Arizona Capitol Times Your Inside Source for Arizona Government, Politics and Business

Arizona schools will have to wait another school year to hire new counselors and cops.

Facing a barrage of parental criticism, the state Board of Education decided Monday to scrap a proposal to remove certain language from the rules on sex education.

The highs and lows of the 2019 legislative session can be measured by how well legislators worked together with the smallest of margins.

But even with the 17-13 split in the Senate, the 31-29 split in the House, the Democrat who accomplished the most during the First Regular Session of the 54th Legislature is the one who was criticized for her lack of political experience during the campaign – and she wasn’t even a lawmaker.

Amid lingering frustrations over the 2018 election – with Republican accusations that a Democrat in charge of ballots in Arizona’s most populous county had mucked up the process– a flurry of election-related bills were introduced this year.

Senate President Karen Fann can boast a 333 percent increase in the number of bills sponsored by Democrats that passed out of her chamber in 2019 compared to last year.

The legislative session wasn’t even done before lawmakers started announcing bills they planned to introduce next session.

Anyone looking for major changes at the Arizona Supreme Court with the naming Friday of Robert Brutinel as its chief justice is likely to be disappointed.

Sen. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, knows how to get legislation passed. This year, he learned how to get it vetoed.

Throughout the 135 days of the 2019 legislative session, only eight lawmakers made it to every required work day and cast a vote for everything that made it to the floor, down from 19 lawmakers last session.