu: Republican Sen. Steve Kaiser’s mega-bill on housing died in March and won’t be revived after bipartisan opposition led by led the Arizona League of Cities and Towns killed it in the Senate.

Last year, Kaiser teamed up with then-Rep. César Chávez on a big housing bill, too, which also didn’t pass. Chávez then lost his primary election. Kaiser spent the off-session leading a study committee on housing, which led to his bill this year.

Now, Kaiser has found allies in some of the Legislature’s most progressive members, like Reps. Analise Ortiz and Oscar De Los Santos, who joined him at a press conference last week to support three bills that include small pieces of Kaiser’s original bill. In a Republic op-ed, De Los Santos touted the bills’ ability to lower housing costs while lessening emissions through improved density. 

The group of lawmakers want to require the state’s largest cities to approve low-income, multi-family rentals in certain areas near public transit stops (Senate Bill 1161); preemptively legalize duplexes and triplexes in cities with more than 30,000 people (SB1163) and ease parking requirements and allow for accessory dwelling units (House Bill 2536).

The state’s housing problems are layered: Market-rate rents are unaffordable for many as costs skyrocketed in recent years while wages didn’t keep up. There isn’t enough housing stock, especially affordable housing, to meet demand. Homelessness has increased, leaving thousands living on the streets and in shelters. 

The Arizona League of Cities and Towns opposes all three bills, telling Axios Phoenix that the measures overly restrict cities and amount to “giveaways” to private developers. But the League and cities haven’t provided any meaningful suggestions for solving the problem through statewide reform, and it’s clear they’ll fight just about any attempt to address the problem through statewide regulation of city zoning.

We don’t have time to waste. The City of Phoenix, compelled by a lawsuit, has to start removing people living on the streets near the Capitol any day now, and it’s still not clear where exactly they’ll go. Evictions are back up. Longtime residents are getting displaced. Despite an influx of COVID-19 cash, projects and programs to help people still are lagging, as the Republic’s Elvia Díaz points out. 

We don’t believe — ever, really — that any one piece of legislation solves a problem entirely. But they’re reasonable, if small, policies that can make a difference. We can’t wait another year for some kind of action from the Legislature on housing.

We also need some leadership from the state’s biggest bully pulpit, the Governor’s Office, to create some kind of consensus around the issue. Everyone seemingly agrees there’s a problem; the state’s top executive should be playing a key role in building out a plan to solve it.

Lord help us if we have to write the same kind of obituary for housing reform again next year.

We’re ready: Lawmakers say they expect to start moving a budget this week, though they still don’t know or won’t say what’s in it. But it seems to be have bipartisan support. House Rules scheduled a 1 p.m. meeting today to allow for late introduction of budget bills, so if this is the real thing, we should see some documents shortly.

Now can they get back to work?: The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors finally selected a replacement for ousted Legislative District 13 lawmaker Liz Harris on Friday, appointing her electoral runner-up, Julie Willoughby, to finish out Harris’ term. Jack Sellers, the supervisor who represents the area, said he interviewed all three candidates sent to the board, including Harris, about “Prop 400, homelessness, water, and elections.” Next year’s election in the purple district should be a heated one. Last year’s top vote-getter in the House race, Democrat Jennifer Pawlik, is not running again, and former lawmaker Jeff Weninger already filed a statement of interest to run for the House there. Hopefully, with Willoughby bringing the Republican caucus back to full, the Legislature will decide to end its off-and-on spring break that’s lasted for several weeks. 

Since we didn’t take a spring break, maybe you could just buy us a margarita?

Local man goes to Harvard: Arizona Rep. Andrés Cano, the House Democrats’ leader, will resign from office after this legislative session to go to Harvard for graduate school. The Pima County Board of Supervisors will appoint a replacement after his departure.

The toll of defending elections: Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates shared how the onslaught of threats and harassment over the past few years led him to a diagnosis of PTSD and therapy to treat it, the Washington Post’s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez reports. Gates found himself growing angry with fellow Republicans and former friends, and his family noticed the way he changed significantly since the pandemic and the 2020 election. Threats had forced Gates from his home on occasion and sometimes targeted his family.

“With COVID subsiding, I have started to attend public functions where I've seen some of these individuals and I have reacted very negatively and gotten very angry,” Gates wrote to the county benefits department. “I have also been interviewed by many journalists over the last 16 months [about] this issue and have become very sad and very angry during these interviews, sometimes even crying.”

Slap on the wrist: The Arizona Supreme Court hit the lawyers for GOP gubernatorial loser Kari Lake with a $2,000 sanction for making "unequivocally false" claims, though the court wouldn’t require Lake and her team to cover attorneys’ fees for Gov. Katie Hobbs and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes in the case. Attorneys Bryan Blehm and Kurt Olsen had repeatedly called it an “undisputed fact” that more than 35,000 ballots were added to Maricopa County’s results (a claim that is both disputed and not a fact). Lake’s one remaining count left in her court case is awaiting hearings in Maricopa County Superior Court. Meanwhile, Lake is embarking on a European tour, where she’ll appear at Hungary’s version of the Conservative Political Action Conference alongside U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy reports. 

How not to handle a crisis: Pinal County elections officials knew or should have known about major problems with the 2022 general election there, where hundreds of ballots weren’t counted, well before a state-mandated recount, Votebeat’s Jen Fifield reports in a public records-based investigation into the county’s ongoing problems. Instead, the interim elections director, Virginia Ross, allowed the canvass to go through despite mismatched numbers and evidence of problems, then collected a $25,000 bonus and left town. The county supervisors and current elections officials largely declined to explain themselves to Fifield or answer her questions. 

“As a former election administrator, the thing that shocks me is the person that was in charge just walked away without reconciling all of this,” Jennifer Morrell, founder of an elections consulting firm, told Votebeat. “I can’t believe she just walked away.”

Speaking of Pinal: Some schools, churches and homeowners’ associations don’t want to be used as voting sites anymore because of the political climate, Pinal Central’s Mark Cowling reports.

A brief stand: The Washington Elementary School District will have to pay $25,000 in attorneys’ fees and allow student teachers from Arizona Christian University to teach in the district in order to settle a lawsuit from the university, the Republic’s Yana Kunichoff reports. The district’s board had previously voted against a contract for the university’s student teachers over concerns of anti-LGBTQ+ bias, which led to a lawsuit fronted by the Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom. 

Way more Waymos: Waymo, the autonomous car brand, is expanding its Arizona operations to connect downtown and the East Valley and will add Scottsdale to its map for the first time, Axios reports. Its territory in Arizona is “the largest fully autonomous service area in the world,” according to the company. 

Still no security: The Joint Legislative Budget Committee wouldn’t approve a quarter-million dollars from Fontes’ office budget to pay for private security for the secretary of state himself due to threats against him, but the committee said he could use $100,000 from the office’s budget to make the offices in Phoenix and Tucson safer, Capitol Media Services’ Bob Christie reports. Hobbs had previously declined to use state troopers to detail Fontes. 

The next battle: Arizona law prevents undocumented people from getting driver’s licenses, though a group that successfully won in-state tuition rates for undocumented students at Arizona universities now wants to change that law, the Republic’s Rafael Carranza reports. Aliento, the group behind the tuition ballot measure, wants Arizona to become the 20th state to allow driver’s licenses for undocumented people, which would affect about 200,000 and 275,000 people here. 

Big changes ahead: With Title 42 set to expire next week, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators including U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is looking for a last-minute measure to keep Title 42 in place for two more years in hopes of stemming a potential influx of migrants, the New York Times reports. Meanwhile, in Nogales, reporter Angela Gervasi profiles a few people who fled Venezuela and stayed in Nogales, “a border town in which very few asylum-seekers have stayed for long.” Local organizations there aren’t sure whether the end of Title 42 will bring more migrants to the county. 

Jobs for jets: In order to make up for the “looming retirement” of the A-10 Warthog fighter jets, the Air Force could add a “new special-operations wing” at Arizona’s Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in order to keep the base from losing a lot of jobs and funding, the Wall Street Journal reports. 

Bad for the brain: Several Valley school districts have now joined a lawsuit led by a Scottsdale attorney against social media companies over the negative impacts big platforms have on students’ mental health, the Gilbert Sun News’ Ken Sain reports. Chandler and Mesa, the state’s largest districts, are both part of the suit now.

Without the lawsuits that compelled the Arizona Senate and Cyber Ninjas to turn over (some, not all) audit records, we wouldn’t have this baffling quote from conspiracy theorist Seth Keshel to former top ninja Doug Logan, as reported by the Republic’s Ryan Randazzo:

"So after the count, the ballots are all checked for legality I take it?" Keshel said in one message. "What about illegals, out of state residents, gays voting?"

Gay people can vote, if they are eligible.