Journalists’ Roundtable 06-18-21: Governor vs. ASU, Budget update

Time now for this week’s Journalists‘ Roundtable, and for a look at the Governor’s target on  ASU’s COVID-19 mitigation efforts, along with the latest on the state budget, we welcome Mary Jo Pitzl of The Arizona Republic and Jeremy Duda of Arizona Mirror.

This week’s journalists’ roundtable covered:

• Governor vs. ASU
• Budget Update
• Senate Review of Election Ballots
• Salmon Announces for Governor

Governor vs. ASU

Mary Jo Pitzl: “You know, it’s just another front in the mask war. I mean, masks have become so politicized. You just wait until younger kids are going back to school this fall, that will be a huge issue.”

Jeremy Duda: “There’s an argument some critics have made that we still don’t know that much about the COVID vaccine, whereas, like a Measles vaccine, we know pretty much all there is to know about it. But this is kind of an extension of a lot of these other fights that we’ve seen over things  like vaccine passports.”

State Budget Hiatus

Mary Jo Pitzl: “We got a June 30th deadline. As a long-time journalist, there is nothing like a deadline to clarify things, so I would suspect that next week would be a lot of budget word.”

Jeremy Duda: “The clock might be ticking even a little bit before the end of the month when they have to have a budget. Sounds like Speaker Bowers and maybe some others are getting a little frustrated here.”