Most of the noise here last week was about the Governor's wagging finger, allowing a couple other screwball stories to more or less skate under the media smokescreen.
When it comes to inventing tools to silence the public, the GOP is on a roll, from advancing repressive voter ID laws to wielding Citizens United's big club. Last year set the tone here in Arizona when then-Senate President Russell Pearce released a blacklist -- although he wouldn't call it a blacklist, it was just a list of human rights advocates not permitted in the Senate chambers. Pearce also declared that the pesky public was barred from attending the Senate's press conferences. So much for his promise to run a more transparent government.
Happily, Russell Pearce and many of his authoritarian policies are gone (although he's popped up, you guessed it, on an anti-immigration radio talk show). But last week, the chair of Arizona's Senate Appropriations Committee, Republican Don Shooter (it could only be better if he were from Tombstone), carried on Pearce's fine tradition of public repression.
The Senate Appropriations Committee begins work Tuesday on the fiscal 2013 budget, but no public need bother to speak up. So says committee chairman Don Shooter, R-Yuma, who is predicting a lickety-split hearing for the hearing that begins at 2 p.m.. Arizona Republic
This is not just any committee, it's the friggin' Big Daddy Appropriations Committee, where all the planning and politicking and lobbying and town halls and media coverage boils down to dollars. For this final scene of the legislative drama, Senator Shooter will call agency representatives to speak, but that's it. So, if you're a parent concerned about schools or someone who works with an organization that benefits from state funding, shut up. Shooter knows better.
"I heard it last year," Shooter said.
Well shit, why didn't you say so? That 'splains everything, you heard people last year! How silly of me to assume that everything, from the funding available to the issues of the day, would not be exactly the same as 2011! And besides, as a legislator he has more important things to do than listen to constituents:
He added it's not the most efficient use of time and it doesn't serve anybody well... Blog for Arizona
You mean it doesn't serve you well. I've sat in Appropriations Committee meetings till 2AM waiting to give a 3-minute speech, as have hundreds of others. That's the nature of the game, Senator. It's our tax dollars after all. If we can sit and wait, so can you. I guess he needs that "lickety-split" hearing to make it to Furr's Cafeteria for the 4PM dinner special.
If citizens are not permitted in the Senate chambers to testify, Mary Jo Pitzl warns us in her Republic story not to take our disagreements to the Capitol grounds either, because of yet another anti-public policy that passed last week:
New rules adopted by the Legislative Council require anyone who wants to hold an event in the courtyard between the House and Senate buildings to get a permit 10 days in advance if their event involves equipment and/or any kind of amplified sound, such as loudspeakers or a bullhorn. Arizona Republic
So, kids, don't show up to testify and don't protest too loudly in front of the people who make the decisions (corporate lobbyists still welcome). And if your rally is ongoing, you need a permit for each day. The new rules also prohibit OWS encampments near the Capitol. In the the 8-3 committee approval of the restrictions, the 3 dissenting votes were all Dems, who'd like to see more public participation, "both outside the Capitol and inside," said Senate Minority Leader David Schapira. But that would be inconvenient, sez Debbie Lesko:
"Last year, there were loud bullhorns," said House Majority Whip Debbie Lesko, R-Glendale. "If you went outside, you couldn't even think." Arizona Republic
That statement suggests at least two things: 1) Arizona's legislators do think when they are not confronted with loud noises, and 2) it would be a bad thing if they didn't.