With most people now seeing Covid in the rear-view mirror, tourism in Arizona is starting to come back.

And now the state agency charged with promoting it may have a new hurdle: The nightly national news reports about how hot it is here.

New figures from a study commissioned by the Arizona Office of Tourism find that overnight visitors spent $28.1 billion last year. That’s up about $4.5 billion from the year before.

Even discounting rampant inflation, Dean Runyan Associates said thats means a $1.3 billion increase in real dollars, about a 5% increase.

But the state continues to struggle to get travel back to pre-pandemic levels. The report says when inflation is factored in, the true quality of goods and services purchased by travelers still lags 2019 levels by about 6.3%.

Inflation also is reflected in the data about the total tax revenues generated from tourism. The nearly $4 billion generated in 2022 is just 7.2% above what it was three years earlier, far less than the 8.0% inflation between just 2021 and 2022.

And while the report says tourism directly generated 179,000 jobs last year, that still is below the number of people working in the industry three years earlier.

Still, Lisa Urias, the agency’s director, thinks all that deficit will be erased this year.

Part of what guarantees that, she said, was the fact that Arizona hosted the Super Bowl. Add that to typical years, said Urias, and the state should be back on track.

But there’s something else that her agency is now having to deal with that could affect the desire of people to come here.

It seems the national media, having discovered that it’s hot in the summer in Arizona, is paying particular attention to the records being set, not only on individual daily highs and the number of days in a row the thermometer tops 110, but also the number of nights the mercury does not drop below 90.

“It is disturbing,” she said.

But Urias, who was at a conference this past week where climate change was a focus, said it’s important to remember that it’s not just Arizona that’s affected.

“Europe is on fire, too, right now,” she said.

“It’s crazy,” Urias continued. “But it’s something we’re all going to have to adjust to and figure out how to manage.”

She said, though, even with all the national attention on the triple-digit numbers, she doesn’t believe that will cause long-term damage to the message that people should visit Arizona.

It starts, she said, with her agency focusing its message on the fact that the state is more than just the Phoenix area that has been making the evening news. There’s Flagstaff and the rest of northern Arizona.

“We do a lot of campaigns to help promote those regions as well,” she said. And Urias said the state also provides direct grant dollars to local communities to do their own advertising.

“They know their markets,” she said. “They know who’s coming to Arizona” as well as those already living here who might be looking to get away.”

“People get away from the heat, say, for a couple of weeks or a week and spend money,” Urias said. “That counts, too.”

On the other side of the equation, Urias said that her agency doesn’t waste its money on trying to convince those from the rest of the country that they should visit the desert in the summer.

“We don’t push real hard in Phoenix in the summer,” she said. “People will just say, ‘Oh, no, you can’t go to Phoenix in the summer.’ ”

But Josh Coddington, the agency’s public information officer, said spending to promote Arizona does not dry up entirely in the summer.

“We also want to at least stay in touch with them, or at least have a presence because the summer’s going to end and people are going to travel,” he said.

“We want to stay in people’s minds because if they don’t see our Arizona ad when they’re searching for a vacation, they might see somebody else’s,” Coddington said.

The new report shows that a large portion of what’s behind the tourism numbers for the past few years is that spending by international tourists, in particular, took a big hit during the pandemic, plummeting in 2020 to just 10% of its pre-Covid figures. And while there has been some recovery, it still amounts to just 9% of total spending.

Of those who came, Mexico and Canada were the largest share of foreign visitors, followed by the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

One of the biggest losses, Urias said, was in visitors from China, blaming that in particular on the pandemic. But she said she remains optimistic that will come back.

“We’re all maintaining our presence and trying to make sure that we are open here, that we welcome them,” Urias said. “But it’s definitely a lag.”

Covid may not be the threat it once was.

But what has replaced it in some ways are the current frosty political relations between the United States and China. Urias said she’s hoping to steer clear of that.

“Tourism tries really hard to kind of stay out of the fray,” she said. Still, Urias said, it’s often difficult to keep the issues separate.

“I don’t think it precludes Chinese visitors from coming to the U.S.,” she said. “At least, we hope it doesn’t.”

Preparations are being made, however, to deal with such issues.

“We definitely do look at other emerging markets for us in Asia and elsewhere,” Urias said. “We’ve been exploring Indian markets and Korea, Japan.”

And the state has been active in recruiting visitors from Australia.

The biggest share of tourism dollars, however, is from a domestic audience. About 30% of those came from Arizonans themselves looking for vacations close to home, with the balance from visitors from the other 49 states.

Among those, the largest share by far was Californians. That was followed by Texas residents, then New Yorkers, Floridians and Colorado residents.

Urias said the state has been proactive in promoting Arizona in certain target markets, including Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Dallas.

So where did all the money go?

The report finds at the largest share — about $6.1 billion — went to hotels, motels and short-term rentals.

But eating out was not far behind at slightly less than $6 billion. Still, the tourists were not always headed to restaurants. Another $1.2 billion was spent at grocery stores.

Local transportation like car rentals and gas added another $4.4 billion, with $2.7 billion spent on entertainment and recreation and retail sales — think about all those souvenirs and more — added another $3.1 billion.

And all that, in turn, generated tax dollars. The report figures that visitors dropped $2.4 billion into state and local coffers in 2022.

Arizona overpaid recipients of a federally funded unemployment program $307 million more than they were entitled.

And two thirds of that was the fault of the state.

Data provided to Capitol Media Services shows that about 68,000 people who got Pandemic Unemployment Assistance received more than they were entitled. That includes those who should have received less based on income and those who were not eligible at all.

But it turns out that it was mistakes made by the state Department of Economic Security that resulted in overpayments to about 62,000 of those.

More to the point, the state will not be seeking recovery of the approximately $215 million they received.

What’s behind that, according to DES spokesman Brett Bezio, is the unique nature of the temporary program — and an admission that the agency, overwhelmed with applications, just made some mistakes. The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program was created by Congress as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act to help those who were otherwise ineligible for standard state benefits.

Generally speaking, that includes the self-employed, independent contractors and those in the “gig economy” like drivers for rideshare programs. But it also covered those who had exhausted their regular state jobless benefits, which run out after 26 weeks.

Benefits of $600 a week were originally available for 39 weeks. Subsequent congressional action eventually extended that out to 79 weeks, with the last day for benefits of July 10, 2021.

All totaled, about 336,000 Arizonans got the benefits.

But the emergency nature of the program got it off to a rocky start — and was directly related to the overpayments.

Some of that, Bezio said, was due to the short time states like Arizona, which were administering the federal dollars, had to implement it.

“Our goal was to ensure individuals in need received assistance so they could keep food on their tables and stay within their own homes,” he said. “The situation at the start of the pandemic was chaotic for all, with many becoming hospitalized and even losing their lives to Covid-19.”

And the pandemic and the resultant layoffs resulted in a surge in not just applications for PUA but for state unemployment benefits.

Complicating matters is that the state’s system which handles regular unemployment claims would not work for those in the PUA program.

And then there’s the fact that Congress, anxious to get PUA payments out, required only a name, Social Security number, date of birth and address. Applicants had to “self-certify” that they are otherwise able to work and available but for the fact that they are unemployed, partially unemployed, or are unable to work because of the Covid outbreak.

“The programs created were vulnerable to fraud,” Bezio said.

That crush of requests for all types of jobless benefits resulted in problems on the state’s end, too — the problems that led to overpayments.

Bezio said his agency responded by rapidly hiring adjudicators to review the requests.

“At one point, DES was hiring one individual every 80 minutes to keep up with the demand,” he said. “With the new programs and systems, and with new employees going through training, inaccuracies in adjudicating cases were unavoidable, as other states also experienced.”

And Bezio said it took some time for the agency to improve its operations and institute fraud prevention and detection systems.

All that, he said, goes to the question of what DES calls “administrative overpayments.”

“This may happen if DES miscalculates the claimant’s wages or fails to deduct income from other sources,” Bezio explained.

“In these cases, the claimants are not at fault for the overpayment and are typically eligible for their overpayment to be waived,” he said. And that, said Bezio, happens automatically, without the need for the person who pocketed the money to pay it back.

And even though the extra payments were the fault of the state, he said there is no obligation for the state to reimburse the federal government.

Others, however, are not so lucky.

“When an individual receives benefits for which they are not entitled and a waiver is not issued, federal and state rule requires the repayment of the benefits,” Bezio said. “If the claimant has committed fraud, they will need to repay the benefits and may face legal consequences.”

There were no immediate figures available about how much DES has collected in repayments.

Thinking of quitting your job?

New state economic figures suggest the timing to find better employment may never be better.

The latest report shows the job openings rate has hit 7%, up from 6.3% in the prior month. And while the rate of hiring also increased, it still trails.

That has not gone unnoticed. Doug Walls, the labor market information director for the state Office of Economic Opportunity, said Thursday the “quits rate” — the number of people voluntarily leaving their current jobs — also is up.

And the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for June is 3.5%. That is up a tenth of a point from May, a figure that reflects the lowest figure since 1973 when the state has been doing these computations.

All that, he said, is a positive sign for employees.

“Generally, the ‘quits rate’ will increase when workers are confident they can find a better job elsewhere, one that may offer better pay or more flexibility,” Walls said. “So, with the uptick in the job openings and a voluntary quits rate and unemployment rates at near-historic lows, workers may be thinking that this is the right time to change job positions.”

The disparity between openings and job-seekers also is having an effect on wages.

Walls said the state’s average hourly wage has hit $31.30. And while that still trails the national average of $33.31, it is up 5% in the past year versus a 4% increase for the rest of the country.

Less clear is how long that positive situation for workers — and headwinds for employers — will remain. And that comes down to the Economics 101: the law of supply and demand.

“Arizona’s labor force continued to add individuals who are coming back into the labor force,” Walls said. There was a big decline during Covid in that figure, which covers the number of people working and, potentially more important, the number actively looking for work.

Then there are new entrants, recent high school and college graduates looking for their first jobs.
And there’s something else: Arizona has long been a magnet for new residents.

That is not expected to change. Figures from the Office of Economic Opportunity project the annual population growth rate in Arizona to be 1.2% by 2030; the same number for the rest of the United States is 0.6%.

“That’s going to help balance out and provide the skilled labor needed by employers,” Walls said. “If we’re continuing to see strong labor force growth then employers may be less inclined or less likely to have to compete for limited talent around the state.”

Overall, Walls reported that private sector employers shed 1,500 jobs between May and June. But he said much of that is seasonal.

One area particularly affected is the state’s leisure and hospitality sector, particularly bars and restaurants, where employment is down by about 5,600. Walls noted, though, that some of that was made up by hiring by the operators of amusement parks and recreation centers.

“The school year is out,” he said. “People are looking for indoor activities or looking to go to the amusement parks which oftentimes have water features and water parks associated with them.”

The new report also showed an increase in construction employment. But Walls said there are signs on the horizon of slowing.

One of those is the number of permits issued for new private housing units.

That had bottomed out in 2009 after the real estate bubble burst, at one point hitting just 802 a month.
There had been a more or less steady increase, even through the Covid recession. But the trend may be reversing, with the number of building permits issued in May at 4,548, down by 689 from a year earlier, a 13.2% drop.

Much of that is related to interest rates, with the latest figures just shy of 7% compared to slightly more than 3% two years ago. And there are signs that the Federal Reserve Board, hoping to bring inflation under control and achieve a “soft landing” of the economy, is poised for at least one more increase in the federal funds rate which directly affects mortgage rates.

And this is about more than new homes.

The number of active listings of existing homes decreased again last month and is now down by about 8% from a year earlier. Here, too, the mortgage rate plays a role.

“I think those who have purchased homes who do have mortgages at those lower rates are more reluctant to sell their house or move unless they have to because they do know that they’re going to be entering into a market with much higher interest rates,” Walls said. And he said this isn’t just an Arizona issue.

He said Redfin Corp., which does research as well as buys and sells real estate, reports that just 1% of all U.S. homes changed hands in the first half of the year, “which was the lowest share in at least a decade.”

PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona woman who faked being a nurse practitioner during the Covid pandemic was sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison.

State prosecutors said 58-year-old Pamela O’Guinn pleaded guilty to fraud, forgery and identity theft.

The Arizona Board of Nursing began investigating O’Guinn after she falsely claimed that she was a medical professional and had been providing services to one of the parties in a child custody case.

Authorities said O’Guinn had been treating patients and writing prescriptions as a nurse practitioner under the name of “Dr. Pamela Robinson” between May 2020 and February 2021, which was during the height of Covid.

Court records show O’Guinn applied for nursing certification in Arizona by using personal information stolen from a Maine resident.

Prosecutors said O’Guinn worked at a wellness center in Youngtown before being arrested.

Update: Provides the latest information that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists formally signed off Thursday on the rules crafted by the Arizona Board of Pharmacy that eliminates the requirement that women have an individual prescription to get contraceptives.

It’s official: Women in Arizona can now walk into a pharmacy and get birth control pills. Ditto hormonal rings and patches.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists formally signed off Thursday on the rules crafted by the Arizona Board of Pharmacy that scraps the requirement that women have an individual prescription to get contraceptives. Instead, they can rely on a “standing order” issued late Thursday by the Arizona Department of Health Services.

And all that traces its roots back to legislation crafted by then-Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita approved in 2021 and signed by then-Gov. Doug Ducey.

But there was no mention of either in a press release by Gov. Katie Hobbs. Instead, the Democratic governor said that the change in law, which she had nothing to do with, was part of her effort of “standing up to the extremists who threaten access to the basic healthcare our families rely on.”

The action comes after the Governor’s Regulatory Review Council gave final approval Wednesday to allowing pharmacists to dispense contraceptives without the specific annual prescription from a doctor that has been required until now. Instead, a standing order by the Arizona Department of Health Services is all that’s required.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists testified in favor of the original 2021 legislation and also submitted a letter in May to the Arizona Board of Pharmacy endorsing the new rule and saying it “will decrease access barriers to contraception yet still maintain the clinician consultation for the patient.”

Still, you won’t be able to grab a box of pills right off the shelf. Ditto with other forms of hormonal birth control.

Instead, you’ll first have to fill out a questionnaire asking you about certain personal habits and health conditions. And Kam Gandhi, executive director of the Arizona Board of Pharmacy, said the pharmacist can refuse to sell you the items if he or she believes the pills could cause health problems.

There’s also the fact that Arizona has a “right of conscience” law which permits pharmacists to refuse to dispense a drug that violates their religious or moral beliefs. But Gandhi said most pharmacists would refer customers to another pharmacy where they could get the pills.

And there’s something else.

The new law applies only to adults. Anyone younger than 18 still needs an actual prescription from her doctor.

All this is the culmination of a three-year effort by Ugenti-Rita to make access to contraceptives available without a doctor’s order.

“Women can make that decision for themselves,” she told Capitol Media Services on Wednesday. Nor is the former state senator from Scottsdale who pushed the measure through the Republican-controlled Legislature persuaded by claims that women do not understand all the risk factors involved.

“Do guys understand all the risk factors when they take Viagra?” Ugenti-Rita responded. And while Viagra does require a prescription under Arizona law, it is widely available online without first seeing a doctor.

All that, she said, shows a double standard.

“I find these questions insulting to women’s intelligence,” Ugenti-Rita said. “I find it just offensive that in 2023 women still have to justify and explain why they’re perfectly capable of making meaningful and rational health and well-being choices that are aligned with who they are, their goals, their objectives.”

Still, it’s not automatic. There is that questionnaire.

Some answers might eliminate the chances of getting birth control outright, like a current pregnancy, already using hormonal birth control or nursing a newborn.

Others are designed to determine risk factors.

Women will be asked, for example, if they smoke. That has generally been considered a risk factor for blood clots for women who take hormonal contraceptives.

Closely related is whether a woman has been told by a medical professional if she is at high risk of developing a blood clot in a leg or lung.

All that, Gandhi said, goes to whether a pharmacist will dispense the pills, vaginal rings or patches with hormones.

“A pharmacist still has to make a clinical judgment,” he said. And there are conditions he said which are likely to cause someone to turn away a customer.

“If someone hasn’t seen their primary care physician in five years, it doesn’t make sense to give them something,” Gandhi said. “They need to go to their family practice person, get a physical, make sure they’re in good health.”

Ugenti-Rita, for her part, sniffed at the whole idea that women have to first answer questions for a pharmacist before that person decides it’s OK to provide birth control.

“If it was up to me, we wouldn’t need the questionnaire,” she said.

“Women are perfectly capable of making health choices for themselves when it comes to whether they want to take hormonal birth control or not,” Ugenti-Rita said. “It’s their choice, they’re armed with information, they’re empowered with doing whatever they feel comfortable doing.”

And Ugenti-Rita suggested that there has been a bit of paternalism in all that.

“It blows my mind and it’s sad that we still struggle with the concept of women being in charge of their own health care,” she said.

She said, though, the requirement for the questionnaire had to be included to get the measure through the Legislature.

Ugenti-Rita also took a slap at some who said that, absent being required to go to a doctor once a year to get a birth control prescription refilled, women won’t go in for preventative care and screening.

One of those expressing concern was Will Humble, executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association. While Humble said that, on balance, he supports the liberalized access to birth control, he feared there was “a good chance that some women will skip that routine care, Pap smears and things like that,” he said, tests that can detect cervical cancer.

“That’s ridiculous,” Ugenti-Rita countered.

“Women are capable of managing multiple priorities,” she said. “And this isn’t going to take away from their ability to go to the doctor in other capacities.”

Ugenti-Rita noted that the Food and Drug Administration approved the first oral contraceptive in 1960.
“It’s been highly studied,” she said. “It’s been one of the most prolifically taken drugs in the world.”

She actually got the proposal approved by the Senate in 2020. But it died before it could get House action when the Legislature adjourned early that year because of the Covid outbreak.

She had better luck the following year getting the full Legislature to approve it and the signature of then-Gov. Doug Ducey. But then it took until now for the Board of Pharmacy to craft the rules and get them through the regulatory process.

The state’s unemployment rate remains at historic lows.

But those Arizonans who do find themselves out of work through no fault of their own won’t see their benefits cut, at least not this year.

A new report Thursday from the Office of Economic Opportunity shows the seasonally adjusted rate for June at 3.4%. No lower figure has been registered in the state since the current method of computing the statistic was instituted in the 1970s.

The report comes just days after state lawmakers narrowly defeated a proposal by Sen. Steve Kaiser, R-Phoenix, that would have sharply cut the length of time that Arizonans who are laid off can collect jobless benefits.

Kaiser contends the current system, which provides benefits of up to 26 weeks for those fired or laid off without case, removes the incentive for those out of work to go out and look for new employment.

He sought — and got the state Senate to approve — a graduated scale that based the eligibility period on the statewide unemployment rate. And at current levels, his SB 1167 would have ended benefits after just 12 weeks.

But two House Republicans aligned themselves with Democrats opposed to the bill, denying Kaiser the 31 votes he needed for approval.

One of them, Rep. David Cook of Globe, told Capitol Media Services on Thursday that a big flaw in what Kaiser was pushing was that the length of benefits would be based on that statewide unemployment rate — a rate that, because of where most of Arizonans live and work is linked heavily to economic conditions in the Phoenix metro area.

“If I lost my job in Chandler I could drive to Queen Creek,” he said.

“If I lost my job in Mesa I could go to Tempe,” Cook continued. “Tempe, I could go to Phoenix. Or Phoenix, I could go all the way to Mesa.”

That, said Cook, isn’t true for residents of rural areas. And even now, in a time of generally low unemployment rates, both statewide and nationally, the picture varies across Arizona.
Maricopa County, for example, has logged jobless rates below 3% for four of the past five months.

In Pima County, by contrast, the percentage of people listed as unemployed, meaning they are actively seeking work, has been running about a half point higher.

And in Gila County, where Cook lives, the latest unemployment rate was 4.1%.

That’s still low. But it’s also historically proven quite volatile.

Even disregarding what happened during Covid, Gila County hit a 14.1% unemployment rate in January 2010. A decade ago, it was 9.3%.

Much of that is because the employment situation in not just his county but several others in Arizona is closely linked to copper, both mining and smelting.

“And when the mining industry lays people off, it takes a long span for it to recover,” Cook said.

He said that Kaiser’s legislation does not take into account that there simply are not nearby jobs that people can pick up waiting to be called back to work.

More problematic, Cook said, is what happens if those laid-off workers, facing a cutoff in their benefits, decide to pack up and move elsewhere.

“If the mining companies lose those experienced workers, then they spend thousands and thousands of dollars on training new people that have no mining experience,” he said.

And there’s something else.

Cook said those unemployment benefits are not paid for from state tax funds. Instead, he said, it’s actually a form of insurance.

Payments come from a special fund which is financed by a levy paid by employers on the first $8,000 of each worker’s salary.

The actual tax rate is based on how often a company’s workers end up being found eligible for benefits. Rates range from as low as 0.07% for firms with low usage to as high as 18.78% for companies which have a high number of employees who are laid off or fired for no reason of their own.

Thursday’s new statewide report shows generally good employment conditions — especially for workers. And it’s not just the record low unemployment rate.

The most recent figures show that the “openings rate” in Arizona was 5.9%. That reflects the number of positions that are not filled.

And Doug Walls, the state agency’s labor market information director, said that figure is higher than pre-pandemic levels.

By contrast, the hiring rate — the rate at which employers were able to fill jobs — was just 4.4%

“That’s a sign that employers are still understaffed and looking for labor,” Walls said.

One bit of fallout from all of that is that Arizona companies are having to pay more to fill those slots.

The state’s wages rose 5.6% in the past year, compared with just 3.6% for the rest of the nation. Still, even at that, the average hourly wage in Arizona is $31.61 versus $33.37 nationally.

But not all sectors of the Arizona economy are growing.

One big loser was in warehousing and transportation.

“This was an industry sector that had benefited from the impacts of the pandemic,” Walls explained.

“Consumers turned to purchasing goods.”

More to the point, he said a lot of those purchases were made online.

“More traditional retail businesses also had closed in-person sales,” Walls explained. And that left the companies that could store and deliver those ordered goods.

Now, he said, these companies don’t need as many workers. But Walls said that the industry still has more people employed than it did before Covid.

Different factors are affecting other sectors of the economy that shed jobs last month. And at least some of that is tied to both inflation and the efforts by the Federal Reserve Bank to curb it with what has been a series of hikes in interest rates.

So, for example, the state’s financial activities sector shed 3,800 jobs between April and May. And half of those were among credit unions, mortgage and other loan brokers and commercial banking as higher borrowing costs meant fewer qualified applicants.

Then there’s the closely related construction sector which lost 1,300 jobs in the past month. By contrast, it normally adds about 1,000 jobs between April and May.

And much of that has been tied to demand for housing which, in turn, is affected by the cost of mortgages.

Walls pointed out that there was pretty much a consistent and steady increase in permits for new homes from 2010 until the middle of 2022. It plummeted by nearly two thirds earlier this year. And while there has been some recovery, Walls noted that the number of permits is still 17% below what it was a year earlier.

Still, he said, there are some optimistic signs. One of the biggest, Walls said, was the decision Wednesday by the Fed to pause further interest rate hikes, at least for the time being.

That, he said, “should be a positive indicator for those looking to purchase a home.”

A resolution that would limit the governor’s ability to declare a state of emergency moved through the Senate on Monday on party lines. Unlike typical bills, this Republican-sponsored resolution doesn’t have to get by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs – it goes to the voters.

The House concurrent resolution, 2039, was amended in the Senate by Sen. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, who toned down the language and lifted some of the burden it would have put on the Legislature.

At the beginning of May, Senate Republicans disagreed in a caucus meeting over how to structure the language of 2039, which at its core, limits the governor’s power to call an extended state of emergency.

The resolution is authored by Rep. Joseph Chaplik, R-Scottsdale, and passed on party lines in the House previously.

One of the main reasons cited by lawmakers as reason for the resolution is Covid. Many Republican senators are displeased with the way former Gov. Doug Ducey handled the pandemic, including through the use of an extended state of emergency.

Sen. Ken Bennett, R-Prescott, said in caucus that while he didn’t like the way Ducey handled Covid either, he also questioned the wisdom of Chaplik’s resolution, which initially would have required the Legislature to reconvene within 10 days of the governor calling a special session for anything.

Since 2021, there have been 21 states of emergency, and they lasted for an average of 859 days, or about two and half years, according to staff.

Mesnard’s amendments seem to have eased those concerns, because Bennett voted “yes” on Monday.

Rather than ending a state of emergency after 30 days, the resolution would end the governor’s special powers during a state of emergency after 30 days. If the Legislature votes to extend the governor’s powers, it would also get the option to alter or limit them in some way.

The bill also no longer includes a state of emergency relating to floods or fires, which are very common. It also doesn’t apply to an emergency in a time of war (which is uncommon).

If the Legislature isn’t already in session when the governor calls a state of emergency, then the governor would be required to call a special session if one third of the members of each chamber requested it. That’s 10 senators and 20 representatives. No Democrats would need to support it in the Legislature’s current makeup.

Although the bill doesn’t go to Hobbs to be signed, or more likely vetoed, it does have to get through voters. This resolution will go to the ballot in 2024.

With a Democrat in the governor’s office and a Republican controlled Legislature, resolutions like 2039 are a good way for the majority party to pass partisan legislation – provided it can convince voters it’s necessary.

PHOENIX (AP) — The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Arizona says four people have been sentenced for fraudulently obtaining millions of dollars in federal Covid assistance, including a couple who netted $13 million.

Federal prosecutors said Thursday four people in three separate cases were recently given “significant prison terms” for taking advantage of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans.

Kimberly and Jason Coleman of Mesa were convicted of falsely submitting two dozen loan applications to collectively get over $30 million. Investigators say more than 10 submissions were approved, netting them over $13 million in funds. The couple used that money on luxury cars, real estate properties, jewelry and merchandise from high-end retail outlets.

Jason Coleman, 41, was sentenced in May to five years. Kimberly Coleman, 39, was sentenced in April to 10 years.

Sean Swaringer of Peoria was also sentenced in April to more than 10 years for taking fraudulent PPP loans of over $1.5 million for two cryotherapy businesses. Prosecutors say he also recruited at least 10 others to apply for loans in exchange for a cut of the funds. Swaringer, 57, used his funding for cars, vacations, real estate and jewelry. He has been ordered to pay over $3.8 million in restitution.

Willie Mitchell, 41, of Phoenix was sentenced in February to more than eight years for conspiring with others to fraudulently obtain seven PPP loans totaling almost $9.5 million. He spent the money on several properties, vacations and a car.

The FBI led the investigations.