The Daily Agenda: Score one for secrecy
Don't legislators have enough privileges? ... Jolly Ranchers can't cost THAT much ... And the continued mishaps of Tom Horne.
“The most transparent election audit in American history” will indeed be able to withhold some of the records underpinning the Arizona Senate’s actions from the public, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled yesterday.
Relying in part on a decision from last year in former lawmaker Don Shooter’s lawsuit against former Arizona House Speaker J.D. Mesnard, the court said the audit was a “privileged legislative act” that allows the Senate to not release documents that it considers legislative privilege.
Whether the audit was politically motivated is “irrelevant” — the audit was a legislative act by its nature, the court said. It doesn’t matter whether current or future legislation had anything to do with the work.
“Arizona legislators routinely stand for election and, thus, are accountable to the state’s electorate who serve as the ultimate arbiters of the wisdom of any legislative action, rather than the courts,” the court opinion said.
The Senate will still need to provide better details on why it won’t release about 1,000 communications, the court said. The trial court will need to sort out that issue, and it’s possible some of those records will ultimately become public because they’re administrative or political in nature.
But the decision is a loss for transparency, especially in such an unprecedented arena of state politics like a third-party ballot review circus. The documents released thus far have provided necessary insight into how the audit was conducted and the people involved in it. We expect the ones they’re trying to keep secret would tell us even more.
It’s not the only recent case that will hinder journalists’ and watchdogs’ abilities to do their jobs: The court also ruled this summer that judges and courts don’t have to release the names of jurors and potential jurors to the public, in a case brought by a Cochise County publisher.
And it’s not the only recent Arizona Supreme Court case that underpins the court’s rank conservatism. The court’s seven justices are all conservatives. Gov. Doug Ducey appointed five of the seven, several of whom held highly partisan jobs before taking the bench.
The court knocked a wide-ranging progressive elections measure off the ballot, despite the measure earning nearly double the number of signatures required to qualify. The court also recently said voters aren’t able to use the ballot for tax-related measures, booting a referendum of last year’s flat tax.
The court is right that lawmakers’ decisions about the audit will ultimately be decided by the voters in the next election.
The same can be said for our Supreme Court justices, three of whom are facing retention elections this year, though those very rarely result in a judge losing their job.
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Another bad day for Blake: Blake Masters’ mega-donor and former boss Peter Thiel is locked into a game of chicken with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell over who will pick up the tab for Masters’ campaign, and neither side is blinking, the Washington Post reports. Meanwhile, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, the longtime political prognosticators, moved the U.S. Senate race in Arizona from a toss-up to “leans Democratic” because of GOP nominee Masters’ weaknesses, U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly’s fundraising and a “not-as-bleak environment for Democrats.” Separately, conservative website National Review called out Masters’ flip-flop on abortion, saying he either was never pro-life or he’s softening his views to win office, both of which “ought to be regarded as disqualifying,” Kevin D. Williamson writes.
“Obviously, one does not enter into a relationship with the Republican Party in 2022 because one is seeking opportunities for the exercise of honor. But if you are in public life and you aren’t willing to pay a price for what you believe, then, really: What use are you to anybody?” Williamson wrote.
She needs a cowboy hat: In an ad that you would think was for a Republican candidate (and one that meets many of our criteria for a cliche border ad), Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs walks the border fence with two border sheriffs, who say she’s the candidate who can fix the border. The ad is a counterpunch to the Republican Governors Association’s ad hitting Hobbs on the border issue, and it’s an indication that immigration is polling as a critical theme on both sides of the aisle.
The search continues: The Rio Verde Foothills community, still trying to find a reliable way to get water to their homes, won’t be getting a water taxing district, the Maricopa County Supervisors decided yesterday. Residents will lose their access to hauling water from Scottsdale’s city water supply next year. But the water district option didn’t garner much support from the community. Instead, supervisors and community members now want to find a private company that will help supply water to the area, the Republic’s Sasha Hupka reports.
A perfect lede: You already know that Republican Sen. Vince Leach’s quest to remove fellow Republican Justine Wadsack from the ballot over residency issues didn’t succeed because residency challenges rarely do. But this dispatch from the courtroom — particularly, from the courthouse bathroom — from Arizona Daily Star columnist Tim Steller gives a full accounting of the whole weird case.
“I don’t usually hang out in public bathrooms, but I admit to lingering a couple of minutes Monday afternoon to see if political violence would break out in the fourth floor men’s room at Pima County Superior Court,” Steller starts the column.
A symptom of the problem: The Peoria Independent was going to host a candidate forum for the Peoria Unified School District board candidates, but the complications the event posed show just how contentious elections for school boards have become. Journalist Philip Haldiman (yes, he played Denny in the cult movie “The Room”) writes that he would’ve had to manage a crowd of potentially hundreds on his own or gotten outside security.
Something was actually inspected: You can find plenty of examples of a state agency not actually doing legally required inspections of places like long-term care facilities, airport luggage scales and school buildings. These inspections often provide key safety and consumer protections. Take, for instance, the five Weights and Measures inspections of a Circle K in Green Valley, which routinely charged customers more than the posted prices for many of its products, the Green Valley News’ Jamie Verwys reports. Jolly Ranchers, as an example, rang up at $2 more than their posted price.
Listen and learn: School leaders in Cochise County want their state lawmakers to understand how the lingering aggregate expenditure limit — which caps the amount of money schools can spend, regardless of how much the state has allocated — affects their ability to plan, recruit teachers and help their students, the Herald/Review’s R.J. Cohn reports. The local superintendents, who held a meeting with their state lawmakers, hope the lawmakers will institute a long-term fix to the problem.
After first offering a full-throated defense of former lawmaker David Stringer, who was forced to resign after court documents surfaced showing he pleaded guilty to sex crimes against children in the 80s, GOP nominee for state superintendent Tom Horne decided he better cut ties.
A few days ago, Horne told AZFamily’s Morgan Loew that Stringer was “completely innocent” and said he was a part of the Horne campaign. Yesterday, after getting hammered on his association with the disgraced former lawmaker, Horne said he would refund Stringer’s in-kind contribution, which was “the only association he ever had with our committee.”
We guess that means he’ll be paying Stringer back for the $1,400 in unspecified in-kind contributions listed in Horne’s campaign finance reports. Horne’s win in the GOP schools chief race remains the biggest surprise we saw in this year’s primaries — and completely unforced errors like this show why.
Glad to see Denny is on the straight and narrow. I hope that Chris-R has been leaving him alone
Let me get this right: the Legislature gives schools monies and then restricts how much the schools can spend from those funds? Seems to me that is a big slush fund! Wonder what happens to those dollars? Hmmmmm.