Restaurants will be able to sell mixed drinks to-go under a law the Arizona House passed overwhelmingly Monday.
The House voted 50-9 to pass HB2773 on final reading, which lets bars sell cocktails for off-premises consumption and lets restaurants apply for permits to do the same. Now that the House has concurred with the Senate’s amendments, it heads to Gov. Doug Ducey’s desk for his signature.
Bar and liquor store owners had originally opposed the bill, saying it is unfair to let restaurants, which have far less expensive liquor licenses than them, sell cocktails to go. As amended, the bill would let restaurants lease to-go cocktail permits from restaurants and liquor stores through the end of 2025. After that, restaurants could apply for such permits in their own right.
“As I committed to people, I continued to negotiate along with a large group, a bipartisan group, and the bars are now in favor and groceries are now neutral because of the changes that we made,” said Rep. Jeff Weninger, R-Chandler, the bill’s sponsor.
Rep. Aaron Lieberman, D-Paradise Valley, said during Monday’s House Democratic caucus that the bill as amended would let bars reap some of the financial benefits of letting restaurants sell to-go cocktails over the next few years through the leasing system. He said allowing to-go sales is both important for restaurants and popular with consumers and with constituents he has heard from.
“As I understand it, this has been a really good stakeholder process to get to this point,” he said.
Ducey let restaurants start selling cocktails to-go as a way to help them stay afloat at the beginning of the Covid pandemic despite the other restrictions placed upon them. A group of bars sued, and a Maricopa County judge sided with them in November. If Ducey signs HB2773, restaurants that want to sell cocktails to-go will once again be able to under the newly established licensing rules.
Four Democrats and five Republicans voted against the bill in the House. It had passed the Senate 22-8, also with bipartisan majorities but drawing the handful of “No” votes from both parties.
Public school funding is essential to ensuring that children in Arizona will become successful in their future endeavors. Special education is one part of public education that needs to be...
Get 24/7 political news coverage and access to events honoring top political professionals
State Treasurer Kimberly Yee speaks at her inauguration ceremony on Jan. 7, 2019. Yee announced May 17, 2021, she intends to run for governor in 2022....
Get 24/7 political news coverage and access to events honoring top political professionals
Katie Hobbs Katie Hobbs was working late on November 17 when she got a disturbing call from her husband. There were protestors outside their home, and at...
Get 24/7 political news coverage and access to events honoring top political professionals
Lea Marquez Peterson at the inauguration of Gov. Doug Ducey on Jan. 7, 2019. Clean energy advocates in Arizona watched four years of work essentially go...
Get 24/7 political news coverage and access to events honoring top political professionals
Gov. Doug Ducey is cutting off the $300 a week in extra federal jobless benefits in a bid to help the restaurant and hospitality industry find more people willing to work for what they are paying.
But they will get a one-time $2,000 bonus if they take a full-time job by Sept. 6. And the state is offering some child care assistance and even a semester of community college tuition for those who go back to work.
“In Arizona we’re going to use federal money to encourage people to work … instead of paying people not to work,” the governor said in a video announcement on Thursday.
The move most immediately affects more than 200,000 Arizonans who qualify the extra $300 a week currently appropriated by Congress to help those affected by the Covid.
Ducey’s position, according to press aide C.J. Karamargin, is that there are plenty of jobs out there and little reason for people to be collecting benefits. More to the point, he said that restaurants and hotels are struggling to find workers.
“The hospitality industry in Arizona, a critical part of our economy, was perhaps the hardest hit sector,” Karamargin said.
“They cannot find enough workers for the jobs they have to fill,” he continued. “And this plan is aimed at helping them fill those positions.”
But Karamargin said this extends to other sectors of the economy where employers are having trouble finding workers.
Inherent in that is the governor’s belief that there are those for whom the total benefits — the $240 a week maximum paid by the state plus the extra $300 — provide a disincentive to go out and find a job. That comes out to $13.50 an hour, before taxes are deducted.
By contrast, the state minimum wage is $12.15 an hour; restaurants can pay $3 an hour less if the tips that servers get bring them up to the minimum.
Steve Chucri
Steve Churci, president of the Arizona Restaurant Association, said there are establishments of all sizes that are “ready to hire new employees and expand their teams.” And he said the situation now is far different than it was last year.
“Millions are vaccinated, we know how to keep patrons and staff safe, and people are ready to eat at restaurants again,” Chucri said. “Restaurants need to ensure they have enough staff to meet the demand but many are struggling to fill positions.”
That, however, still leaves the question of whether the problem is the underlying wages — and whether it would be resolved simply by paying more.
In the restaurant industry, for example, data from the governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity shows that the average salary for fast food and counter workers in Arizona ranges from $12.15 an hour to $13.42. And restaurant cooks earn from $12.44 to $15.38 an hour.
“That’s a fair question,” Chucri told Capitol Media Services. But he said those pre-pandemic numbers no longer reflect what the industry is offering.
“We’re paying far above what we would typically pay,” Churci said.
“We’re seeking dishwashers making $25 an hour,” he said. “McDonald’s is paying $50 just to show up for an interview.”
And yet, he said, restaurants are still having trouble finding workers.
Chucri conceded that some part of the problem the industry is having has nothing to do with people deciding they’d rather collect unemployment benefits.
“You’ve got people that have cared for or are caring for Covid patients, family members, that have to be there,” he said. And there are other reasons.
“Some in the restaurant workforce said, ‘You know what? I don’t want to be this vulnerable in the future if another Covid were to strike or Covid came back strongly, I don’t want to be in the same situation,’ ” Chucri said. “So they’ve gone into health care, they’ve gone into a different profession.”
So in those circumstances, the governor’s decision to cut jobless benefits won’t make a difference.
But Chucri said there are situations where Ducey’s maneuver will matter.
“I know for a fact that some people who are on unemployment would rather sit home and not come back to work because they’re making at or maybe a little below — and in some cases, above — what they were making,” he said.
Anyway, Chucri said, it’s about more than the restaurant industry, saying retailers also are having trouble finding help.
The big carrot in all this is that $2,000 bonus for those who are currently collecting benefits who go back to work by Labor Day. For those who take part-time jobs, the bonus is $1,000.
But they have to work at least eight of the following 10 weeks to qualify.
Doug Ducey
There also is the promise of a single semester of tuition at the community college along with cash to help those without a high school diploma prepare for their GED exam.
And the state will provide subsidized child care for those who return to work if they are earning $25 an hour or less.
Arizona lawmakers are considering legislation, backed by the business community, to increase that maximum state benefit. That $240 a week is not only the second lowest in the nation — only Mississippi pays less — but has not been raised in 17 years.
But that legislation has stalled amid differences between House and Senate versions, one moving the cap to $320 a week and the other at $300. That leaves the question of whether either version can be enacted before that additional $300 expires on July 10.
And that assumes the governor goes along. Ducey has been chilly to even raising the basic state benefit even though it is not paid through state taxes.
Instead, the payments are financed through a tax that employers pay on the first $7,000 of each worker’s salary. The average cost, according to DES, is $160 a year per employee.
The governor’s announcement also comes as the state’s official seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is 6.7%. While that is down from the peak of 14.2% it hit a year ago, it still is higher than the pre-pandemic figure of 4.7%.
This is actually the second move by the governor in less than two weeks to force people back into the workforce.
Earlier this month the governor rescinded an order he had signed in March 2020 suspending the job-search requirements normally part of the ability of people to collect benefits. That was based on not wanting to force people who were infected with Covid, or were caring for others with the virus, to go out looking even as the pandemic was raging.
Now, effective the week of May 23, anyone wanting to keep unemployment benefits will again have to make contact with potential employers at least four days a week.
And after four weeks, they have to take any job that’s offered, regardless of whether it is in their field or not.
Ducey is hardly the first Republican governor to make the move. At least nine others have already done the same.
But President Joe Biden earlier this week rejected the idea that the enhanced federal benefits are why some people are not going back to work.
“The line has been because of the generous unemployment benefits, that’s a major factor in labor shortages,” the president said at the White House on Monday.
“Americans want to work,” he said. “I think the people claiming Americans won’t work even if they find a good and fair opportunity underestimate the American people.”
Voters arrive to vote at their polling station on Election Day, early, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020, in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Matt York) It took less than...
Get 24/7 political news coverage and access to events honoring top political professionals
Former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett talks about overseeing a 2020 election ballot audit ordered by the Republican lead Arizona Senate at the Arizona Veterans...
Get 24/7 political news coverage and access to events honoring top political professionals
A White Mountain rancher who received $66,000 in grants from a state board she serves on will get another term on that board.
The Senate this week confirmed the nomination of Sarahmarge “Wink” Crigler to the state’s Livestock Loss Board, over the objections of Democratic lawmakers who argued that it looked bad for a person who benefited monetarily from the board’s decisions to continue serving on the board.
“This is all about the appearance of impropriety, and this just doesn’t look good for the state of Arizona,” said Sen. Martín Quezada, D-Glendale.
In 2019, Crigler received $66,000 from the board to help pay to move 300 cows and their calves to a pasture outside of the range of Mexican gray wolves. The board gave just over $206,000 in grants that year – $96,000 to pay ranchers for cattle killed by wolves and $110,000 through a new research grant program for ranchers to test methods to prevent conflicts between wolves and cattle.
Crigler, who has been a member of the board since it was created in 2015, voted to create the research grant program that her Springerville ranch benefitted from mere months later, according to meeting minutes. She recused herself from the vote on whether to fund her specific proposal, and she said she didn’t see any conflicts of interest.
“I did it in good faith with the intent of the board,” Crigler said. “One of the intents of the board was to look at strategies that would reduce conflict.”
The actual cost to move her cows out of wolf range was almost three times as much as the grant she received, she said. It cost about $3.50 per head of cattle per day, and she had 300 cows for 180 days, plus an extra $1,000 in moving costs.
And people who criticized her for benefitting from a board she serves on didn’t consider that her practices save money, she said. The board approved about $25,000 in payments to neighboring ranches for lost cattle at its last meeting alone, Crigler said, and she could have been among the ranchers seeking payments if she didn’t send her cattle away.
“What people don’t look at is that I don’t get paid large sums of money for lost livestock,” Crigler said.
Ducey’s office was similarly unconcerned about the appearance of a conflict of interest. Spokesman C.J. Karamargin said the governor expects Crigler and other board members to follow set rules, including recusing themselves from votes when necessary.
“In the past, she has complied with board policy and recused herself when issues come up that could be a potential conflict and we expect that she will continue to do so,” he said.
Sandy Bahr, director of the state’s Sierra Club chapter, said Crigler recusing herself from a vote on her grant request doesn’t automatically eliminate conflicts for the board. Her status as a board member could still create pressure for other board members to approve her request, Bahr said.
“She’s part of the board, she’s sitting right there, and clearly if someone else on the board wants her support for what they’re asking for, it creates a weird power dynamic,” she said. “You have someone who has a vote on every other thing the board does asking for a substantial amount of the money.”
The Sierra Club also opposed Crigler’s re-appointment because of her public statements about wolves, including comments about wolves being a government tool toforce people out of rural areas and into urban areas.
Police in Arizona will soon need a criminal conviction before they can seize property in connection with a crime.
House Bill 2810, which makes far-reaching changes to civil asset forfeiture, was sponsored by Rep. Travis Grantham, R-Gilbert, and passed with just two dissenting votes in the House and one in the Senate. However, it was opposed by many in law enforcement, including Maricopa County Attorney Allister Adel, who wrote to Gov. Doug Ducey last week urging him to veto it.It will take effect 90 days after the Legislature adjourns for the year.
Ducey said in a prepared statement that Arizona’s Constitution provides broader protections for personal rights and property than the U.S. Constitution, and that he weighed the balance between individual rights and making sure law enforcement has the needed tools to protect people.
“HB 2810 provides this balance,” he said. “And it ensures that law enforcement has the ability to seize property pending forfeiture or if the property is evidence of a crime. It ensures that property being taken is truly connected to criminal activity while innocent persons have the ability to get their property back.”
As well as requiring a conviction before property can be seized permanently, the bill would make it easier for innocent people to get their property back and ban the use of so-called “roadside waivers” that threaten criminal charges unless property is handed over. And, it puts the burden of proof on the state to show property was being used for an illegal purpose. Property could still be seized if it is evidence of a crime, abandoned or illegal to possess.
HB2810’s supporters say it will protect innocent people from having their property seized unjustly. Opponents said it would make it more difficult for law enforcement to seize the ill-gotten gains of major criminal organizations.
“This bill reflects a gross misunderstanding of the role civil asset forfeiture plays in keeping our community safe,” Adel wrote last week, according to the Arizona Republic. “Civil asset forfeiture is an important and powerful tool, used by law enforcement to efficiently interrupt the money supply of criminal enterprises and quickly recover property for victims of crime.”
A spokeswoman for Adel’s office didn’t immediately return a call Thursday evening.
Arizonans are going to have to start looking for work again later this month if they want to keep their unemployment benefits.
Gov. Doug Ducey on Monday rescinded an order he signed in March 2020 suspending those job-search requirements during the pandemic. That was based on not wanting to force people who were infected with Covid or were caring for others with the virus to go out looking even as the pandemic was raging.
Now, effective the week of May 23, anyone wanting to keep those benefits will again have to make contact with potential employers at least four days a week.
Initially it requires just a “sincere” job search in the chosen field to maintain benefits. There also is a mandate to document the effort.
But anyone who collects benefits for at least four weeks will find themselves being forced to take pretty much anything that comes their way. That’s because a 2018 law signed by Ducey — and now again takes effect — says people forfeit their benefits if they do not accept any jobs that pays them at least 20% more than they were collecting.
Doug Ducey
With state benefits capped at $240 a week, that’s pretty low.
That translates out to $6 an hour for a full-time job. That means any job at all that pays the minimum wage of $12.15 an hour would qualify.
So, too, would jobs for tipped workers who are entitled to be paid just $9.15 an hour as long as their tips bring them up to the minimum.
Ducey’s move comes despite the fact that the state’s employment situation has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels.
The state Office of Economic Opportunity lists the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate at 6.7% for March, the most recent figures available.
That is far below the 14.2% peak it reached in April 2020. But it had dropped as low as 4.7% in November 2019.
At the same time, the number of people actually working also still lags.
According to OEO, the state has recovered just 68% of the 331,500 jobs it lost since the pandemic-induced recession began in February 2019.
And that same agency reports that unemployment is still 36% higher than it was when the pandemic began.
More telling is that the recovery is quite uneven.
For example, the state’s financial activities sector has recovered just 37% of what was shed, versus 62% for leisure and hospitality — the sector that includes bars, restaurants and lodging facilities — and 78% for manufacturing.
In fact, the only part of the economy that’s doing better than before the Covid outbreak is trade and transportation.
That’s driven largely by e-commerce and the fact that people have been buying more online. That, in turn, has meant the need for more workers at warehouse and fulfillment centers, like those operated by Amazon, and delivery drivers.
How much better?
Doug Walls, the OEO’s marketing information director, said the 45,800 job loss has been more than compensated by 64,300 more people now working in this sector than at the beginning of the recession.
The most recent report from the state Department of Economic Security says there are about 55,000 Arizonans currently collecting state benefits.
That is down from a peak of more than 230,000 last summer. But it still is higher than the 17,000 a week before the pandemic.
Ducey in a prepared statement, said he believes it’s time to reinstate the job-search requirements.
“Arizonans are ready to get back to work,” he said. “Our economy is booming, jobs need filling more than two million Arizonans are fully vaccinated, and vaccination appointments are available to anyone who wants one.”
And the governor quoted from Ronald Reagan who said “the best social program is a job.”
“Unemployment benefits are still available to Arizonans who need them,” Ducey said. “But now that plenty of jobs are available, those receiving the benefits should be actively looking for work.”
Particularly hard hit has been the hospitality industry with many hotels and resorts, now starting to recover as more people are vaccinated and willing to travel, reporting they are finding no takers, including among former employees.
With the new executive order — and the mandate to take pretty much any job after four weeks of benefits — those hotel and restaurant jobs could be filled by former professionals from a variety of fields.
None of this affects current negotiations to boost the maximum benefits.
A Senate-approved measure by Sen. Karen Fann, R-Prescott, would increase the cap by $80 a week, to $320, and potentially to $400 at some point. But the trade-off is that once the statewide unemployment rate drops to 6% or less those benefits would be cut from the current 26-week cap to 22 weeks.
But Rep. David Cook, R-Globe, is pushing a plan to boost benefits to $300 a week, but without the cut in the length of benefits.
The governor has not yet weighed in on either of the measures.
Despite the governor’s new executive order, there are some exceptions.
Under federal law, those who are getting the extra $300 a week in “pandemic unemployment assistance” do not have to be out looking for a job to keep those federal benefits if they have been diagnosed with Covid or if they are caring for a family member who has the virus.
Also exempt are those who provide care to a child who cannot go to school because it is closed, and those who have been advised by a health care provider to self-quarantine due to concerns related to Covid.
Tasya Peterson, DES press secretary, said those exceptions do not apply to the $240-a-week in state benefits. But DES is empowered to allow someone to not return to work if they have “good cause,” which can include pandemic-related situations. She said these are determined on a case-by-case basis.
As the Legislature enters what are likely the waning weeks of the 2021 session, a few bills meant to make Arizona’s system of criminal sentencing more lenient have already been signed into law, while more ambitious measures have stalled.
A bill that has been in the works for years to require a criminal conviction before police can seize someone’s property through civil asset forfeiture passed the Senate this week and awaits Gov. Doug Ducey’s signature or veto. And supporters of a proposal to expand the state’s earned release credit system still hope to pass it this year, albeit with some amendments to appease law enforcement officials and lawmakers who worry its terms are too generous.
While Sen. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, is still working on possible amendments to SB1064, the earned release credit expansion bill is expected to pass the House if a deal can be worked out – that same chamber easily passed an even more generous earned release credit bill earlier this year. The real question is whether it will pass in the Senate, which is where the previous bill stalled.
J.D. Mesnard
“I think it will have a better chance, but I will be candid, I don’t know how really in the loop my Senate colleagues are,” Mesnard said. He said he plans to talk to other senators, including Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee and who didn’t schedule a hearing on the Housebill.
But while earned release credit expansion could still become law, a bill that would have created an independent corrections ombudsman won’t be moving forward, according to its sponsor.
“Haven’t heard, and it looks like it’s probably dead,” said Rep. Walt Blackman, R-Snowflake. “And that’s unfortunate.”
HB2167 passed the House 38-14 on March 1, and was assigned to Senate Judiciary, where it never got a hearing. Blackman blamed opposition from the Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry for its demise.
“DOC says there are too many issues with the bill, and that they are not prepared to execute the provisions in the bill, and it died,” Blackman said.
Blackman, a longtime advocate for changes in criminal justice policy, chaired the new House Criminal Justice Reform Committee this year, advancing numerous bills with bipartisan support. What opposition there was usually came from a minority of other Republicans. However, some of the more-controversial bills stalled after passing the House, an outcome which has frustrated Caroline Isaacs, the program director of the American Friends Service Committee of Arizona.
“I don’t think it’s about the particular bills. … it’s about the obstructionism and the kinds of ridiculous distractions that our state leaders are more engaged in,” Isaacs said. She said Arizona has fallen behind many other states, including some very conservative ones, when it comes to criminal justice reform.
Caroline Isaacs
“This is not a radical concept, and so the kind of dialogue, ‘Oh, we’ve got to slow this down, and it’s too much, too soon,’ this is baloney,” Isaacs said. “If you look at states like Mississippi and South Carolina and Texas, this is old news. This is like a shrug. Why would you not do something that works better and saves money?”
Grover Norquist, who is best known for his anti-tax activism but who has become a criminal justice reform advocate in recent years, made a similar point during an ArizonaCapitol Times Morning Scoop on Mesnard’s bill April 22. He noted that conservative states such as Texas passing legislation to reduce the number of people in prison can provide a model for Republicans in other states who might be leery of being seen as soft on crime. Norquist said criminal justice reform can be part of a conservative approach to government by reducing spending.
“You can step forward comfortably if you’ve seen other states do something and nobody died and nobody lost an election and the world didn’t end,” he said.
Mesnard’s bill would make earned release credits, which could be earned by taking part in programs such as drug treatment and some work and self-improvement programs, retroactive for drug offenders but not for others. Mesnard said there is “less consternation” about letting drug offenders get earned release credits retroactively, but “ultimately, the biggest issue is going to be outside of the drug side of the bill, the non-drug, non-violent offender side of the bill.”
While Mesnard’s bill would only let them qualify for earned release credits prospectively, and at a slower rate than drug offenders. He said “some folks have a general discomfort with touching that population at all” and would rather stick to the current requirement that they serve 85% of their sentences. Mesnard said this requirement merely incentivizes not breaking prison rules, without giving them a reason to improve themselves. He said discussions include narrowing the scope of which non-violent offenders qualify for earned release credits.
Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, who voted against Mesnard’s bill in committee, said he fears going back to the days of less consistent sentences that preceded the ‘80s and ‘90s, when most states enacted the tougher sentencing laws that are largely still in force today.
John Kavanagh
“I don’t think that this is really close to what I could support,” he said. “I have real concerns about any bill that would allow a sentence to be cut pretty much in half.”
Another bill that appears to have stalled is HB2673, which would have let judges go below a statutory mandatory minimum sentence in some cases. It passed the House 50-9, but nothing has happened since it was assigned to Senate Judiciary in February.
However, not every bill that hasn’t gotten a hearing is dead. House Majority Leader Ben Toma, R-Peoria, said he expects his bill to let some felons get their records sealed, which passed the House with only one “nay” vote in February but hasn’t moved in the Senate, to be included in this year’s budget deal. The bill includes a $500,000 appropriation to set up the petition process.
Ducey, who typically does not comment on bills until they reach his desk and he signs or vetoes them, has in the past been supportive of proposals to reduce recidivism but skeptical of other more far-reaching efforts to change the system. On April 26, Ducey vetoed SB1261, which would have expanded the use of justification as a defense against any criminal offense.
“I appreciate the sponsor’s intent with this bill,” Ducey wrote in his veto message. “However, I have heard from several county attorneys that this bill could make the prosecution of DUIs nearly impossible. The safety of our highways and roads is of utmost importance, and I am concerned of the unintended consequences this bill may have.”
However, Ducey has signed a few other bills that went through the House Criminal Justice Reform Committee, such as ones relaxing the state’s repetitive offender sentencing law; creating new data collection requirements for police use of force; prohibiting most state agencies from denying people occupational licenses based on drug convictions; letting some low-level felons have their charges recorded as misdemeanors; and ending the requirement that a driver’s license be suspended for nonpayment of a fine. Isaacs said she was pleased to see these “baby steps.”
“These passed, the governor signed them, and lo and behold, the sky has not fallen and hopefully our elected officials will see that this is good policy and people support it and there are not negative consequences for supporting criminal justice reform,” Isaacs said. “In fact, it’s the opposite. This is what people want.”
You don't have credit card details available. You will be redirected to update payment method page. Click OK to continue.
Sign In
Free Newsletter
