We ended the third week of the Legislature today and finally voted on some bills on the floor of the House. Since everyone was not there, we didn’t vote on anything controversial. Consequently, there were only a handful of vote explanations.
Although I didn’t say much, I ended up saying more than many people today. I introduced the LD9 doctor of the day.
I took a tip from our Coms guy and explained my vote on HB2109 with one word … “Bingo!”
Some of the new members were wondering about my “no” on HB2122, so I explained my vote on that also. HB2122 allows municipalities to move financial advising fees for bond issues out of the bond budget and allows those fees to be paid from another unspecified source. In my opinion, this is a transparency issue. I know many constituents who are looking at budgets and data on governmental websites in order to determine how local, county, state and federal governments are spending our tax dollars. If they look at the budget for a multi year bond issues, they expect to see the total cost. They shouldn’t have to dig around in layers of PDFs on a governmental website to find out the total cost. The cost of government should be transparent and readily available to the people.
Besides all of that, the big news for me today is that I have an appointment to get a 1B vaccine in Phoenix on Friday. If you have a chance to get the COVID-19 vaccine, I suggest you go ahead and do it. According to experts on NPR’s Science Friday both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are 90 percent effective at immunity. (There are other unknowns they are figruing out. For example, they are trying to determine if immunized people can be COVID carriers.)
Arizona still has one of the worst pandemic outbreaks. Wear a mask, practice social distancing and get the vaccine as soon as you can. Masks are going to be in our future for several months to come.
I miss you all and your energy. It’s not the same at the Capital without the constituent groups. We are getting work done, but meeting with constituents and taking photos is one of my favorite things. Take care!
VACCINE UPDATE: The operation was very efficient with many National Guard troops directing cars and checking people in. So far, no side effects from the Moderna vaccine beyond light tingling around the shot about an hour later.
This post was originally published on Facebook on January 29, 2021.