43rd Legislature begins with a goodbye 

Ten years ago, on Jan. 13, 1997, Arizona’s 43rd legislative session opened. Initially weighing on the minds of legislators were issues of mortality, privacy and tariffs.
Page 2 of the Jan. 17, 1997 issue of the Arizona Capitol Times featured news of the passing of an Arizona icon, Burton Barr at the age of 78. The former iron-man legislator, candidate for governor and tireless consensus-builder, spent 22 years in the Legislature before deciding on an ill-fated run for governor in 1986.
The article regarded him as “the state’s most powerful politician” during his 20 years as House majority leader. It went on: “…no one has exercised anything approaching Mr. Barr’s influence in the years since he left, and with term limits now in place, it may be that no one ever will.”
Page 1 of the same issue featured the revived question of whether a public official has the duty to disclose health problems. The issue arose after then-Speaker Don Aldridge revealed that his left foot had been amputated from complications related to diabetes, something he had chosen not to publicly acknowledge a week earlier.
After suffering a stroke in August 1997, Aldridge decided to step down from his position as speaker, but continued to serve in District 1. He had served 10 months and was succeeded as speaker by Jeff Groscost. Don Aldridge died on Sept. 19, 1999, at the age of 62.
Chronicled on Page 3 were the ongoing attempts to refund and abolish the Maricopa County baseball stadium tax, a quarter-cent on sales in Maricopa County, to finance the Arizona Diamondbacks’ new retractable-dome stadium. The separate attempts by then-legislators Marilyn Jarrett and Gary Richardson, Libertarian Ernest Hancock and a retired Tempe business owner, were all stymied and the public eventually funded the stadium to the tune of $238 million. The remaining $111 million was provided by the baseball team’s investment group. Source: Arizona Capitol Times Archives.