The Arizona Legislature has been widely criticized for not getting much done this session on important issues. Lawmakers have been meeting since January, seemingly with little positive result. What, people ask, are they doing down there?
The best way to follow the action at the state house is by reading the Arizona Capitol Times, a droll weekly tabloid that circulates among what passes for the state's cognoscenti. Among its other functions, the Capitol Times tracks each of the more than 1,200 bills introduced this session on two big pages of agate type. The potential laws are listed by bill number, of course, and a sometimes-cute descriptive title accompanies each one. Check marks to the side show each bill's progress. Everybody knows how legislators are doing on bills carrying titles like "Martin Luther King," "Corrections," and "Transportation." Not everyone knows how they're doing on bills called "Golf Car Smog Exemption," "Legislator License Plate," "Dog in Vehicle," and "State Poet Laureate."
BASED ON A SHALLOW, unscientific skimming of small type in the Capitol Times, it seems that one of the more important topics this session has been golf. Several bills address aspects of the sport. Two bills seek to clarify laws that govern the game's most pleasurable elements, golf carts and beer. House Bill 2004 ("Golf Cart Smog Exemption") apparently is necessary because of an inconsistency between state and federal laws that govern emissions-equipment requirements on imported vehicles, according to Rick Griffeth, legislative liaison for the Motor Vehicle Division of the Department of Transportation. The bill seeks to exempt foreign-made golf carts from emissions-control requirements. Or something like that. Apparently even golf carts need to have titles if they're used on city streets, and foreign-made golf carts--even electric golf carts--currently need to comply with strict Environmental Protection Agency equipment rules.
Co-sponsor Patti Noland, a Republican from Tucson, says the bill was introduced at the request of constituents in Green Valley, a retirement community south of Tucson where "people use golf carts to go to the grocery store." Nobody in Green Valley or anywhere else has been stopped from getting a title for their golf carts, Noland says, but it could happen. The bill has passed in the House and awaits action in the Senate, and though it sounds goofy, Noland says the bill hasn't been a difficult sell with her colleagues. "Once you kind of explain what's happening, they pretty much go along and vote for it," she says.
Senate Bill 1141, another links-linked potential law, hasn't fared so well. Senator Tony Gabaldon, a Flagstaff Democrat, got behind the "Golf Course Restaurant Liquor" bill for constituents who whack the little ball around at the Village of Oak Creek Golf Club in the Sedona area. Most golf courses have a No. 6 liquor license, which allows the sale of booze for on-site consumption plus carry-out. Some have a 12 and a 7, a combination which provides for both on-site sales plus six-packs to go. The Oak Creek club just has a No. 12, which restricts sales and consumption of liquor to within the four walls of the restaurant/clubhouse. Cans of cold beer are dispensed on most every golf layout in the world, even in communist countries. Technically, it is illegal for golfers to carry their beers out of the Oak Creek clubhouse or to buy it from roving carts out on course. This technicality makes for hot, dry and sometimes angry swingers.
"When it's 110 degrees, we get a lot of complaints about it," says Rusty Byrne, Oak Creek's head pro. Gabaldon's bill, which he says also was introduced last session and which immediately was buried in a committee this session, inserts a golf course exemption into the wording of the restaurant license law. The bill would make it technically okay for swingers in Oak Creek to swig chilly brew from tee to green. State liquor department officials opposed the bill because it clouded an area of law that the department will eventually seek to simplify. Someday in the indefinite future, golf courses may have a special kind of liquor license of their very own. Until then, the Oak Creek duffers apparently will stay dry.
(Important footnotes: 1) Enforcement of liquor law on golf courses is not much of a priority, says Hal Pershall, assistant superintendent of the state department of liquor control. "We haven't really taken any action that I know of," he says. 2) In Maricopa County, a No. 6 license--which is hard to come by, anyway--can cost as much as $25,000. The cost of a No. 12 is about $2,000.)
The most visible golf-related bill has the sponsorship support of a huge number (44) of prominent lawmakers, including House honcho Jane Hull and Senate solon Robert Usdane. HB 2124 ("Golf Tourney Tax Exemption") makes professional golf tournaments exempt from some taxes. The affected tournaments are the Phoenix and Tucson Opens (for men), and the Standard Register Turquoise Classic (a Phoenix tournament for women). Until recently, these tournaments, which are run by nonprofit civic-booster groups or charitable foundations, were considered exempt. But a change in leadership at the state Department of Revenue (DOR), which roughly coincided with additional funding for more auditors, changed all that.
Paul Waddell took over as chief of the department in May 1988, and Craig Cormier signed on as deputy director in September 1988. And the legislature has given them more get-tough money than they've ever had.
"One of the things we both agreed on was to get a better bed of written ruling out to the community so that there would be better understanding [of the existing tax laws]," says Cormier. "Last year we issued what we call a tax ruling, essentially a policy statement. This statement was a reiteration of existing policy . . . a more detailed explanation of who and what types of events are subject to sales tax.
"These are not new things, they've been around for about half a century."
The tax money now pried out of the three tourneys combined amounts to about $200,000 a year, according to P. Robert Fannin, a senior official of the Phoenix Thunderbirds, the group that sponsors the Phoenix Open. Fannin has been lobbying in behalf of all three tournaments. The $200,000, he says, is money that could otherwise be spent on one of the many charities that golf fans have supported by their attendance at the tournaments. "The list is nine yards long," says Fannin. "In many cases, the existence of a charity is dependent on the money they get from a tournament."
Proceeds from the most recent Phoenix Open allowed the T-Birds to make donations of $100,000 to both the Special Olympics and the United Way. The tourney annually returns a significant amount of money to the golf business, too, by supporting junior-golf programs and sponsoring local high school golf teams.
A Thunderbirds spokesman couldn't put an exact figure on the Open's support of its favorite sports industry, but any way you look at it, the Phoenix Open is helping those with handicaps. THE DOR'S RECENT hard-guy stance on tax breaks for amusement-related entities has spawned several more bills that sound funny when read out loud. The Fiesta Bowl, various rodeos around the state and a local river-rafting company all went to the legislature this session asking for tax exemptions that they once enjoyed comparatively hassle-free. The Fiesta Bowl gets a nonprofit tax classification because it benefits "educational institutions"--the competing mega-universities take home huge piles of money every year. The bowl is paying about $100,000 annually in taxes on its ticket sales, and John Junker, new executive director for the Fiesta Bowl, has been working SB 1492 in hopes of getting an exemption, similar to the exemption granted last session to the booster groups that run spring training ballparks. Junker says the bill ("Fiesta Bowl Tax Exemption") has been the subject of "continual misunderstanding" because it appears to grant a new tax break to the big-bucks bowl game. One legislator remarked in a committee hearing that he'd never before seen such a statutory "Christmas tree." "We're not asking for anything new," Junker says, just a return to the status the bowl enjoyed for its first fourteen years. A Fiesta Bowl bill almost made it out of the legislature last year.
Jerry Gillespie, Republican senator from Mesa, is sponsor of a bill (SB 1057) that seeks a tax exemption for companies that provide river-rafting excursions. He says he filed "Raft Trip Sales Tax" at the request of constituents in his district who run just such a company. Hay rides, horse stables and jeep-tour companies got an exemption like this one last session, and the float-trip people are just a little late in jumping on board. "We're a tiny business, man, we're a sneeze," says the owner of one such float-trip company affected by the bill, who asked to be quoted anonymously. "I think we're talking about $5,000 in taxes a year. That's a third of a year's profit for us. It isn't a lot of money for the state, but it is for us."
Jack Brown, a Democrat from St. Johns, led a group of about three dozen mostly rural lawmakers who signed onto HB 2171 ("Rodeo Tax Exemption"), aimed to help civic groups that sponsor "rodeo events featuring contests involving primarily farm and ranch animals."
"Down in my area, every little town has a rodeo, a one-dayer or a two- dayer," says Brown. "If they have to start keeping records, they hate that. All of them that I know of are sponsored by some group getting money for the Little League or something."
Brown is a little befuddled by the change in attitude over at DOR that made his bill necessary. He's apparently not alone. "I don't quite understand," he says. "I guess they just got someone over there that got to readin' and found out that what we've been doing wasn't legal. That's what you get when you get someone readin'."
Brown's colleague Dave Carson, a Prescott Republican, introduced a similar bill, and it has become the session's operative rodeo bill from the sticks. For the longest time, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Doug Todd, a Republican from Tempe, held all the exemption bills in his committee. He was symbolically sitting on all special-interest tax breaks--calling them "goodies"--as a protest of the legislature's unwillingness to effectively reform the state's tax system. Recently, Todd let several of the bills fly as part of an omnibus bill, and it has passed the Senate. But the ultimate fate of rodeo tax status, however, likely rests with the legislature's attempt to rewrite the state's entire tax structure, something that's supposed to occur in the next few weeks. It's doubtful that much action will be taken on piddling tax breaks, credits or exemptions of any kind--even those sought by heavy- hitting sponsors of golf tournaments. In the lingo of just about anyone you talk to at the capitol, there are bigger tax fish to fry.
ONE OF TODD'S constituents is responsible for SB 1311, which makes it legal to put special license plates on your car that commemorate presidential inaugurations. These political-party- poobah premiums are legal in many states. Todd wants them to be legal here, for ninety days after a swearing-in. An amendment to Todd's bill by Window Rock Democrat James Henderson would have mandated special license plates for legislators, hence the eye-catching "Legislator License Plate" slug in the Capitol Times. Thanks to a House committee, it is a dead idea, though Todd's inaugural breakthrough still has a shot.
Another dead (maybe it's just sleeping) idea was an effort by Mesa Republican Mark Killian to establish an "affinity" credit card for the state. If passed, a standard Visa or MasterCard would have been issued through a standard bank. The card would have been stamped with some kind of colorful Arizona-related artwork, the flag or state seal or something. Half of the proceeds of the credit card fee would have been deposited in the state general fund and half would've gone to schools. Charities, college fraternities, even the Elvis Presley estate have similar programs. Killian put the kibosh on HB 2452 ("State Credit Card"), which was based on a fairly successful program in Montana, because he says it needed further study.
THE VERY FIRST House bill filed this session sought to regulate where dogs can sit in cars and trucks. "A person driving a motor vehicle on a highway which has a posted speed limit of 45 miles per hour or more shall not allow a dog to ride in that portion of the motor vehicle that is open in such a manner which would permit the dog to jump out of the motor vehicle or to be thrown from the vehicle by acceleration or stopping of the vehicle or in an accident involving the vehicle," says HB 2001, sponsored by Margaret Updike, a Republican representative from a central Phoenix district who cringes when she sees Bowser riding in the back of a pickup. "When you consider that anyone carrying a load of any kind in the back of a pickup has to have it secured, think of a Great Dane running around loose in the back of the truck," says Updike, who wrote the bill with the help of the Arizona Humane Society. "It's a hazard to the dog and other drivers on the road. It really doesn't need to be legislation, it's just common sense. "I understand it was a rather unusual piece of legislation when you look at the title of it . . . . But every time I see a dead dog on the road or in the median, I feel more strongly that legislation is needed."
Until the legislature passes a law making it illegal for humans to ride in the back of pickups--and a bill doing just that has gone nowhere so far this session--this bill doesn't stand much of a chance. HB 2001, carrying the reference title "Dogs Riding in Motor Vehicles," died in committee early in the session. FINALLY, THERE IS a bill that at first glance looks like nonsense but should get some kind of priority treatment. But it runs a great risk of being treated like nonsense anyway. Senator Carolyn Walker, a South Phoenix Democrat, has introduced a bill calling for the establishment of a state poet laureate.
The poet laureate will be appointed by the governor, after a recommendation by a special five-person panel, to serve a two-year term. It's an unpaid position. The duties of the state poet laureate include poetry readings in public schools, organization of poetry-writing contests, and talking up poetry writing in general.
Getting the state a poet laureate was the idea of Dr. Maureen Jones-Ryan, executive director of the Sexual Assault Recovery Institute and founder of the Arizona Poetry Association. Jones-Ryan took the bill to Walker because the two had worked together to get a key marital-rape bill passed two years ago. Eleven states have official poets laureate.
"It makes a statement that the state takes literature--and poetry in particular--seriously," says Jones-Ryan. "Einstein said that poets are the undesignated legislators of society.
"Poetry is not only about trees and bees and pretty, pretty, pretty. It's about politics, and by politics I mean it's about people."
SB 1275 has passed the Senate and awaits action in the House. Jones-Ryan testified in favor of the bill when it was heard in the Senate Government Committee. Her biggest concern is that the bill not be treated by legislators or the media as something that's too artsy-fartsy. "Poetry is as important as the marital-rape bill, because one little step at a time it begins to raise the consciousness of all people regarding the quality of life, the quality of ideas, the quality of civilizations," she says. "I'm not an idealist. I'm very, very practical. I work with sex offenders. I see a lot of results of life without poetry."
Nobody in Green Valley or anywhere else has been stopped from getting a title for their golf carts, Noland says, but it could happen.
Any way you look at it, the Phoenix Open is helping those with handicaps.
"Every time I see a dead dog on the road or in the median, I feel more strongly that legislation is needed."
"Einstein said that poets are the undesignated legislators of society."
