"How does that sound?"--3/23/17

Hi everyone! Today was  another day in the Senate, because according to Rep. Ugenti-Rita's assistant, Mr. Klugman, there wasn't much going on in the House and he likes to go out of his way to make sure I am entertained (have I mentioned how grateful I am of this? not to say that the House can be boring, but you can imagine). So I started the day at the Senate Judiciary committee, which was a first, and was very interesting because I got to witness a confirmation hearing for a judge. Of course, he was accepted as a judge because he was very qualified and so on. But he told his life story, which was interesting to hear, so I encourage all of you to watch here (if the times are off, it is from 2:07 to 20:07):



After that, I went to the House floor, where they passed another ridiculous number of bills, but this time there was a little more debate here and there. After which, I met with the Rep. Ugenti-Rita and Mr. Klugman to discuss what I should do now that committees were pretty much done (with the exception of Appropriations, because it's kinda important to budget talks). The Rep. Ugenti-Rita then had the idea that I could interview the Speaker of the House and the House minority leader, which is being set up right now! Which she then came up with the quote of they day, to which I obviously responded with a yes. In fact, the whole Democratic Leadership has agreed to meet with me, and so I am currently getting my questions ready for my interview! So if you have any ideas or suggestions as to what I should ask, please comment below!! See you next week!

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"I get to cover Arizona politicos in all their glory and then get paid for writing about it. What more could you want?"--3/23/17

Last day of committees! I was actually in House Ways and Means this morning, which was something I hadn't done in a while (tbh not much had changed), so it was nice to see some familiar faces and Rep. Ugenti-Rita rocking it as chairwoman. I won't talk about any of the bills, even though they were pretty interesting, because they don't really affect any of our lives personally (unless you work for the city and the city owns a hotel), but I encourage all of you to watch it all here.

After the floor (where not much was going on), I then went to Senate Government, where I didn't get to see many of the bills on the agenda because the members spent a lot of time discussing one of the strike-everything amendments to a bill that was being heard (in case I haven't mentioned, a strike everything amendment is an amendment that is proposed that deletes everything in the bill and pretty much gets replaced by something completely different- for some legislators, this is a way to introduce bills after committees stop hearing new things). The proposed amendment was going to install GPS systems in school buses to collect data as a part of a pilot program (ie a new thing they will do for a year) to analyze efficiency and possibly save the state money, considering Arizona reimburses the schools for gas for the school buses. After much debate, when voting one Senator was having a tough time deliberating, and so they called recess in the middle of voting and kicked the public out of the room. At that point, I left because it was time for me to go anyways, but the bill passed.

And now for the quote, which actually comes from Howard Fischer, a reporter. I wanted to use some time to talk about how my research has been going outside my time at the capitol since some of you have been asking and I haven't really discussed it yet. When I began my project, I wanted to track bill coverage in the media as it went through the legislature; however, if you haven't noticed by the number of bills I've been talking about, that it pretty much impossible to do. And from what I've been researching, the news media and film/television (which were other parts I was going to study) don't really cover the state legislature at all. So for now, I've been shifting through newspaper articles, and I won't get too much into it because this post is pretty long already, I will point out one thing that I have noticed. Even though there are 20+ newspapers in the state, many of the local newspapers (like the Yuma Sun, for example), don't actually employ any journalists to cover the state legislature. Instead, this journalist, Howard Fischer, who founded this company called Capitol Media Services, writes articles which he sells to all of these local papers who only use his articles. Meaning, that many Arizonans are only getting news from this one guy. Crazy right? The quote of the day is from his Twitter bio, which you should take a look at. So anyways, I wanted to give you guys a glimpse at what my research has been focused on, but if you have any questions or suggestions I would really appreciate it. Also, sorry my posts have been coming out kinda late, the last couple of weeks have been kinda hectic (which isn't really an excuse, but I wanted to apologize anyways). And because you read all of this, here is an Arizona meme because it's the state legislature and we need to keep our memes local:

what ms. mitrovich 100% intended when she said add more photos

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"What's up bro?"--3/20/17

Hi everyone! Today was another day that started on the floor, which must have destroyed records on number of bills voted on- this was their agenda, and they got through it in under an hour with almost zero debate. Some days are like this, where they just decide to vote on all of the noncontroversial bills and get them done, and then save some of the bills with more opposition for another day.

Afterwards, I went to the House education committee, which is starting to beat out the Government committee as my favorite committee, because they were discussing a lot of interesting bills. One of the bills was actually about Senior Projects! (well, kinda) SB1156 changes the way that attendance is calculated at schools to what was the common practice and not the actual statute that the Department began to enforce after realizing that what was going on in a couple of schools was not accurate for the calculations that existed in law (which is very important, because how attendance is marked affects the amount of funding the school gets from the state). The new law, according to committee testimony, only really affects seniors, because to be considered a "full time student", you have to complete a certain number of hours of being in a classroom, which is not the case for many students who complete credits early and go get a job or a Senior Project (boom related). The law changes it so that a full time student does not need to reach a total number of hours (720 to be exact), only the number of instructional hours (ie hours in a classroom) so these students aren't forced into classrooms to take unnecessary classes (currently you have to do both, so this law gets rid of the first requirement). The opposition argued that one of the consequences of this law could include schools just putting in filler to keep students there and not actually teaching them. The bill passed anyways, so now it goes to the House floor for a vote, where if it passes it goes to the Governors office for a signature (provided  that the House does not amend the bill, which if so it has to go all the way back to the Senate for another vote to approve the change yes democracy is slow).

But if you didn't care about hearing about legislation (and if so, why are you here?), here is a photo from the committee hearing where you can see my notebook:

wow  im famous

Ms. Mitirovich told us all to put more photos in our blogs, so there it is. My brother told me I need to insert more memes into my blog, so I'll get working on those too since I know you guys might be getting bored of the committee meetings. But if that's true, good news for you! This week is the last week of committees! After this, all the bills that haven't been heard yet are dead (rip), and the legislature will begin to work on the budget until the end of the session.

And now for the quote of the day. It actually comes from Rep. Weninger to Rep. Espinoza in the hallway, which brings me back to one of the most surprising things that once again I have probably already discussed- legislators are people too.  I know, it sounds dumb, but since I have spent the past three months watching these people do great things from afar it's still jarring to hear them call each other bro as I pass them in the hallway. And on that point, I know that one of the things people like to complain about is "dark money" and politicians just going with their party instead of their beliefs etc. etc., but one of the most admirable things I have seen is legislators voting with their conscious. That's not to say that they don't vote on party lines, because they do at times, but whenever a legislator has an issue with the bill they will do what they can to work with the sponsor and fix that bill so that they can support it on the floor alongside the other members. What I'm trying to say is, when they vote it's their actual opinion, there is no secret puppet master telling them to vote the way they do (or at least, to my knowledge). I also think its just funny that they call each other bro.

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