With a full plate, the 46th Legislature convenes its second special session at 11 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 20.

The session, which will consider the governor’s plan for reforming Child Protective Services, along with supplemental funding for that agency and for the Department of Corrections, is the 80th special session of the Legislature since 1967, when the modern day, 90-member Legislature was established under the U.S. Supreme Court’s one-man-one vote decision.

The longest special sessions each lasted 170 days when lawmakers were dealing with legislative and congressional redistricting in 1981-82 and the state budget in 1990.

Facing Republican opposition to her requests for additional CPS and prison funding, Governor Napolitano, a Democrat, has no predictions on how long this month’s special session might last.

“It could be very short or it could be very long or it could be in the middle,” she said at her weekly news briefing Oct. 14. “It will be as long as it needs to be.”

Legislators interviewed by Arizona Capitol Times made predictions on the length of the session that ranged from three weeks to the end of the year, and some lawmakers say the governor’s 42-point CPS reform plan alone is more than a plateful and should be handled in the 2004 regular session, which convenes in January.

“Our position is that we’re not ready to act on CPS,” said House Majority Leader Eddie Farnsworth, R-Dist. 22.

Even Senate Minority Leader Jack Brown, D-Dist. 5, says the governor’s call for the Legislature to act on six items might be too much to handle in the special session, and that some of the measures might be put off until January.

Four of the six items deal with CPS and DOC, including supplemental funding of $35.5 million for CPS and $26.4 million for DOC. The governor says the money would come from stepped-up tax collections (net $10 million), the State Compensation Fund ($50 million) and increased AHCCCS payments to hospitals for non-compensated care, which could net the state about $14 million from federal Medicare matching funds.

Questions About Funding

The fate of CPS legislation could rest with answers from the Governor’s Office about federal funding to the agency.

In an Oct. 7 letter, Senate President Ken Bennett, R-Dist. 1, and House Speaker Jake Flake, R-Dist. 5, asked the governor 19 questions about her requests for supplemental funding and for an accounting of all federal funds that flow to the Department of Economic Security, of which CPS is a part.

“Having a complete picture of how all funds are used is required to adequately evaluate the effectiveness of the program [CPS],” the letter said. “We don’t want to find ourselves pouring more taxpayer money into a broken system — this will only frustrate our efforts to better protect children.”

The letter said the state general fund is out of balance by $400 million.

“Your special session requests tilt that imbalance even further,” Mr. Bennett and Mr. Flake wrote. “You are aware of more federal funds and other dollars flowing into the executive branch that will assist the state in covering its continued general fund deficit, or you are planning to propose a tax increase to make up the difference.”

Senate Majority Whip Marilyn Jarrett said, “We might as well close down and go home if she won’t give us the figures to get started on.”

George Cunningham, the governor’s deputy chief of staff for finance and budget, said the Bennett-Flake letter would be answered.

“There was a lot of information requested, and it was worked on diligently,” he said.

In response to the leadership’s statement about tax increases, Mr. Cunningham said, “That’s not deserving of a response.”

CPS needs an overhaul, including the hiring of 154 additional caseworkers to meet national standards and investigate all complaints, the governor says.

Carol Kamin, director of Children’s Action Alliance, said in an e-mail urging support of CPS legislation, “We know what the problems are and we should expect action now.”

Ms. Napolitano also has asked the Legislature to revise or repeal the transfer of an estimated $45 million to the state from local judicial revenues and to repeal the new $5 minimum tax withholding, which she said “is a plague on small business.”

Six Bills Have Been Drafted

As of Oct. 16, six bills had been drafted, and sponsors were named on minimum withholding bills (Rep. Steve Huffman, R-Dist. 26 and Sen. Jack Harper, R-Dist. 4) and the judicial collections bill (House Speaker Jake Flake, R-Dist. 5.)

Mr. Huffman’s bill calls for repeal of the $5 per pay period minimum withholding. Mr. Harper’s bill, on the other hand, calls for a $25 per week minimum withholding tax, but only for immigrant workers in the state with green cards.

Mr. Harper’s original measure for minimum withholding last session was aimed only at green card workers, but Democrats expanded it in budget negotiations to cover all workers, which would bring in an additional $3 million to pay for programs they wanted, he said.

The minimum withholding tax repeal and the judicial collections measure will be quickly passed, Ms. Jarrett predicted.

The governor has been working with a small group of legislators on drafting bills for the session, but other than her Columbus Day visit with Mr. Flake, at his ranch near Taylor, had not met with legislative leaders as of Oct. 16.

Paul Allvin, the governor’s director of communications, said on Oct. 15 the governor was working on setting up such a meeting before the session begins.

Despite opposition to her plans for CPS from Republican legislators and Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley, opposition that mainly centers around spending more money this year on the agency before institutional reforms are made, Ms. Napolitano said, “What we’re discovering is that there is more agreement than what people presumed there was. The hard issue will be the money, but at some point, you’ve got to bite the bullet and pay for child protection.”

Shortly after the special session was announced, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Russell Pearce, R-Dist. 18, said, “This session is really about money, and there is no money.”

Exactly how much money will be requested in the special session to alleviate prison overcrowding was up in the air as of Oct. 16. In addition to the $26.4 million the governor wants now to add 1,600 temporary beds for the inmate overflow and to hire additional correctional officers, she said she might request more than that as part of her $470 million, 15-year plan to provide 9,134 more permanent beds to meet projected inmate growth, which was estimated to reach 40,500 prisoners by 2008.

Prison Construction

DOC Director Dora Schriro was to advise the governor before the special session on whether some financing of new prison construction would be needed before the year ends.

Ms. Napolitano said the Legislature has been aware of the short- and long-term needs at DOC, but “I thought it was important to put that out there.”

“The thing that got missed in the [news] coverage was, that because of some of the changes we’re making and what kinds of prisons we’re building and what level of cells, we’re actually avoiding about $300 million worth of costs over the 15-year program,” the governor said. “The legislative leadership knew when we passed the

’04 budget that they had under-funded Corrections.”

As is the case with CPS, a special legislative committee has been working on prison issues. The House Alternative Sentencing Work Group has been taking testimony on the st
ate’s sentencing laws and has discussed early release of prisoners, alternative sentencing and electronic monitoring of convicted felons to reduce prison overcrowding.

“If the Legislature wants to look into early release, Ms. Napolitano said, “that’s fine, but it’s not something I’m proposing.” The former attorney general said she does not support changing truth in sentencing laws, nor providing exemptions from prison sentences for certain categories of offenders.

She said she will continue to support probation because “probation is a sentence,” and much of the increase in prison population was caused by a shortage of probation officers.

Ms. Jarrett said she plans to call on a group of former legislators to review mandatory sentencing. “We need to rely a lot on memory of what has been happening, where we came from and why we’re here,” she said.

The senator said more funding is needed for private prisons.

“We’ll have to do some interim patchwork there,” Ms. Jarrett said.

In the meantime, legislative staff said Oct. 15 there had been some discussion about whether to ask the governor to amend her call for the special session to include a $2.4 million appropriation for the Independent Redistricting Commission for legal fees it has accumulated. (Related story, Page 1).

If the Legislature wants to add items to a governor’s call for a special session, it must get the governor’s approval through an amended call, or, with a two-thirds vote of both houses, may call itself into special session.

Will the Legislature be motivated to end this month’s session by Thanksgiving?

“Oh, I hope so,” Ms. Jarrett said. —