Rep. Jim Weiers returns to the House this session after two years in the Senate and is picking up right where he left off: as speaker. By emerging from the organizational caucus with his party’s support, the District 10 Republican is poised to be the first person to serve non-consecutive terms as the leader of one of the legislative chambers. The caucus Mr. Weiers leads is one member smaller numerically than last year, though with eight of last year’s budget rebel Republicans being replaced by seemingly more principled conservatives, the caucus may be ideologically stronger than its predecessor. In an interview last month, he said the “changing face of the Legislature” will surely result in more conservative legislation being passed and will give Republicans a leg up in negotiating spending priorities.

Arizona Capitol Times: Did you know you are the first speaker or president to have a gap in your tenure?

Rep. Weiers: Before I answer that, is that good or bad? (Chuckling) No, I didn’t realize that, but with term limits, that’s the way things happen. I don’t know if it’ll happen again. I wasn’t aware of that, but I think it probably crossed my mind. Also, with my brother coming in [Rep. Jerry Weiers, R-12], it’s the first time brothers have served in the chamber, too. There’s more: did you realize I was the only member to hold all the majority leadership positions except majority leader at one time? That’s when Mr. [Jeff] Groscost resigned and he appointed me as the [Speaker] Pro Tempore and got [former Rep.] Joe Hart removed, and as the designee coming out of the Republican caucus, he then appointed me as the pro tempore as he resigned, which in absence of the speaker, I took that spot. But I was also the [speaker-] elect and the speaker and the pro tempore and the whip, all at once, and held that for two and a half months, until we took office in January, and then I just went to speaker.

You served in the House for eight years before moving to the Senate for one term. Why come back before reaching your term limit in the Senate?

It was a lot to do with redistricting. I didn’t want to run for the Senate again because of my seatmate [Sen. Linda Gray, R-10], and I had said I’d never run against her. And, of course, with Linda, she was redistricted out to another district, and then another district, and there was talk of me staying in the Senate. It is a swing district, which the Republican Party felt that I’ve got a good enough following and reputation and my numbers are decent enough to where, as long as I keep doing the job that I’m doing and the people enjoy the quality of work that put me here, they would keep me here.

Linda, then, was put back in as the redistricting goes back to where it originally was in the beginning. I found myself put back into another district, which is the same district that I had, and at the and of the day, there was no one else running for the Republican side other than Doug Quelland, so here I am.

Is there anything that you learned in the Senate that you have brought back to the House with you?

Oh, yeah, and we’ve already talked about it. A couple of the things have already been implemented. Much to his credit was Randall Gnant, running the little kiosks when it comes to the committee hearings. At the beginning, a lot of people don’t like change. For myself, being just a regular person, like everybody else, there was some resentment. … But, as you got into it, you found it would work quite well. One of the things that I really, truly enjoyed is — it’s not a rule, but it’s accepted over there as a practice — that you do not put amendments onto bills going into COW without 24 hours notice to the Chief Clerk’s Office, and in doing that, everything is downloaded, so you can come onto the floor at anytime, any bill that is on the screen, you know exactly where you’re at, what’s been introduced, what’s failed and what’s passed. That’s a great idea, and I suggest that be something we implement over here.

It’s a different attitude, a different nature. People in the Senate, a lot of them have come from the House, but it’s just things run a whole lot slower. The pace is reduced a lot. The pressure doesn’t seem to be as immense. The workload, I think, is less, which would explain why, in fact, they’re able to get out a little bit earlier than the House. There are just fewer people to go ahead and deal with. And, that’s probably the biggest difference, that when you’re making the rounds, trying to convince other people, you have far fewer people to talk to. Caucuses are smaller, individual group sittings are smaller. You go ahead and run with a clique of 15 or 16 people over here and you find out that’s almost a supermajority over there. So, that’s the biggest difference, just sheer numbers.

Sure, having an 18-member caucus is a little bit different than having a 38-member caucus.

(Laughing) It’s a little bit different, and, also, with the House, for a lot of people, it’s the entry level into state government, when you look at an elected position. So, you know, every year, you get quite a few freshmen that come in. Some of them have the idea that they know everything, some knowing that they know nothing, and there’s other people that have other experiences in other aspects of life that know a little bit about something. Even if you’re down here for 30 years, you’re not going to know everything, even within the legislative process. But it’s fun and interesting to see how people grow into these positions. Now, with term limits, everything’s a little more fast-paced. Everybody’s in a hurry to get the things done and make a name for themselves, and to climb the ladder of leadership or committee assignments, because they’re running out of time. The clock is ticking.

It’s just — it’s a more exciting place in the House, the electricity is extremely high, the energy level is wonderful, it’s a lot different. The difference is like the Senate is the library and this is the playground. It’s noisy, it’s fast-paced, a lot of confusion. But I like it that way, and I think the older I get, probably the less I will enjoy the noise and excitement, but in saying that, right now it’s good. I love to see new people coming in. I like to see the energy that they have coming in as freshmen and even sophomores, and the ideals that people hold and they want to fight to the bitter end. This is what makes this state so exciting, especially as a citizens’ legislature, and I love to be in these kind of venues, especially in the House, where you have people that fight so very strongly for the things they believe in, because they are philosophies and values that they hold near and dear.

You mentioned term limits speed up the process a little bit. Is that something that you think will end up being looked at by the Legislature?

I think it’s always been looked at. There are pros and cons to it. I think the biggest negative when you’re looking at term limits are you lose a lot of history and institutional memory and experience when people are pushed out the door. On the other hand, the law simply says that you’re restricted to eight years per chamber, and there have been a lot of people going back and forth, and I don’t know if that’ll be a continuing fad, but you’ve seen it. You had four people come over from the Senate, with [Pete] Rios, myself, [Mark] Anderson and [Jack] Brown. And then going from the House to the Senate, you had Linda [Gray] and [John] Huppenthal and Mr. [Jake] Flake — three. You have to ask each individual why they’re down here — you know, I feel I’m doing a good job. I do the best job I p
ossibly can. I’ve got lots to offer people when it comes to experience over the last 10 years. And, other than people like Pete Rios or Jack Brown, there are not a lot of people down here with as much experience as myself and Mark Anderson. We’ve both been down here for 10 years.

How do you think budget negotiations will go in the session?

I’m always one that looks at things as optimistically as I possibly can. If we can, from the very beginning, understand what we have to spend, and if, in fact, there’s a mindset that the reality is you can’t spend more than you have, I think the negotiations will go extremely well.

Revenue estimates show the state will have more money than expected this year. Are those numbers still holding up and what impact will that have on the budget?

You know, the projections as far as the revenue coming in, it’s a little better than what was expected, but we’re still a half a billion dollars short, even with these projections being taken into account. AHCCCS alone will add another 50,000 people. By the end of this year, we’ll have nearly one out of five-and-a-half people in this state on welfare [for] health services. So the welfare rolls, especially with the AHCCCS, are growing. With a fast-growth state, it’s creating lots of other problems when it comes to infrastructure. With fast growth, you also have problems with prisons. You also have problems with public safety — you have to keep adding. You have to build more highways. The system, on the formulas that are being created, we’re just pouring hundreds of millions of dollars every year into the system just to keep up with the growth. And that’s not with inflation, only growth.

It seems full-day kindergarten will be a head-on collision between some in the Legislature and the governor. Where do you stand on full-day kindergarten?

The same place I stood last year — until you can show me how you pay for it [and] explain how it works, I can’t get behind something that doesn’t have the solutions that are connected with the proposals. The governor is obviously in the forefront of advocating for the full-day kindergarten, and all I’ve asked is to show me how it works and how you’re going to pay for it. You know, why don’t you go ahead and show me the affordability and how you’re going to get the money, then we start the discussions. If it’s not affordable and you don’t have the money — you can’t argue about where you’re going to vacation if you have no money. And you can’t argue about full-day kindergarten if you can’t pay for it.

The interim committee recommended that students be phased in over a five-year period. Can the state afford that funding as it stands now?

It depends, because priorities are going to have to be set. I’ve talked to a lot of people within the school system, which you think would be natural supporters of full-day kindergarten, off the record, and they certainly don’t want to be identified, but they said, “There’s other places that are more important to us when it comes to the priorities of spending. If we’re going to get more money, we’d rather see it here, here and here, rather than full-day kindergarten.” Even the very element that you would think would be the most ardent supporters of full-day kindergarten are saying if you’re going to put that money into something, here’s some things that we’d rather have. I’m not predisposed as to all-day kindergarten one way or the other, but at this point, nobody has shown me that there is money to do it, how, in fact, that we’re actually going to do it. Does it really, truly lend itself to what you’re getting for what you’re paying for? Regardless of anything else, when you come down here, that’s one of the decisions you have to make as a legislator. You’re not spending your money specifically, you’re spending [the money of] everybody else who goes out and works 40-, 50-, 60-hour weeks. Those taxes are taken — at the very least, they should have an expectation that when you get the money, you spend it the best way to get the best product to serve the people that went out and worked for it.

So, it’s a cost-benefit analysis?

Yeah, and sometimes that’s absent from the discussions down here. What are we getting for what we’re paying? I’ve been down here for 10 years, and too many times it doesn’t matter what the outcome as far as the quality of the solution is, it more is, well, if we give them more money, then, obviously, that is going to be the answer. And that never is the answer, especially when something’s broke and given more money, and at the end of the day all you have is a broken system that costs more money. That doesn’t make any sense either.

The governor has been outspoken on state employee raises outpacing the increased retirement costs. What’s the solution to giving employees higher wages?

There are lots of state employees who don’t make nearly as much as they should. I imagine, as is the case with almost any industry or business, there’s probably people that make more than what they should. But as an overall, I think we’ve got some pretty good people that work for the state. Again, it comes down to where we get the money. You can’t produce it out of thin air. You know, the priorities — people will have to make their decision within the consensus of the majority. Do you give state employees more money on their raises or, at this point, do you provide the beds that [the state is] short within the prison system, do you put on the highway patrolmen for public safety, do you continue to build those roads, do you fund all-day kindergarten?

You know, it’s interesting, and I use this just as an example of a priority, and with the governor, if you could only choose one or the other between all-day kindergarten and raises for state employees, where would her priorities lie? See, this is what we have to decide as we come out of these systems. And no matter what you do, you upset a constituency. If you side with all-day kindergarten, even though you have state employees that are preferring all-day kindergarten, if you asked them, well, it’s either your raise or all-day kindergarten, I can almost guarantee you the vast majority of state employees will say, forget the all-day kindergarten, get me my raise.

Do you think formulaic spending is something that’s going to have to be changed in the near future so the state has enough money?

Well, a lot of what is eating our lunch right now has been put on the initiative ballot. We can’t change it. We can, obviously, make changes as to furthering the purpose of the intent, and even that takes more than the simple majority that most bills get that go through the chambers. We could always put it back to the ballot and ask people to go ahead and reconsider, but usually on public policy issues, you don’t have a great deal of people out there willing to foot the bill, to be able to promote the idea, to say, this is the reason this thing needs to be stopped. So, if you don’t have a funding source to be able to run a campaign for why this needs to be or why it needs not to be, the chances for failure increase tremendously.

What tax reform issues do you see being undertaken during the next two years, and how important is tax reform to the state’s economic future?

One of the things that have been brought to my attention is something we passed years and years ago. You had on it, as far as this is how old you’d have to be, and this would have to be your income and this is for seniors, and your property tax would be frozen, it would never be able to go up. It was kind of like the Prop. 13 in California. Some of
the proposals that have now kind of surfaced are that we would now do that for everybody within the state, regardless of age or income. You would simply say, this is what your property tax is going to be frozen at, and it can only increase no more than three per cent a year. Of course, you always have the options of the counties or the schools that can come back in and either float their bonds or raise their taxes, but at least it would be straight out and forward, rather than the assessment value that’s always been used by the board of supervisors. [They say] we don’t raise taxes; it’s simply by what the value of that land is.

But what is happening, you’ve got a lot of people coming in that say, well, when we bought this house, we had no idea — now our payments on our taxes are more than what our mortgage is. Our income hasn’t come up, and let’s say with the elderly on fixed incomes, it’s not a whole lot different in a young family starting out. At [age] 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, it’s almost identical. The revenue’s not there, but for different reasons. One is at the end of your career and you have a fixed income. The other at your beginning and you have a bottom income. One is growing to the middle as the other one is coming off of the middle. So, I don’t know. I guess the best thing to do is to go back at talk to the two finance chairmen and see what some of those ideas are. This is where everybody takes their ideas and, of course, they start generating those through bill folders, and I get to see a lot of them prior to them getting dropped, of which I’m very appreciative.

Will a more conservative Legislature translate into more bills on social issues — particularly gay marriage/unions and abortion — that will get sent to the governor?

With the changing face of the Legislature, absolutely. You have two types of issues down here: you have fiscal issues — everything, almost, is attached to the fiscal aspect of how the state runs — and you have the social issues. And, yeah, there’s going to be social issues that are pushed down here. But, as I’ve explained to other people, when you’re talking about six-, seven-, eight hundred bills, introduced from a chamber and you have seven, eight or nine that are going to be specific to agenda, like a social. That is a very, very small percentage, and yet it somehow receives a tremendous amount of coverage, which doesn’t seem quite fair when you’re looking at a relationship and how small that amount is.

How do you view this particular House in relation to the one you presided over from 2001-2002?

We’ve got more members that are Republican, but they’re different. Each membership is going to be unique. I was extremely proud of the Legislature back in 2000 and I’m sure at the end of these two years, I hope to be as proud of this membership as I hope they are proud of me. I’ll do the best job I can for them. I have the greatest of confidence that they’re going to do the best for myself and the state as a whole and deliver a work product that, at the end of the day, everyone is going to say we’re extremely proud of.

How long do you expect the session will be?

I don’t know. It’s anybody’s guess — that’s why they hold a pool at the end of the session. If you knew, there wouldn’t be a pool. But right now, tentatively, we’ve got a 65-day budget cycle slotted in and we’re looking at the 15th of April as a projected date for our sine die, which corresponds with tax day, which also is a Friday. I think we’ll be able to come very close.

What role do you expect the Democrats to play in the regular session? Will they be at the table for negotiations, especially on the budget and full-day K?

I’m going to be sitting down with the Democrats, hopefully within the next week. Obviously, they’re going to be in the loop. We will be setting up weekly meetings, kind of keeping them abreast of what’s going on. I haven’t gotten to know [Minority Leader Phil] Lopes that well — I’ve only had a couple of meetings with him. Up to this point, it’s been more of the mechanics, as far as office assignments, proposed rule changes, committee assignments and stuff like that. After we get through that, then we’ll actually get through the whole idea of how the session is going to work. —