Arizona lawmakers have been playing hooky at an alarming rate during this year's legislative session, with 21 state legislators missing more than 20 percent of the floor votes in both houses of the Legislature.
Eat your heart out, Ferris Bueller.
According to a Cronkite News Service legislative review, this is a huge increase from last year, when only four members of the Legislature missed such a large number of votes.
Representative Rich Crandall wins top honors on the House side for missing an, um, impressive 66.5 percent of the house's 382 votes this year.
Crandall attributes his successful absenteeism to his taking a six-week contract job in New York that started in June.
Crandall, however, says he was there for all the important votes, and even flew back from New York twice to vote on things he felt were important to his district.
"Was I there for the postcard votes? No. I hope not," Crandall tells CNS. "Those are what slow us down anyway."
Crandall is one of four Republicans with attendance issues, with the 17 other AWOL legislators sitting on the Democratic side of the aisle.
Representative Kyrsten Sinema missed more than 36 percent of the votes in the House this year but, like Crandell, Arizona's very own Obama girl has an excuse: She's been workin' for the President.
Sinema is part of the White House health-care-reform initiative -- how fancy -- so we probably shouldn't bother her with the small stuff, like, ya know, showing up for a job she was elected to do.
You can check out the full list of wayward legislators here. To steal a line from the 1991 Boys in the Hood film, it seems that "either they don't know, they don't show, or they don't care about what's going on in the hood." (Single tear.)
