Journalists’ Roundtable: Arizona public health cuts and campaigns

It’s Friday, which means it is time for another edition of Journalists’ Roundtable. This week, “Arizona Horizon” host Ted Simons was joined by Jeremy Duda of Axios Phoenix, Camryn Sanchez of KJZZ and Wayne Schutsky of KJZZ.

This week’s topics:

• Arizona vs. HHS public health cuts
• Arizona vs. Trump mass firings
• Horne vs. Arizona Freedom Caucus
• Lawmaker pay raises
• Wadsack vs. Tucson Police Department
• Kolodin’s Secretary of State campaign

How do HHS public health cuts affect Arizona?

Camryn Sanchez: “We’re not the only state concerned about it. It greatly affects, potentially, our state budget as well. I think we’re talking about negotiations for what we need in terms of our health system; it coincides a lot with the federal health system.”

Wayne Schutsky: “A lot of government spending is planned and so just because there’s a temporary hold put on this order, it doesn’t mean the public health administrators can just start spending that money again. They have to kind of plan as if it’s not there until they get more definitive answers.”

Ongoing lawsuits against President Donald Trump

Schutsky: “I believe there was a tenth today, that the Attorney General signed on to with other Attorneys General that had to do with funding for libraries, museums and things like that, that’s also being cut.”

Jeremy Duda: “I think she’s [Kris Mayes] counting on Trump being unpopular, the Republicans being unpopular next year. It will be a midterm with the Republican in the White House; traditionally voters will go the other way.”

Tom Horne vs. Arizona Freedom Caucus

Schutsky: “Senator Hoffman is the leader of this far-right freedom caucus group at the legislature and has been getting more involved in running his own candidates for various, whether they’re state political party positions to elected positions. The most recent one, he said he wants someone to run against Tom Horne, who is our Republican Superintendent, and his big criticism was he said that Tom Horne is the biggest threat to the school voucher program in the state, which is surprising considering that the Superintendent is a huge defender of the school voucher program.”

Sanchez: “Horne defended himself, and he said, “Well, yes, of course I’m a defender of the ESA program. I support school choice, I support the vouchers.”

Pay raise for lawmakers

Duda: “These folks do not make a lot of money, as we saw a few weeks ago when Senator Eva Burch resigned, siting money. These pay raises generally have to be approved by the voters; the voters have not been so keen on doing that. The last time they did that was in 1998. Some lawmakers want to give them another opportunity next year.”

Sanchez: “Voters are going to understand, I think, that this is still a 100% pay increase, which sounds great to me. That’s not small potatoes if you’re being offered that, and I think there’s something to be said though for having it, but voters don’t seem to ever really care that much about those arguments, like you get what you pay for; you want lawmakers who actually represent you, not just those who are independently wealthy. All that stuff in the past has not worked out that well.”

Why is former Senator Wadsack suing the City of Tucson?

Sanchez: “She was going like 75 in a 35 a couple months ago. We all read about it because when she got pulled over, she said, “I’m a lawmaker; you can’t do this to me.” They waited, they gave her a ticket. She said she shouldn’t have to pay it, took it to court, the court said, “No, you don’t get special privileges to break the law.”

Duda: “The strangest part of a very strange lawsuit when I was looking through it: She claimed that she was pulled over as part of this conspiracy against her. They said, “We’re gonna pull over Justine Wadsack to hurt her career.” No explanation, not even a couple of words on how some random Tucson Police Department patrol officer knew that this car that was allegedly going 71 miles an hour belonged to a state legislator.”

Kolodin’s Secretary of State campaign

Schutsky: “In some ways, it could be a bit of re-run of the last time when we saw Mark Finchem take on Adrian Fontes because Finchem and Kolodin have shared a lot of disproven theories of election fraud, and I think that’s going to be a big part of this election.”

Sanchez: “He’s been a party to a lot of election fraud cases. He was in the Kraken lawsuit, he’s been sanctioned, he got a slap on the wrist from the state bar, and he really started off this campaign giving reporters a brick wall.”