Spectacularly absurd:
Columnist Laurie Roberts has named her top seven legislators this year in the Arizona Capitol’s theater of the absurd. The legislators’ actions, she says, will make your jaw drop.
They are this year’s standouts, the cream of the class in that theater of the absurd we call a state Capitol.
Legislators who by their actions this year have made quite a name for themselves.
Naturally, there are no shortage of runners-up to Arizona’s Spectacular Seven.
Honorable mention goes to Rep. Jay Lawrence, R-Scottsdale, who is moving swiftly to deal with what must be an excessive rat problem in the northeast Valley by pushing a bill that would allow city dwellers to load up their guns with rat shot or snake shot and blast away.
Alas, with so many contestants, Lawrence didn’t make the cut for this glorious gallery of our most stunning leaders. Not even close.
Here are my picks for the Arizona Legislature’s Spectacular Seven, cycle 2017:
No. 7: Sen. Sylvia Allen
This Snowflake Republican penned the remarkable “When is it ever enough?” column, grousing about all you greedy publicschool supporters who think we should spend more on K-12 education. And she’s the chairman of the Senate Education Committee.
Apparently, she’s just fine with spending $3,360 less per student than the national average. Then again, average is so overrated, and given that our leaders are moving toward sending all the suburban kids to private schools anyway, what does it matter?
Say it with me now: We’re No. 48!
No. 6: Rep. Tony Rivero
This two-term Peoria Republican came rushing to the aid of victimized gun owners by proposing to weaken Shannon’s Law, which makes it a felony to negligently fire a weapon inside city limits.
Rivero apparently thinks we have an epidemic of gun owners who are being branded as felons after they accidentally fire their guns.
“How many miscarriages of justice are acceptable?” he asked his colleagues in January. Unfortunately, he couldn’t name even one. That’s because prosecutors don’t go after people whose guns accidentally discharge. They go after the yahoos who believe no celebration is complete until they act like total idiots and fire off their guns into the city skies, never mind that what goes up must, well, you know.
Fortunately, Senate President Steve Yarbrough, R-Chandler, killed Rivero’s bill, saying, “It’s important to have this law in place to deter folks from firing weapons in these circumstances, even accidentally.”
No. 5: Sen. Sonny Borrelli
Borrelli drew national attention when he proposed a new strategy to silence dissent. This Lake Havasu City Republican proposed giving police broad new powers to seize the assets of anyone involved in organizing a protest that results in property damage — regardless of whether they were the ones doing the damage.
Borrelli’s bill, declaring such protest organizers to be racketeers, passed the Senate but was killed by House Speaker J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, because it made Arizona look, well, crAZy.
When he’s not working to stifle public protest, Borrelli has been working to light up much of northwestern Arizona with digital billboards, reneging on an earlier deal that protected the area. Because who doesn’t want to see the glaring ads about Laughlin casinos as they drive beneath a (formerly) star-studded Arizona sky?
No. 4: Sen. Judy Burges
Best known in past years for her kooky bills to battle national and global conspiracies, Burges has been rather quiet this year. Well, until recently, when she replied to a citizen who emailed her with concerns about a bill that undermines our right to make laws at the ballot box.
“You must be a paid troll,” the Sun City West Republican wrote. “Seems that I hear a lot from them these days.”
Turned out, the “troll” was an 82-yearold great-grandmother from Scottsdale. After the story became public, other citizens called on Burges to apologize, only to get bizarre replies from this elected leader.
“I just ran your email through the spell checker. You might want to try it and see if you have any grammatical errors,” Burges told one emailer.
“What is a troll?” Burges asked another. “How do they work? What is their purpose?”
No. 3: Rep. Bob Thorpe
This Flagstaff Republican always exceeds my expectations for goofball ideas, and this year, starting his third term, he’s been in fine form. First came his attempt to bar Arizona’s publicly funded schools, community colleges and universities from teaching about or even discussing anything that promotes “social justice toward a race, gender, religion, political affiliation, social class or other class of people.”
Students still would be able to learn about “the accurate history of any ethnic group” under Thorpe’s bill, though Thorpe doesn’t specify who gets to decide what’s accurate. (Thorpe, perhaps?)
Meanwhile, he has continued his glorious fight against federal tyranny, proposing that our leaders henceforth declare that the sovereign state of Arizona will ignore any executive order issued by the president of the United States and any policy directive from any federal agency unless it is affirmed by Congress and signed into law.
And who can forget Thorpe’s proposal to prevent Northern Arizona University students from voting in Flagstaff’s elections?
Speaking of politics, Thorpe has expressed concern about out-of-state interests influencing Arizona’s elections. So much so that he proposed barring anyone from out of state from contributing to a campaign to get a ballot initiative passed. Curiously, though, out-of-staters still could contribute to our leaders’ reelection campaigns under Thorpe’s bill.
Thus far, none of Thorpe’s bills have gone anywhere.
No. 2: Rep. Vince Leach
This Tucson Republican is the frontman for the stinkiest of a bucketful of stink bombs aimed at undermining your constitutional right to make laws at the ballot box: the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s House Bill 2404.
The bill will make it more expensive and therefore all but impossible for any grass-roots group to mount a successful initiative campaign in the future. Leach says it’s all about “restoring integrity” to the process, which is code for restoring control to the chamber and its powerful members who are still steaming about the 58 percent of Arizona voters who in November raised the state’s minimum wage.
Naturally, Leach’s bill allows politicians to continue the more cost-effective approach of collecting signatures on their nominating petitions. So much for the restoration of integrity.
No. 1: Sen. Debbie Lesko
Look at any bad bill at the Legislature, and it’s likely you’ll find Lesko’s name attached to it. She is state chairwoman of the American Legislative Exchange Council, and many of her bills come from the group’s wish list.
This Peoria Republican is the brains behind the bill to offer credit-challenged Arizonans the golden opportunity to borrow money at the low, low interest rate of 164 percent.
She’s the one pushing to dramatically expand school vouchers, diverting everlarger sums of the public’s cash into private-school tuition via Empowerment Scholarship Accounts.
And the latest bad bill aimed at undermining your constitutional right to go around our leaders and make laws via initiative — the one aimed at getting judges to toss out any petition where the margins are an eighth of an inch off or the type a smidge smaller than the mandated 8 points? That’s Lesko, too.
Of course, Lesko says her proposal to make it easier to toss out petitions for technical reasons is in no way a proposal to take away our rights: “My legislation merely says all initiatives, whether I agree with them or not, have to follow the Constitution and the Arizona Revised Statutes.”
Genius thinking. Because, of course, without Lesko’s bill, it’s a well-established fact that no initiative would have to follow the Constitution and Arizona Revised Statutes.