Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

A couple of things that our legislature was up to this week that you may have missed.

On Tuesday, the Committee on Counties, Municipalities and Military Affairs passed HB 2069, an attempt by the state legislature to insert itself in negotiations between Cox Cable and the City of Tucson. Local control is all fine and good for the Republicans, unless someone can hire a popular lobbyist, I guess. Susan Bitter-Smith, lobbyist for Cox, claimed that this bill is a “tax decrease.” Eh?

These guys up there are suckers for anything that someone calls a tax cut or a credit.

This has been typical of some of the big companies that don’t think they are doing well negotiating with Tucson, whether it’s Clear Channel Outdoor or Cox Cable: if negotiations aren’t going well, just go up to Phoenix and claim your billion dollar corporation is being put upon by those nasty Maoists on the Tucson city council. I have a feeling that if this had been done to the cities of Glendale or Mesa that it would have not even gotten a hearing.

I’ve heard it said that this bill is just a “negotiating technique” by Cox. How does that work? If Cox gets what they want, they cancel the bill? It’s kind of out of their hands now, ennit?

I’ve been told to look out for attacks on the Clean Elections system, and here is a big one: HCR 2020.  This would call for a referendum to get rid of Clean Elections, the bill is sponsored by Rick Murphy.  I’m sure Murphy’s opposition to the law has nothing to do with his own running afoul of it.

By the way, co-sponsors Trish Groe and Lucy Mason have taken Clean Elections money before.  I’m sure they really hated having to do it though.

I’d rather this doesn’t pass, but I think the bill’s sponsors are fooling themselves if they think that there is some groundwell against the Clean Elections law. Polling that was done during the last attempt to ditch the law showed that the system was quite popular.  “Let the politicians be funded by the lobbyists,” ain’t much of a campaign slogan.

Of course, part of the thing that helps is the name “Clean Elections.” I mean, who could be against that? Well, they’ve got something on that too.  SB1188 would change the name of the law to the “Publicly Funded Elections Act.” This was also a tactic that conservatives used in Maine, but they didn’t succeed in giving their law the clunkier and less pretty name. For reasons unfathomable to this blogger, SB1188 is sponsored and co-sponsored by several Democrats.

HCR2020 has only been assigned to one committee, rules, but has not yet been heard. SB1188 passed the judiciary committee but is awaiting action in rules.

There are two interesting bills regarding solar energy that are making their way through the legislature.  It is silly that Arizona is not a leader in the use of solar power. Heck, even rainy old Oregon beats us on this one. This could be because solar power is still in many conservative minds linked with some 70’s hippie-dippieism.  Remember when one of Ronald Reagan’s first acts was taking down the White House solar panels?

One bill is sponsored by Steve Farley and Lucy Mason that would give tax credits to ratepayers (both individuals and buisnesses) who use solar power and the credit would be paid for by a surcharge on the use of non-renewable energy. The bill, HB2674, has been assigned to committee and is co-sponsored by Doug Clark and Lena Seradnik.

Another bill, also sponsored by Mason (who I was giving grief a few paragraphs ago, ain’t politics funny?), Seradnik and Tom O’Halleran would create enterprise zones and give property tax credits to renewable energy providers, and also give a tax break to those who do buisness with those providers. That bill, HB2691, is co-sponsored by Ed Ableser, Manny Alvarez, Bill Kopinicki and Jack Brown. The bill has been assigned but not yet heard by any committee.

NB - The above illustration was created by Bob Richards. I wrote a bit about its history here.