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"There are two kinds of light - the glow that illumines, and the glare that obscures."
~ James Thurber
March 6, 2015
credit: Kristen Caldon
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Dear Conservation Friends,
The legislative leadership and governor's office released a budget this week. As usual, the process to develop this package was a limited to a few people meeting behind closed doors. They then release the bills and give people almost no time to read and digest them before they vote them out of the respective Appropriations committees in the House and Senate, which happened yesterday. Legislators will be considering them on the floor today and possibly vote them out, but only if they get the votes.
The budget includes significant cuts to the Water Quality Assurance Revolving Fund (WQARF), which is the State's superfund program, continues to underfund the Arizona Department of Water Resources, State Parks, and other environmental agencies, and provides a slush fund of $1 million at the Attorney General's office for a "Federalism Unit" to challenge the federal government on just about everything. Apparently, this may be the funding they use to fund challenges to recovery of the Mexican gray wolf.
The budget package also includes a proposed constitutional amendment to swipe up to 10 percent of the State Trust Land dollars from the sale of State Trust Lands annually for the "management" of State Trust Lands. There are no details on what that means, no provisions for conservation, and no provisions for ensuring that this is in the best interest of the Trust. (See HCR2038 trust land management; budget reconciliation.)
SB1185 appropriation; wolf recovery; litigation costs (Griffin, Allen, Burges, et al.), the bill that appropriates $250,000 to challenge any expansion of the Mexican wolf recovery program in Arizona, advanced out of the House Agriculture, Land, and Water Committee this week, even though there are no dollars in the budget for it. As noted above, they are looking to fund this out of the federalism litigation dollars that were inserted in the budget. Please continue to let legislators know you oppose spending Arizona tax dollars to hinder recovery of these highly endangered animals.
Ask your state representatives to oppose efforts to stop wolf recovery.
The public lands grab continues as the House continues to advance several bills to seek control of federal public lands.
Please protect our public lands – ask your state representatives to vote NO on bills to grab federal public lands.
Legislators also advanced bills to oppose the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule to ensure that most of Arizona's rivers and streams have protections provided by the Clean Water Act.
Ask your state representatives to oppose bills that could harm our rivers and streams.
credit: Sandy Bahr |
Ask your state senator to oppose bills that seek to eliminate Clean Water Act protections for Arizona waters.
There is a memorial and a bill to attempt to get more user-created roads on public lands throughout Arizona. These are still in play as it is unclear if they are going to reject any of these bad ideas.
Ask your state representatives to oppose more user-created roads in our national forests, national monuments, and national parks!
The measure to prohibit cities from requiring salvage of native plants or the planting of native plants could go to the House floor at any time. These is being pushed by the Homebuilders Association of Central Arizona, in other words, big developers.
Ask your state representatives to oppose HB2570. Protect our native plants!
Don't forget that you can register your support or opposition to individual bills that are on a committee agenda via the Request to Speak system. You need not actually speak in the committee. You can register your opinion and a brief comment, and all of the committee members will see it. Please consider doing this as it really helps! Just click on Request to Speak and sign in and find the bills through the search functions. If you do not have an account on the Request to Speak system, please send me an email and I will set one up for you. I will just need your email address and a temporary password.
If you no longer want to receive these updates, just zap me an email or unsubscribe by clicking on "Manage Preferences" at the bottom of the message.
Thank you for speaking up and taking action!
Warm regards,
Chapter Director
Sierra Club – Grand Canyon Chapter
(602) 253-8633
http://arizona.sierraclub.org
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Credit: Mark Coryell |
Monday, March 9th
Senate Committee on Natural Resources at 9:00 a.m. in Senate Hearing Room 109
Senate Committee on State Debt and Budget Reform at 10:00 a.m. in Senate Hearing Room 3
House Committee on Energy, Environment, and Natural Resources at 2:00 p.m. in House Hearing Room 1
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SB1079 solid waste collection; multifamily housing (Griffin, McGuire, Mitchell, et al.) prohibits municipalities from restricting private entities from providing recycling and waste services to multi-family housing. This could result in private entities cherry picking valuable recyclables while leaving the city with the mess, the garbage, that costs taxpayers. OPPOSE.
- SB1465 distributed energy generation systems; disclosure (Lesko, Burges, Griffin, et al.) requires a long list of provisions be included in sales, leases, and financing agreements for solar rooftop systems. Some of the provisions are fine, although unnecessary as there are already several laws requiring transparency and accountability in these leases. Some requirements are clearly intended to erect impediments and discourage solar leases, and at a minimum send a message to the solar industry that they are not welcome here. OPPOSE.
Senate Committee on Water and Energy at 2:00 p.m. in Senate Hearing Room 3
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Wednesday, March 11th
House Committee on Federalism and States' Rights at 9:00 a.m. in House Hearing Room 5
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SCM1014 urging EPA; ozone concentration standard (Griffin, Allen, Burges, et al.) asks that the Environmental Protection Agency not implement the health-based standard for ozone that has been recommended and to instead keep it at the higher level. The memorial does not mention the health impacts of ozone pollution at all. OPPOSE.
Senate Committee on Public Safety, Military, and Technology at 9:00 a.m. in Senate Hearing Room 1
- HB2365 off-highway vehicles; enforcement (Thorpe: Cardenas) allows Game and Fish and the sheriffs to enforce off-highway vehicle provisions on protected federal public lands. Two years ago, Game and Fish and the sheriffs asked for the limitation. Now they want to eliminate it. We hate to say, "we told you so," but we told you so. SUPPORT.
Senate Committee on Government at 2:00 p.m. in Senate Hearing Room 3
- HB2010 (Now: counties; protected development rights; extensions (Shope) allows a county to extend a protected development right plan for 30 years to a maximum of 40 years, if it is a phased development plan that has a gross acreage of more than 1,600 acres. OPPOSE.
- HB2297 state agency rulemaking; restrictions (E Farnsworth) prohibits agencies from adopting rules that would increase existing regulation on property rights or business, unless the rule is part of an overall effort to reduce regulatory burdens or it is strictly ministerial. OPPOSE.
- HB2407 referendum and recall provisions (Stevens) requires strict compliance and additional requirements for petitions regarding referendum and recall. It is already difficult to implement a successful referendum or recall effort. Local referenda have been disqualified frequently due to purely technical provisions and statewide referenda are rare due to the significant signature requirements and time limits. Under this bill, signatures for a local referendum could be discounted merely because they were not submitted in the proper order – organized by circulator. That is an undue burden on constitutional rights and certainly unnecessary. OPPOSE.
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