CEBV Weekly: February 24, 2025
Halftime at the Legislature. Lawmakers behaving badly. Two good bills to support.
This week is Crossover Week at the Arizona Legislature. Most committees take a break, and lawmakers hold seemingly endless days on the floor, voting on whether to advance bills to the opposite chamber. All bills have to be heard in committees in their chamber of origin by the end of this week or they’re considered dead for the session. We’re expecting this first deadline to dispatch roughly 1,000 of the 1,802 bills that lawmakers introduced this year.
Sports fans may describe this week as “halftime,” but we tend to look at things through a different lens. Give this video ten seconds to see what comes to our minds every year at around this time:
Next week, committee hearings will start up again with a more focused perspective. Most bills we tell you about from that point on will have made it through at least one chamber, meaning their chances of passage are that much more real. Treat this week as a lull in the legislative storm, and use it well: take at least one extra action to make your voice heard.
⏰ If you have 5 minutes: Use Request to Speak to support the two Spotlight bills.
⏰⏰ If you have 15 minutes: Also contact our Hall of Shame and Worst of the Week lawmakers (see those sections below) to tell them what you think!
⏰⏰⏰ If you have 30 minutes: Also use Request to Speak on the other bills in committees this week. Refer to the information, links and talking points in this Weekly to craft your own comments to lawmakers.
⏰⏰⏰⏰ If you have 60 minutes: Join us on Zoom for our next CEBV Happy Hour conversation and an informative state legislative rundown. Happy Hour meets every Sunday at 4 PM through the end of legislative session. Sign up in advance here.
Let’s make an effort this week to see these two deserving bills advance through this week’s checkpoint:
SB1490 (Alston, D-5), would gradually raise the monthly stipend for kinship foster care parents (those related to the child) to the same $600 per month that every other foster parent gets. SUPPORT.
HB2456 is subject to a striker1 (Gutierrez, D-18) that would hold adults responsible if they fail to take “reasonable measures” to secure firearms from minors. When you use RTS, you must specify in your comment that you SUPPORT the striker.
Refer to the “Use RTS on These Bills” section below for more information and talking points.
It goes without saying that some lawmakers in year’s Legislature are consistently awful, doing as much as they can to pass as many harmful bills as possible. But that doesn’t mean all the others should help them do that!
Our “Hall of Shame” this week highlights a few Arizona lawmakers who chose to support some bills we wish they hadn’t. These five people didn’t have to vote for bad bills in order for them to pass, but they did anyway — most with no explanation.2 Perhaps they’re naïve or misguided, or maybe they’ve got the wrong lobbyist in their ear, but whatever the reason, they need to hear from you:
👎 Janeen Connolly (D-8) and 👎 Kevin Volk (D-17) for voting YES on HB2113 on the House floor. This bill bans the display of certain flags on Arizona public property, including schools, such as LGBTQ+ Pride and Black Lives Matter flags. The bill is so far-reaching that people with flag stickers on their car who drive onto public property (like you, if you visit the Capitol!) would be breaking the law. The bill now advances to the Senate for committee assignment. Contact Connolly at jconnolly@azleg.gov or 602-926-3300; contact Volk at kvolk@azleg.gov or 602-926-3498.
👎 Catherine Miranda (D-11) for voting YES on SB1255 on the Senate floor. This bill requires public schools to post information on students’ race, color, national origin, sex, disability and age that is meant for the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. Schools would also have to complete a new survey on bullying, fighting and harassment. Public schools are already subject to many laws covering discrimination and bullying, making this an excessive overreach. Meanwhile, kids at ESA voucher-funded schools have no such protections. The bill now advances to the House for committee assignment. Contact Miranda at cmiranda@azleg.gov or 602-926-3413.
👎 Brian Fernandez (D-23) for voting YES on SB1298 in the Senate Finance Committee. The bill expands Arizona's existing religious property tax exemption to also exempt housing, which would directly benefit religious microschools. The bill now advances to the Senate floor. Contact Fernandez at bfernandez@azleg.gov or 602-926-3098.
👎 Lydia Hernandez (D-24) for voting YES on HB2867 in the House Education Committee. The bill bans public schools from teaching or promoting “antisemitic conduct,” defined as creating "a hostile educational environment" (often coded language for avoiding any discussion that deals with thought-provoking or difficult subjects). The bill also bans "requiring a student to advocate for or against a specific topic or point of view to receive credit," which is core to social studies and English standards and is necessary to develop critical thinking skills. The bill now advances to the House floor. Contact Hernandez at lhernandez@azleg.gov or 602-926-3553.
Speaking of awful, Hall of Shame just doesn’t feel shame-y enough for the situation we’re about to describe. The “worst lawmaker of the week” is quite a bar, but we feel this one deserves it:
👎 David Livingston (R-28), for hanging disabled kids out to dry and trying to exploit the situation for political points.
As chair of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, it’s Livingston’s job to help find solutions for the Division of Developmental Disabilities’ current budget shortfall. He wants to wait to fund the program in budget negotiations, but last year a budget didn’t pass until June — and the DDD projects it will run out of cash in April.
Instead, Livingston has been grandstanding, sending out angry press releases chastising Hobbs even as he calls for major cuts to the program which would directly hurt kids.
A coalition of disability organizations is warning that Livingston’s proposal to either slash the program’s funding by 25-50% or shut down services is “unrealistic and would have devastating consequences.” The furious parents who came to the Capitol this past week to address his committee — and who Livingston turned away — aren't buying it either.3
“This started under Ducey… Is it more important that Hobbs get blamed, or is it more important that our kids stay alive?”
— parent Courtney Burnett speaking to reporters in the Capitol courtyard after Livingston excluded her and others from the hearing
She’s right: this program began in 2020, under former Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, to address an existing caregiver shortage. Federal funding has since dried up, and enrollment and service costs are spiraling upward. The resultant hole will take $122 million to backfill. Hobbs introduced a bill to cover those costs4 and has also backed amendments to other bills which would fund the program. But, incredibly, Livingston is lambasting Hobbs for not going through the legislature to request funding even as he refuses her efforts to fund it.
In an attempt to defend his position, Livingston says, “We just can't grow a program by $100 million a year without ramps and guardrails.” That’s wildly hypocritical nonsense. Arizona’s out-of-control ESA voucher program ran over budget by $113 million last year and by another $274.8 million the year before. Despite increasing demands from the public for accountability, Livingston supported fully funding the voucher entitlement in both instances.
And can we talk about how insensitive it is for Livingston to have used the words “ramps and guardrails” to describe cuts to a program that helps children who, in many cases, rely on *literal* ramps and guardrails??
Shame on you, Mr. Livingston. Our tax dollars are not Monopoly money, and disabled kids are not political pawns.
SB1490, sponsored by Lela Alston (D-5), would gradually raise the monthly stipend for kinship foster care parents (those related to the child) to the same $600 per month that every other foster parent gets. Kinship foster parents are often grandparents raising grandkids; the bill sponsor, who has been working for parity for these families since 2019, says some families must give their children up to the state because they cannot afford to take care of them. This bill would decrease the number of children who end up in group homes. Scheduled for Senate Appropriations Committee, Tuesday. SUPPORT.
HB2456, sponsored by David Marshall (R-7), is subject to a striker from Nancy Gutierrez (D-18) that would hold adults responsible for failing to take “reasonable measures” to secure firearms from minors. The bill, dubbed Christian’s Law, is named for a 15-year-old boy who went to spend the night with a friend and never returned after being killed in an accidental shooting. The boy’s father, Bruce Petillo, views the measure as similar to seatbelt or drunk driving laws, which have both been credited with saving countless lives, saying, “What you have in your possession can take a life in an instant, and there’s a responsibility that goes with that.” Arizona’s GOP-led legislature has consistently refused to consider any restrictions on firearms. Scheduled for House Appropriations Committee, Monday. Use RTS and specify in your comment that you SUPPORT the strike-everything amendment.
HB2926, sponsored by Michael Carbone (R-25), is subject to a striker that would make it more difficult for Arizonans in need to keep their government healthcare benefits by raising the income threshold and requiring at least 20 hours of work per week from “able-bodied” workers. Work requirements for AHCCCS enrollees are terrible policy: they’re punitive, fail to move people out of poverty, and lead to low-income people losing their health coverage. Similar to a vetoed proposal from last year. Scheduled for House Appropriations Committee, Monday. OPPOSE.
Need help? We’ll offer our RTS 101 training this Monday night. That link and so many others are available on our Linktree:
2025 Session Timeline
Monday, 2/24 Crossover Week begins (most committee hearings are suspended)
Friday, 3/28 Last day for a bill to get out of committees in its crossover house
(and the last day to use RTS until a budget drops)
Tuesday, 4/22 100th Day of Session (the stated end goal; can be changed)
Monday, 6/30 Last day to pass a constitutionally mandated state budgetFlag this handy list of contact info, committee chairs and assignments, freshly updated for 2025.
Bookmark CEBV’s Linktree. Want other ways to take action or stay informed? Looking for our social media? It’s all on our Linktree.
A striker, also called a “strike-everything amendment,” is a gut-and-replace amendment that introduces new ideas (or revives old ones) which don't even have to be related to the original bill. This article tells you more.
If you have a MUCH higher than usual tolerance for swearing, and you truly want to know how parents of kids who rely on this program feel, watch this TikTok. But don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Yes, we know governors don’t introduce bills. Hobbs worked with Assistant Minority Leader Nancy Gutierrez (D-18) to see this one introduced. In such situations, most folks around the Capitol discuss such bills as “the governor’s.”