Editor’s note: This story has been revised to include new information. 

The executive director of the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission announced his resignation after intense scrutiny from Republican lawmakers during the commission’s sunset review. 

Andrew LeFevre announced his plan to resign at a Feb. 17 meeting of the ACJC’s Executive Committee after it met in executive session to discuss “personnel matters related to the executive director.” 

LeFevre and the ACJC have been on the defensive this session after Republican Reps. Alex Kolodin and Quang Nguyen leveled accusations that the commission has been attempting to expand its data collection duties in order to spy on Arizonans. ACJC is currently up for its regularly scheduled sunset review. 

LeFevre’s resignation was pending until made official by a vote of the commission at a meeting scheduled for Feb. 20. ACJC Chair Dave Byers and Vice Chair Steve Stahl thanked LeFevre for his service and apologized for the circumstances of the resignation at the Feb. 17 meeting.

“Andy, words can’t express the amount of work you did for ACJC and the professional way that you did it,” Stahl said during the meeting. “This is certainly not the way I would have wanted to handle things, but when you sit in that chair sometimes you don’t get a choice.”

The resignation comes after Kolodin and Nguyen introduced a bill to terminate the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission and questioned LeFevre extensively at two separate hearings. LeFevre repeatedly denied their allegations in committee hearings, in a letter sent to the Legislature on Jan. 29, and a guest commentary published in the Arizona Capitol Times on Jan. 31.

Kolodin also accused Byers of espionage for his role in the Judicial Branch’s Task Force on Countering Disinformation, which LeFevre also refuted.

“I thank Mr. LeFevre for his service and hope that Chairman Byers will quickly follow suit,” Kolodin said in a text message on Feb. 18. 

A spokesperson for the Administrative Office of the Courts, where Byers is the executive director, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Kolodin’s statement. 

Sen. Analise Ortiz, D-Phoenix, co-sponsored a bill to continue ACJC for eight years and expressed concern over the resignation in a prepared statement.

“It’s unfortunate that politicization over this important agency made Mr. LeFevre feel the need to resign,” Ortiz said. “Hopefully it doesn’t lead to any disruption of the critical victim’s services, data analysis, or  grant funding distribution that the agency provides.”

Last week, Kolodin said during a House Judiciary Committee meeting that the ACJC is “too dangerous to exist” and the disinformation task force was actually a “mass censorship apparatus,” although he presented no evidence to back his claims. 

Kolodin and Nguyen raised concerns that the ACJC was hoping to create a database on all gun owners in the state and collect information on individuals who had not committed any crimes. 

Nguyen also expressed concern that LeFevre and the ACJC were unresponsive to lawmaker questions during past sessions and engaged in improper lobbying practices, like pressuring other organizations to change their positions on bills or mischaracterizing the positions other groups were taking on bills.

In addition to Kolodin and Nguyen’s bill, Sen. Mark Finchem, R-Prescott, introduced a strike-everything amendment in the Senate that would reorganize ACJC into the Sheriffs’ Criminal Justice Commission. The amendment would rename the commission, change its membership and adjust its responsibilities. 

Currently, ACJC’s membership represents a wide range of professionals involved in the criminal justice system, like police officers, county attorneys, sheriffs, judges, victims advocates, probation officers and others. It is responsible for researching the state’s criminal justice system and providing recommendations to lawmakers and agencies. 

Finchem’s amendment would limit the membership to five county sheriffs and two public members and allow them to make recommendations for how its duties should be changed. 

Two sheriffs would be appointed by the Senate president and two would be appointed by the House speaker. The governor would appoint the remaining sheriff and the two public members. 

Finchem’s amendment instructs the new commission to provide a report by March 2026 with recommendations for duties that should be repealed, transferred to another agency or added to the commission’s statutorily designated duties. 

That bill passed out of the Senate Judiciary and Elections Committee on Feb. 19, but Republican Sens. John Kavanagh and Shawnna Bolick said that they believe ACJC can be reformed without major restructuring.

“I don’t know if this is the right solution moving forward,” Bolick said of Finchem’s proposal.

She and Kavanagh said reform is needed due to concerns from sheriffs that the commission hasn’t been adequately fulfilling its duties to administer grant money from the federal government to law enforcement organizations. Bolick said Kavanagh is working with ACJC on those reforms and Kavanagh said he would not support the House bill from Kolodin and Nguyen that terminates the commission.

“The House is sending over a complete elimination of [the commission] which can’t be done; they perform a lot of functions,” Kavanagh said during the hearing on Feb. 19. “…I’m not going to vote to get rid of ACJC.”