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.
Continue reading #AZLeg Week 3 Ends, as Pandemic Rages in Arizona (video)