Last-minute lawmaking: Expedient or opaque?

• Striker bills are popping up as last-gasp efforts to push through legislation.
• Strikers help a bill survive but they move so fast details are hard to absorb.
• Records show strikers have declined generally since 2007 but have ticked up a bit this year.

Until Thursday, almost everyone at the state Capitol thought the effort to do away with photo enforcement was dead.

Except for Rep. Bob Thorpe and Sen. Kelli Ward. The two Republicans quietly transformed one of Ward's bills into a measure that would prevent cities and towns from using cameras to enforce traffic laws.

The result was no more successful than the first run at a camera ban: With one day's notice, a House committee voted to kill Senate Bill 1192.

The measure's short life is a prime example of the significant policy changes that are being considered in hastily called committee hearings as the Legislature races toward a hoped-for April 2 adjournment. Critics say it comes at the expense of transparency and deliberation.

In recent days, lawmakers have used a legislative maneuver called the strike-everything amendment to resurrect bills that have failed, or to introduce legislation for the first time.

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Among them, to name just a few: Gov. Doug Ducey's controversial plan to create a state Inspector General's Office; a 25 percent hike in the campaign-contribution limit for individuals, to $5,000; the dissolution of the state Department of Weights and Measures; and a complicated plan that would extend a penny-per-gallon tax to pay private gasoline-tank owners for cleaning up leaking tanks.

And, of course, the Thorpe-Ward attempt to kill off photo enforcement. To do that, the lawmakers gutted a bill that would rename provisional community-college districts and replaced it with the photo-enforcement ban. The practice of striking the original bill language and replacing it with something completely different is why it's called "strike-everything" a amendment.

While critics decry the practice as opaque and contrary to thoughtful lawmaking, supporters say it's a handy tool to keep alive legislation that arrives late or has hit unfriendly waters.

Sen. Don Shooter, R-Yuma, said strikers are a last-ditch attempt to keep a bill going. Besides, he said, it doesn't happen in the dark: The strikers must get a committee hearing where public testimony is invited and then get the approval of the full chamber in which they were introduced.

"There's no lack of transparency in this because almost every one of those bills have been heard in one place or another; this is just one last-gasp of a dying bill," Shooter added.

The practice is generally supported by the majority Republicans, although some privately say the maneuvers are an abuse of the deliberative process. Democrats have little hesitation about voicing concerns some of their GOP brethren only whisper.

House Minority Leader Eric Meyer, D-Paradise Valley, questions the need for such a rush.

"It's different from what we've historically done," said Meyer, who is in his seventh year at the Legislature. "We're putting lots of work into a shorter period of time. So we get lots of confusion."

Although the volume of strikers has dropped in recent years, some introduced in recent weeks could have far-reaching implications that may not be realized until after they become law.

"There's a point for having lawmaking go slow and have bills be heard in both chambers," said Sen. Martin Quezada, D-Phoenix. "It helps us weed out bad legislation, and it helps us fix problems. We're cutting ourselves off at the knees by doing these big policy changes through strikers."

The practice is also bothersome to Emily Shaw, national policy manager for the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based nonpartisan organization that advocates for government transparency.

Arizona isn't unique in its use of strikers. California has its "spot" bills and other states have placeholders, Shaw said.

"There's a problem from a citizen's perspective. How can you intervene if you don't even know what's in a bill?" Shaw said. "It's a way that legislatures can make sure the public can't participate meaningfully."

But other lawmakers say complaints that the strikers fly in the face of transparency are misguided.

The use of striker bills generally had been falling since 2007, according to a Republic analysis of legislative records. That year, lawmakers adopted 207 of the 273 striker bills they considered. By 2014, those numbers had dropped to 103 strikers adopted of the 120 proposed.

This year, however, the Legislature has posted a slight uptick in proposed strikers.

On Thursday, the House Elections Committee convened to consider a striker that would limit who could return a voter's early ballot. Democrats got notice of the meeting at 5:45 p.m. Wednesday and faced a 9 a.m. deadline for submitting amendments — something Meyer got waived given the short notice.

The striker to SB 1340 failed on a tie vote during a meeting that was so confusing "even the legislators didn't have the amendment to the amendment," said Jennifer Loredo, a lobbyist for the Arizona Education Association.

For Rep. Stefanie Mach, D-Tucson, Thursday was the final straw.

"It's kind of ridiculous," she told her colleagues during a committee vote on a bill recently amended to change police disciplinary procedures. "I need more information to make a decision. ... I don't think it's responsible for me to vote otherwise."

Afterward, the second-term lawmaker said she will vote "no" on all bills that are pushed before her without enough time to do her homework.

For example, the bill to parcel out the duties of the Department of Weights and Measures to other agencies runs 82 pages and was only introduced Monday, less than two days before it got a 4-3 vote from the Senate Government Committee.

"It's incredibly frustrating," she said. "It's totally new legislation."

But that legislation is vetted by a committee, and the public gets a say, said Rep. Rick Gray, R-Sun City.

"I don't necessarily think it cancels out the transparency," he said. "All of those committees are televised, all of them are archived, so anyone that has concerns can go back and actually look at the testimony in that committee."

Freshman Rep. Reginald Bolding, D-Laveen, said he knew about strikers but is overwhelmed by the heft of many of the proposals.

"When you're talking about adding new offices, when you're talking about dissolving offices — those are huge policy implications that need to be discussed and brought in the light," he said. Sure, he said, the bills get a public hearing, but the hurry-up nature of many of this week's strikers "definitely puts a limit on transparency."

But fellow freshman Rep. Anthony Kern, R-Glendale, said although he's seen more strikers than he expected, he feels he has a good grasp of the resulting legislation because he makes the time to read everything.

"I'll go home, get up at 3 or 4 in the morning and do my business," he said.

For Diane Brown, executive director of Arizona Public Interest Research Group, a non-profit organization that advocates for consumers, the striker strategy goes hand-in-hand with the Legislature's closed-door budget process.

"Simply put, strikers need to be struck from the legislative process," she said. "If something needs wheeling and dealing to pass, it needs to be done away with."