State Sen. John Kavanagh, a Republican representing Scottsdale, is abandoning Senate Bill 1004, which he introduced in December before it became the butt of jokes. The bill would have made it a petty offense to intentionally release 10 or more balloons into the air, resulting in a fine for offenders.
After introducing the bill, Kavanagh realized that it would actually lower the penalty for releasing balloons, which is already considered littering and a misdemeanor. Whoops!
Kavanagh said he told the office of Arizona House Speaker Steve Montenegro not to assign the bill to a committee, which will bring it to a natural death in this session.
“The whole thing was an entire calamity of unintended outcomes,” Kavanagh told Phoenix New Times. “I knew it was going nowhere with the jokes and the humor and lowering the penalty. It needs more work.”
Kavanagh said the idea for the bill came from an email from “some group in California.” It mentioned that California cattle ranchers supported the bill because cattle were dying from eating fallen balloons in their fields. That was one reason Kavanagh thought it could get passed in Arizona.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he said.
State Sen. John Kavanagh noted that releasing balloons without retrieving them is already littering under current law and carries a stiffer penalty than his bill would have imposed.
Elias Weiss
But the problem with the bill is that releasing balloons is littering and already a misdemeanor, though Kavanagh noted that littering is nearly impossible to enforce when it comes to balloons.
“A police officer couldn’t cite you until the officer saw the balloon hit the ground,” Kavanagh said, “which is not going to happen.”
Kavanagh has considered making changes to the bill, specifically “making it a presumption in law” that anyone who releases a balloon isn’t going to retrieve it when it lands. A person “could override the presumption by proving they had a way to retrieve the balloon,” Kavanagh said. He added he still wants to talk to lawyers about that idea.
While his bill would have lowered the penalty for releasing balloons, the “calamity of unintended outcomes” brought about other epiphanies for Kavanagh. “It did bring to my attention the absurdity of making people criminals for dropping gum wrappers on the ground,” he said. He plans to introduce a bill this session to lower the penalty for small littering from a misdemeanor to a petty offense, a “reasonable thing to do” that Democrats might support.
“I originally made (the balloon bill penalty) a petty offense because I didn’t want the Democrats to go south and accuse me of creating the balloon-to-prison pipeline,” Kavanagh joked.
That joke might need some work, too — misdemeanors are not punishable by prison time.
