With state lawmakers angling to increase the unemployment cap for the first time since 2004, Gov. Doug Ducey will likely face a political quandary.
Ducey has repeatedly shown little interest in raising the weekly amount above the current rate of $240, the second lowest unemployment cap in the nation. As two separate measures – both with bipartisan support – move through the legislative process, it raises the question whether Ducey would sign it into law or veto an increase, assuming it makes it to his desk.
Over the year of the Covid pandemic, Ducey has repeatedly pointed to the federal government as the avenue to increase unemployment checks.
Congress has passed three separate relief packages adding between $300 and $600 to each state’s weekly unemployment benefit cap, with a fourth on the way soon. Arizona still sits at 49th in the country, above only Mississippi.
Rep. David Cook, R-Globe, who is far from a moderate Republican, sponsored HB2805 that would raise the cap from $240 to $300 and also raise the cap for part-time workers to still be able to receive some assistance, increasing the weekly income disregard amount from $30 to $160.
It passed the House 50-9 on February 24, getting overwhelming support from progressives and some of the staunchest conservatives.
Senate President Karen Fann has her own proposal written as a strike-everything amendment that would raise the cap to $320 weekly payments, though it would cut benefits from 26 weeks to 20. Fann said she has the votes. In fact, she would only need five other Republicans in the chamber to have two-thirds of the Senate and the potential to override a veto – something that has never been done during the Ducey administration.
Chuck Coughlin, the strategist who used to work for two former Republican governors, said it’s an easy decision for Ducey, as the bill has popular support from bipartisan lawmakers and the public.
“In the last two years of his term, thumbing his nose at two-thirds majorities seems an unwise political thing to do,” Coughlin said. “Any governor’s last two years are amongst his or her most vulnerable because you just have less political capital, and you don’t want to invite that antagonism to your door.”
Coughlin said Ducey could save face by including a note with his signature talking about these “extraordinary times.”
“I think he could say that, and at the same time, indicate that his greatest hope is for people to find employment, find jobs in a robust Arizona economy as the vaccine becomes more prevalent,” he said.
Coughlin also said he doesn’t view signing a bill to increase the unemployment cap as a loss for the governor, despite Ducey’s previous opposition. He likened the decision to former Gov. Jan Brewer’s push to expand Medicaid benefits under Obamacare, saying it made very little sense to punish the state.
“I mean, we do have one of the lowest benefits in the country and so, acknowledging that and maybe readdressing that in a time of pandemic would give him an opportunity to revisit that thought,” Coughlin said.
Another possibility is that Ducey could allow a bill to become law without his signature, by declining to take action on it.
Throughout the pandemic, Ducey has faced many questions about the low unemployment benefits. His answers have varied from “there are jobs available” to some version of it’s up to Congress to act. Ducey has been clear that he supports creating jobs so people can get back to work, rather than pay them to remain unemployed. He has also repeatedly avoided answering whether he could live on $240 per week. Other Republican elected officials like House Speaker Rusty Bowers said “no” to that same question last year.
While Ducey has not conducted a public briefing in nearly three months, there have not been many other opportunities to ask him about these efforts moving through the Legislature. Arizona Republic podcast “The Gaggle” addressed the topic of unemployment on a congressional level on March 3 and Ducey told the hosts similar comments he has said before.
“I want to have public policy that supports employment, and having people incented to work. And I want to work with the Legislature on those types of solutions,” he said. “I do think through this [pandemic] we wanted to make sure that our social safety net was stretched and that it was strengthened and we’ve been able to do that to date.”
He went on to say what concerns him more than increasing the unemployment cap in a post-pandemic world is “pandemic aid.” Otherwise he wants to see what Congress will do before he responds further.
Ducey’s office did not respond to multiple requests for an interview, and the governor does not typically comment on pending legislation.
State legislators voted Thursday on multiple fronts to curb the power of the governor — this one and future ones — to declare and maintain an emergency.
With no discussion at all, the Senate gave preliminary approval to SCR 1001. If it gets final approval by the Senate and later by the House, it would immediately terminate the emergency that Gov. Doug Ducey declared nearly a year ago.
The resolution, crafted by Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, R-Scottsdale, states that the governor’s March 11 emergency order has interfered with individual rights. That specifically refers to the stay-at-home edicts he issued early in the Covid pandemic.
While those have been allowed to expire, Ugenti-Rita said other Ducey actions remain, including restrictions on how some businesses can operate. which she said have wreaked havoc on the economy.
Ducey could terminate the emergency on his own. But he has repeatedly insisted the need for him to assume the special powers remains.
This measure, which now needs a final roll-call vote in the Senate before going to the House, bypasses using. a constitutional provision which allows the legislature, by a simple majority, to declare the emergency over.
But Ducey could have the last word: A recent opinion by Attorney General Mark Brnovich said that, under the current constitutional provisions, the governor remains free to issue a new emergency order.
That, in turn, goes to the separate actions designed to keep that from happening — at least in the future.
HCR 2037, approved by the House on a 31-28 party-line vote, would allow a simple majority of state lawmakers to call themselves into special session to consider and review any gubernatorial emergency. It now takes a two-thirds margin to do that.
Separately, the Senate gave preliminary approval to SCR 1010. It actually would require the governor to call a special session any time he or she declares an emergency.
In both cases, that would give lawmakers the power to review what the governor has done, the restrictions imposed, and decide for themselves whether they are appropriate.
Nothing in either measure would affect the current emergency order. That’s because it requires a constitutional change, something that requires voter approval. And that can’t happen until November 2022.
But Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, who crafted the House version, said that there is a need to revisit the decades-old laws for the next time a governor declares an emergency.
“What we have now is absurd,” he told colleagues.
“What we have now are emergency procedures that were created for floods and hurricanes and fires, local short-lived emergencies, not pandemics,” Kavanagh said, with the governor given broad — and pretty much unquestionable — powers to act. “Pandemics are statewide and they’re long-lasting and the current procedures don’t work.”
Sen. Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa, author of the Senate measure said it’s a simple matter of the constitutional right of a republican form of government.
“And that’s not what we had this last year,” she said.
“We had one person and his advisers making decisions on behalf of the entire state,” Townsend said. “And I would challenge anyone to say that the state and the people in the state were satisfied with those decisions.”
Kavanagh said his measure is not a total power grab.
He said if whoever is governor doesn’t like the changes the legislature has made, he or she has the right to “protest,” essentially a form of a veto. And it would take a vote of 60% of lawmakers to override.
The whole concept of legislators second-guessing the governor bothered Rep. Randall Friese, D-Tucson.
“In a pandemic, very specifically, when decisions need to be made expeditiously to address rapid spread, I think one person with the advice of experts, and the guidance of their agencies like the Department of Health Services, making those decisions is less problematic than 90 people,” he said. And he asked if that wouldn’t slow the process down to the point of being ineffective.
Kavanagh and Townsend both said nothing in the measure would stop the governor from declaring an emergency and issuing immediate orders. What it does is ensure the legislature is in session and has a voice.
“And that’s when we deliberate, maybe we negotiate, we do a lot of things,” Kavanagh said. “And then we make a decision as to whether or not the governor acted wisely.”
Friese said he agrees, in essence, with the idea of giving the legislature a voice in future emergencies.
“We should have, as a legislature, some sort of automatic approval or something,” he said. And Friese said there should be some simple procedure for lawmakers, at some point, to review the declaration.
But he said that future emergencies could require rapid — and unilateral — action.
“One thing we know for sure is these viruses will evolve, these viruses will become more and more difficult to manage,” Friese said. And if there isn’t quick action, he said the impact on Arizona could be even more pronounced than it has been.
“We will have businesses close for much longer, we will have hospitals at capacity,” Friese said.
“We will have much more people sick and dying,” he continued. “And if we put too many triggers and make it too easy to undermine the plan of the executive, on the advice of many, many specialists and scientists and those people who are trained to respond to these things … we could be causing ourselves a lot of grief.”
As Republicans across the state and country face a party identity crisis about moving on from former President Donald Trump or to keep embracing him and his ideals, Gov. Doug Ducey has seemingly separated himself from the drama.
The 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, took place the final weekend of February in Orlando, Florida., but Ducey did not attend. Trump was the main attraction as his base embraced him, hoping he can remain the Republican Party’s best chance of becoming president again in 2024.
Ducey has not attended a CPAC event since 2017, but this year he is the chair of the Republican Governors Association, putting him as one of the top elected Republicans in the country.
Doug Cole, a Republican strategist at Highground Public Affairs who served under former Gov. Fife Symington, said Ducey made the right call in not attending CPAC.
This particular CPAC, Cole said, had taken on an aura of “what’s next for Donald Trump.”
Not attending a weekend event with the most conservative members of the party appears to send a message, but Ducey’s communications director, CJ Karamargin, gave a simple answer for why he did not travel to the Sunshine State.
“There is a lot going on in the Legislature right now. A lot of very important things and there’s a lot of work to be done here in Arizona,” Karamargin said.
Mum on specifics, Karamargin said three areas Ducey was focusing on prevented him from attending an event that several Republican legislators attended themselves. Those areas are “education issues, amendments of the gaming compact, and at the top of the list – Covid,” he said.
Education leaders, like state Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman, are trying to game-plan how schools can completely reopen, something Ducey is in favor of doing.
Ducey’s years-long legislative priority of amending the state’s gaming compact with Arizona tribes stalled in Senate Appropriations on February 23, as the chairman, Sen. David Gowan, R-Sierra Vista, held a gaming bill from Sen. T.J. Shope, R-Coolidge, in favor of his own effort to add historic horse race betting, which Ducey and the tribes won’t support. There’s a mirror bill to Shope’s in the House from Rep. Jeff Weninger, R-Chandler, which is still alive. Karamargin wouldn’t provide details on what Ducey’s office was planning to do on this topic.
“I’m not in position to go into any details right now, but suffice it to say, stay tuned,” he told Arizona Capitol Times, adding that he does, in fact, have details, he just cannot share them.
And for Covid, Arizona continues to vaccinate its way through the pandemic – to paraphrase the governor. Nearly 2 million people have received at least one dose, including Ducey himself who got his first shot on March 2.
Karamargin did say that there was a standing invitation for all GOP governors to attend CPAC, Ducey just chose not to go.
Ducey has spent the better part of 2021 telling several media outlets what the Republican Party looks like to him and slowly beginning to distance himself from Trump, without explicitly saying that’s what he is doing.
Cole said while CPAC focuses on Trump and his part to play for Republicans in the future, Ducey can focus on being the Republican Governors Association chair and actually work to help more Republicans get elected throughout the country.
“[Ducey’s] key task is not to support whatever Donald Trump may or may not do next. His focus, rightly so, is raising money, recruiting candidates, and keeping current governors in their seats if they face re-election,” Cole said.
The events that transpired in Washington, D.C. on January 6 caused a domino effect of major corporations changing or contemplating a change in political spending, which is a “sobering situation for the head of the Republican Governors Association,” Cole said, adding that Ducey is in a position to lead the party with fundraising — something that has been a great strength for him in his own races to date.
Ducey repeatedly condemned the rioting and said Trump deserves some blame for what happened.
Cole said of Ducey, “His job is to put the infrastructure, the candidates and the financial resources in the coffers of the Republican Governors Association and be successful. He made the right decision by all counts.”
Of course, Ducey is still tasked with leading Arizona for the next two years and managing what remains of the year-long Covid pandemic, where he is the sole person who can put an end to the emergency declaration he put into place on March 11, 2020.
Karamargin deferred questions to the state Department of Health Services about where Arizona has to be for Ducey to feel comfortable ending the emergency declaration.
Steve Elliott, the DHS spokesman, said there isn’t a magic number of vaccinations that need to be administered for the emergency declaration to end.
“But it likely would include a combination of decreased case counts, decreased patient counts, and slowing vaccine demand, which would suggest that Arizonans who want to be vaccinated have been vaccinated,” Elliott said. “When conditions are such that there’s no realistic potential of cases exceeding hospital capacity, it will be time to discuss lifting the emergency order.”
A bipartisan coalition of legislators gave Gov. Doug Ducey a crucial victory Thursday as they approved his plan to expand off-reservation gaming in the state.
The 48-12 House vote on HB2772 came despite concerns that the plan, crafted by the governor, effectively amounts to a give-away of valuable gaming rights to the owners of the state’s sports franchises. That’s because they would be the only ones who would be able to take wagers on the outcome of both professional and college sporting events.
In fact, Rep. Jeff Weninger, R-Chandler, who is carrying the bill for Ducey, acknowledged he could not say how much those franchises would have to pay for that exclusive right to make money off of gaming. Instead, he said, that would be set by the Arizona Department of Gaming whose director reports to the governor.
Pressed for details, Weninger said the experience from other states shows that these rights sell for anywhere from $500 to $20 million.
The flaw in all that, according to House Minority Leader Reginald Bolding, D-Laveen, is that it essentially gives the franchises the right to dictate what they want to pay. That’s because no one else can bid against them.
“We are creating a market that only one set of players has access to,” he said, leaving the state with “no real negotiating power on the fees.”
“If we decide to set the fees at $20 million, then sports teams say, ‘no, we’re not going to pay that $20 million,’ there’s nothing else that we can do,” Bolding said. That’s because there’s nothing in the legislation that allows others to bid for the right.
“So then the Department of Gaming may have to lower the fees,” he said.
Weninger did not dispute the exclusivity of the legislation. But he said that’s justified because the franchise owners have shown an interest in the community and have a record of charitable works.
He acknowledged, though, that there is an interest in providing a financial boost to the sports franchises — including football, baseball, golf, NASCAR and hockey — saying they have been financially damaged by the shutdowns due to the Covid pandemic.
Rep. Randall Friese, D-Tucson, had different concerns.
He cited a provision in the legislation that will allow what could amount to round-the-clock games of keno being conducted at not just “fraternal organizations” like the American Legion but also at tracks. In fact, the measure as worded would permit a new game, essentially a form of lotto, every four minutes.
“People can lose paychecks over it,” Friese said.
Even with the House vote, a significant hurdle remains.
The Senate is set to consider what was supposed to be parallel legislation, a maneuver designed to expedite approval. That’s because enactment of this measure is linked to a plan being negotiated by the governor with tribes that would allow them to expand reservation gaming.
But SB 1794 also includes something not in HB2772: a provision to allow wagering on so-called “historic horse races,” essentially a new form of gaming designed to provide financial help to horse tracks.
Only thing is, that has not been agreed to by the tribes. And the deal is set up so that the state can expand off-reservation gaming only if the tribes agree — and only to the extent of that agreement.
What the tracks want is, for all intents and purposes, is a new game of chance.
It would allow people using machines to wager on races that were run in the past. But bettors would have no information on the name of the horse or the date of the race.
The only bit of skill that might be involved is that they would be given some data on that horse’s historical record and handicap.
Bettors could, if they want, then watch an animated reenactment of the race on which they wagered, though that is not required. Instead they could simply move on to bet on another historic rate.
In any case, the house — meaning the tracks — keep a cut of the overall betting pool.
The proposal by Sen. David Gowan, R-Sierra Vista, was approved last month by the Senate Appropriations Committee and now awaits debate in the full Senate.
Getting a leg up on everyone else in his age group, Gov. Doug Ducey got his first dose of the Covid vaccine on Tuesday morning.
But his press aide insists he wasn’t jumping the line.
In an unannounced event, the governor got Dr. Cara Christ, the state health director, to administer the shot at State Farm Stadium. That is one of the state-run sites for inoculations.
Only later did his office put out a release, video and photos of the event. That included an explanation that, at age 56, he was now eligible.
And that followed the announcement Monday by Christ that the process is now open to anyone age 55 and older.
What the governor’s release did not say is that when Christ announced the change on Monday she said that no one could sign up to even get an appointment before noon. Ducey’s release came more than an hour before that.
And even then, anyone who did manage to get through the state registration system would not be scheduled until at least Thursday — if not later — with only about 50,000 doses available to the 55-plus crowd.
So was Ducey taking advantage of his position?
“The governor did not jump the line,” said Ducey publicist C.J. Karamargin. Instead, he said, the goal was to create a public service video.
“We had a message to get out about the importance of getting the vaccine, that we were opening up to a category that includes a lot more people,” Karamargin said.
What that did not include, he conceded, is an event with media who then would not just publicize the announcement but also be able to ask him questions about the state’s handling of the virus and other issues.
“We chose not to,” Karamargin said. “We chose to approach this important announcement by letting people know about it with a video and a press release.”
And the fact that Ducey did get inoculated ahead of everyone else in his age group for the PSA?
“This is what leading by example looks like,” Karamargin responded.
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