By Jim Nintzel and Sidney Philips
HAVING ALREADY passed the budget and handed back $200 million in tax cuts--half of it to the richest 4 percent in the state, of course--the 42nd Legislature just needs to take care of a few final details and lawmakers can head home.
To begin with, there's the matter of handing out raises to their brethren pols. The Senate Government Committee passed a bill giving $10,000 raises to elected county officials in Pima and Maricopa counties, including supervisors Ed Moore, Paul Marsh and Mike Boyd. County Attorney Steve Neely picks up an additional $17,000 a year.
The House had originally passed a bill giving supervisors the right to vote to give themselves a pay increase, but Tucson's own Sen. Patti Noland (R-13) realized how much heat that could generate for local Republicans, so she stripped the original language from the bill and just gave them the raise, from $42,000 to $52,000 (with an increase to $92,000 for Neely). Elected officials in other counties got similar hikes.
The committee passed the new bill unanimously, sending it along on the path to becoming law.
About the same time, lawmakers were well on the way to putting more money in their own pockets by doubling their per diem allowance from $60 to $120 a day for members from outside Maricopa County--a boost that will add about $8,000 to their annual income.
In a GOP caucus, freshman members from Phoenix complained they deserved a per diem raise as well.
"My costs have gone up, too, and if part of us can't have it, we should find another way," whined Rep. Marilyn Jarrett, a Mesa Republican, who probably ought to have looked into the pay before running for the job.
Rep. Fulton Brock (R-Phoenix) got to his feet in the meeting and asked his fellow Republicans when the voters last had a chance to give lawmakers a raise. No one had the heart to tell him it was in the election that put him in office.
One lobbyist in attendance suggested the Republicans could raid the Heritage Fund for the raise.
Meanwhile, on the states' rights front, the People for the West--that grassroots gang of good rural folks backed by the big bucks of ranching, logging and mining industries--threw a party over the weekend in Mesa. Members used the gathering to discuss how much they'd suffer if subsidized ranching became any more expensive.
The event drew plenty of Republican lawmakers, including U.S. reps J.D. Hayworth (R-District 6) and Matt Salmon (R-District 1) and state Rep. Rusty Bowers, a Mesa Republican, who was showered with praise for his hard work dismantling environmental laws over the last few months.
Bowers probably found the convention a nice break from the game moderate GOP lawmakers in the House caucus have been playing with him, "Make Rusty Turn Red." Members are keeping score on how many times they can make him turn bright crimson, which he has a penchant for doing whenever confronted. A west Phoenix moderate is said to have the lead.
Also on hand at the People for the West confab was Graham County Sheriff Richard Mack, who told a reporter the gathering was "basically like going to church--it's just a recharge."
Mack hung around town until Monday, when he turned up at the Capitol with Pat Buchanan, the bullying columnist and radio hate show host who's once again chasing the GOP nomination for president.
Buchanan put on his usual show, entrancing his audience with a sermon about the culture war, family values, closing the border and cutting off foreign aid.
Mack told the crowd a candidate like Buchanan could inspire him to register Republican.
Even with Mack's support, however, Buchanan has an upward climb. The right wing has already pledged fealty to Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, and the moderates are backing Sen. Bob Dole. That leaves Buchanan with rural Democrat gun nuts. Well, at least it's a constituency.
Speaking of that madcap free-for-all 1996 election, the House continued to push for a February presidential primary date, hoping to make Arizona the "New Hampshire of the West." Our primary would take place a week after voting day in the Granite State, which would then presumably make Arizona a kingmaker in presidential politics.
Or Republican presidential politics, anyway, because lawmakers are determinedly ignoring the fact that national Democratic Party rules prohibit state Demos from participating in a primary before March 5.
In other words, the Republican leadership is pushing to hold a primary election that will cost taxpayers at least $2.5 million, and 873,000 Democrats won't even be able to vote.
"This is the arrogance of the Republican majority at its worst," said state Democratic Party honcho Steve Owens, grumbling that the whole thing was engineered by Gov. J. Fife Symington III to boost the presidential stock of liege-lord Gramm. "If this is going to be a Republican-only primary, the Republican Party, not the taxpayers, should pay for it."
The logic was lost on the House States' Rights and Mandates Committee, chaired by Mesa Republican Jeff Groscost. The committee dismissed the concerns of Demos and pushed the legislation through.
The same day, Groscost resurrected his legislation making it a crime for state officials to comply with the federal Endangered Species Act. Other lawmakers had complained his original bill went too far by slapping state employees with felony charges, so Groscost's new version reads, "A person who attempts to implement or who enforces any provision of the federal Endangered Species Act in this state that is not ratified by the legislature is guilty of a Class One misdemeanor."
"I wish it was still a felony," said Rep. David Farnsworth (R-Snowflake), as he voted for the bill, which passed the committee.
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