Journalists’ Roundtable: Arizona legislation, federal visits and more

April 11

This week’s topics:

Deportation bill
RFK, Homan visit the Capitol
Axon bill
Arizona disability funding
Stolen Valor bill

What does the deportation bill entail?

Howie Fischer: “Well, it’s essentially daring the Governor, if you will, to veto it. It says, ‘You will cooperate. You will cooperate with federal officials. You will cooperate with immigration officials.’ Some of that is technical, for example, if you’ve got somebody in your county jail, and there is a detainer on them by I.C.E., you have to keep them for I.C.E. The question is, what else does it mean?”

Fischer: “Her comment is ‘Well, but look at what I am doing. I have a task force for border security, and look at all the fentanyl we’ve picked up, and look at all the marijuana we picked up.’ She’s focusing on that, and saying ‘The issue of immigration is not primary.’ I don’t know that the voters believe that.”

Mark Brodie: “The Democrats, in general, have made the argument that immigration is a federal obligation, that the federal government has the responsibility to enforce the border and deal with immigration policy, and the state has a sliver of that to deal with things inside the state.”

Arizona Capitol visit

Mary Jo Pitzl: “Some of them [Democratic politicians] did not show up at all, and those that did promptly stood up and paraded around with signs, as they were exiting the chamber, with the names of people who they say have been wrongfully deported.”

Fischer: “Homan played off of it and said ‘If these Democrats would have hung around, I would have told them what’s going on,’ so I don’t know if they accomplished anything.”

Brodie: “His [Tom Homan] message is basically if you’re in this country illegally, you should be looking over your shoulder, like if you’re here illegally, you should not be here, and if we find you, you’re out.”

Secretary of Health and Human Services pushes two new bills

Pitzl: “This was specifically to promote two bills that are already on their way up to the Governor. One that would remove certain additives from school meals in the name of healthier food, and the other one that would bar people who use food stamps from using those food stamps to buy soda.”

Fischer: “I asked him [Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] I said, ‘Well, have you seen the sugared cereals that are on the shelf and everything else?’ and he said ‘Well, you know, if it were up to me, we’d get rid of those too, but you got to start somewhere.’ Now, what’s also interesting is that J.J. Cooper from the Associated Press tried to ask him about some of the other things going on. We’ve got issues of measles and vaccine and fluoride, and he basically was shouted down, so obviously Mr. Kennedy and his entourage only want to talk about these two bills.”

What does the Axon bill entail?

Pitzl: “Axon is an Arizona-based company; they make tasers, and that’s how they were previously known. They have bought a big parcel estate trust land. They bought it saying, ‘We’re going to build our international headquarters here,’ and they came back and said, ‘And we’re going to put in housing; we’re going to bring a lot of workers here, we need housing.’ The Scottsdale City Council granted that, in terms of zoning, they gave an exception for that, and citizens rose up and have successfully referred this to the ballot.”

Brodie: “Many of the people who signed the petition to put this on the ballot to stop it, it’s really just the apartments that they don’t like. They weren’t upset about retail, they weren’t upset about a hotel on this property; they didn’t want apartments.”

Update on Arizona disability bill

Pitzl: “The latest is that the Republicans have introduced a bill that says, ‘We will appropriate the money to give you the $122 million that’s needed to keep this program running through the end of the year, and then down the road, we’re going to cut the number of hours we will pay these parents that act as caregivers for their kids to 20; currently they’re getting 40 plus hours.”

Pitzl: “You have all these people, parents with kids with disabilities, you’ve also got caregivers, and they’re all like, ‘Money is running out May 1, what are we going to do?’ It’s a back and forth between lawmakers’ intent on the process and the Governor saying, ‘This is ridiculous; you do this for ESAs. This is not a problem.'”