An Update From That Legislative Repository of 'Biosolids' To The North. By Jim Nintzel LADIES AND GENTLEMEN of the jury: The Weekly charges that the so-called "Loser Pays" bill floating around the state House Of Representatives--HB 2230--is a wretched piece of legislation designed solely to help the rich and powerful in their continuing quest to squash the little guy. We move it be thrown out immediately. Judge for yourself. The bill would force the loser of a lawsuit to pick up the tab for the winner's legal costs--a sum that could stretch into hundreds of thousands of dollars. "It's a bad bill," says Tim Hogan, an attorney with the Center for Law in the Public Interest. "If what we want is a system of justice for the rich, this is what we want to do." In Arizona's legal system, the average guy already has the deck stacked against him if he decides to take on a large corporation with its army of lawyers. Under the "Loser Pays" legislation, he could well be held liable for the high cost of those troops. Hogan says it will certainly discourage people from exercising their legal rights. "If you lose, it doesn't matter how legitimate your claim was, you're going to pay the other person's lawyer," Hogan says. "Well, who's going to be able to afford to do this? If you're facing exposure for $50,000, or whatever you might be liable for if you lose the lawsuit, you're going to think more than twice about bringing it." The bill is especially unnecessary in light of the fact that judges already have the discretion to award attorney fees if they think it appropriate. "This bill is not going to stop corporations or people of wealth from pursuing their claims, but it will stop virtually everyone else," Hogan says. "Much of the groundbreaking rights litigation pursued over the last 200 years wouldn't have been filed. This is a draconian piece of legislation to address a minimal problem. This isn't the kind of stuff that's clogging up the courts." The bill was the brainchild of Rep. Ernie Baird (R-Phoenix), who convinced two other representatives to co-sponsor the legislation. One of them, not surprisingly, was Rep. Jeff Groscost, a Mesa Republican fond of signing nearly anything put under his nose. This year, Groscost has signed onto just shy of 100 bills, including one designed to screw hotel and resort workers out of unemployment compensation, and a Zit Bill, which would make it illegal for a health insurance plan to require a physician's referral to see a dermatologist. Groscost isn't the only fartknocker filing inane legislation. Take a look at House Concurrent Memorial 2001, a memo to the U.S. Congress saying Arizona wants to use holistic resource management on federal lands. What is holistic resource management? We don't know, and it's not defined in the memorial. Apparently, not many people do know what holistic resource management is. House Bill 2211 gives the state land commissioner $375,000 for the natural resource conservation districts--little patches of land essentially run by ranchers--to create courses in holistic management around the state. Any money that isn't spent teaching those holistic methods is up for grabs for land management. Does that sound like a subsidy to you? There are bills to regulate racing electric wheelchairs, tax "hard cider" at 16 cents a gallon, and make it easier to dump sewage sludge--euphemistically referred to as "biosolids"--on farms. "We are choking on a sea of legislation down here and we're right on target for another 1,000-bill session in 100 days," says Sen. Chris Cummiskey, a Phoenix Democrat. "They're incongruent--you can't do a 100-day session and have over 1,000 pieces of legislation fighting for the attention of the committee chairman and the space that's on the calendars." Frustrated by the way lawmakers are doing business, last year Cummiskey started gathering signatures to put the Common Sense Initiative on the ballot in 1996. Under the initiative, each of Arizona's 90 lawmakers could introduce only five bills. Not only would the limit save about $1 million in staff time, printing costs and other related expenses, Cummiskey says, it would also force lawmakers to carefully consider the bills they would introduce. "It would force people to think long and hard about what they wanted to justify to the electorate," he says. Each bill would also be guaranteed a hearing, so committee chairs could no longer sideline bills they didn't like; and the Legislature would be forced to open all its meetings to the public. As it now stands, lawmakers exempt themselves from the open-meetings statute. Cummiskey's petition drive has already forced legislators to change the way they're doing business. A few weeks ago, partly in concession to the initiative, the GOP majority agreed to open its caucus meetings to the public. But Cummiskey gripes that conference committee meetings at the end of the session will still happen behind closed doors. "Most of the substantive bills have massive disagreements," says Cummiskey. "They go into conference committee and these deals are cut at the end of the session." Cummiskey needs to gather signatures from nearly 113,000 registered voters by July to get his measure on the ballot. To give himself a cushion for invalid sigs, he's shooting for 130,000. So far, he says about 36,000 people have signed petitions. He's confident he can get signatures from 50,000 more voters, but admits, "The question really is, can we close that final 50,000?" For more information about the Common Sense Initiative, call (800) 468-4703. To contact your lawmakers about pending legislation, call (800) 352-8404.

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