PHOENIX – The question, “Paper or plastic?” is usually reserved for supermarket checkout lines, but a Senate bill could have public records clerks using a similar refrain.

Authored by Sen. Jay Tibshraeny, R-Chandler, SB 1305 would require public bodies that keep public records electronically to provide them upon request on CD-ROM or in another format.

The change would allow more efficient public access to records, said David Bodney, a media attorney with the Phoenix law firm Steptoe and Johnson LLP.

“It’s cheaper, it’s easier, it makes the information more readily searchable,” he said. “If the information superhighway means anything, it ought to mean that public bodies produce their records in electronic format when they’re maintained in electronic format.”

The bill is among several that aim to reconcile access to public records with evolving technology. Other measures would make information documenting changes to electronic documents a public record, allow public officials to redact certain information from e-mails and keep open meeting announcements online longer.

Elizabeth S. Hill, Arizona’s assistant ombudsman for public access, said she suggested the changes in SB 1305 to clear up gray areas in public records law.

Among several provisions, it would make electronic records available for inspection or copying in a format such as a database or spreadsheet if a government body maintains records in that format. However, public officials could change the data to a format that can’t be manipulated, such as a PDF, Hill said.

Under the bill, a government body could charge a reasonable fee for electronic records and could charge more if compiling the data takes longer than two hours.

SB 1305 would require that copying fees for paper records not exceed the cost of reproduction, including equipment, maintenance and personnel time. Tibshraeny also put those provisions into another bill, SB 1304.

In addition, Tibshraeny, who didn’t return three phone calls seeking comment, authored SB 1303, which would require Web announcements for open meetings to stay online for one year. The measure would allow government bodies to post meeting notices on Saturdays, though posting on Sundays still wouldn’t be allowed.

SB 1248, authored by Sen. Jonathan Paton, R-Tucson, would counteract a January appeals court ruling by classifying as public record metadata, or data about other data that’s contained within a file, such as who accessed it and when.

The ruling in Lake v. City of Phoenix denied Phoenix police officer David Lake access to data that he requested to support his claim that the city backdated documents related to his Equal Employment Opportunity Complaint.

Hill said she didn’t understand that ruling.

“The fact of the matter is, electronic records create this metadata,” Hill said. “How do you separate that from the record?”

Paton didn’t return three phone calls seeking comment on the bill.

Still another bill, HB 2328, authored by Rep. Tom Boone, R-Peoria, would permit government officials to redact personal information about senders of e-mails they’ve received.

David Cuillier, University of Arizona journalism professor and chairman of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Freedom of Information Committee, disagreed with the proposed change, saying the public needs to know who influences politicians.

“To have this legislation passed means people will routinely in every organization redact information in e-mails,” he said. “If there’s a need to make someone secret, legitimately secret, there’s a law for that already.”

Boone didn’t return a telephone call seeking comment on the bill.

———

Bills dealing with public access

to electronic records

• SB 1248: Would classify as public record metadata, or data about other data that’s contained within a file, such as who accessed it and when. Author: Sen. Jonathan Paton, R-Tucson.

• SB 1303: Would require Web announcements of public meetings to stay online for one year. Includes charter schools in that mandate. Would allow meeting notices to be posted on Saturdays but not Sundays. Author: Sen. Jay Tibshraeny, R-Chandler.

• SB 1304: Would mandate that copying fees for paper records don’t exceed the cost of reproduction, including equipment, maintenance and personnel time. No fee can be charged for reviewing or redacting the records. Author: Sen. Jay Tibshraeny, R-Chandler.

• SB 1305: Includes all of SB 1304 and would allow public records to be obtained in electronic format, if possible. Allows government bodies to charge fees for electronic records, including higher fees if complying with a request takes more than two hours. If a government body can’t provide a record in electronic format, it must give a written explanation as to why. Author: Sen. Jay Tibshraeny, R-Chandler.

• HB 2328: Would allow government officials to redact personal information about the senders of e-mails they’ve received. Author: Rep. Tom Boone, R-Peoria.

PHOENIX — One hundred years old and legally blind, Lucille Myers couldn’t travel to the State Capitol from her Phoenix home Wednesday, so her caretaker, Cyndy Scheidle, made the trek to Senior Action Day for her.

State funds allow Myers to remain in her home while Scheidle checks in to help with groceries, laundry and prescription pickups. So when Scheidle heard the program was in danger due to state budget cuts, the Surprise resident wielded a picket sign bearing Myers’ face to lobby her legislators.

“It’d sure make her living situation difficult,” Scheidle said. “We keep seniors independent in their own living environment so they don’t have to go into nursing homes or assisted living.”

Cuts of $153 million from the Department of Economic Security’s fiscal 2009 budget have left many seniors lacking essential services, said Lupe Solis, associate director for advocacy for AARP Arizona, which organized the event. More cuts in fiscal 2010 would be devastating, she added.

“What we’re trying to do is raise awareness and consciousness,” Solis said. “The aging community cannot afford any more cuts.”

Several dozen sign- and banner-bearing seniors from around the state marched around the Capitol esplanade, chanting slogans and chatting up their legislators.

AARP estimates that the home-care system that serves nearly 8,000 people statewide costs Arizona $2,200 annually per person compared to upwards of $24,000 annually per person to house a senior in public long-term care facilities.

Dick Morse of Peoria, the 82-year-old federal liaison for AARP Arizona, said caring for seniors in their own homes is a win-win.

“We’ve got a general legislative goal of protecting the most vulnerable of our citizens,” he said while manning an information booth in front of the State Senate building.

Many attendees came north via bus from District 23, which covers most of Pinal County and parts of Gila and Maricopa counties between Tucson and Phoenix.

The district’s representative, Barbara McGuire, D-Kearny, came down from her office to join her constituents. She said cuts to Meals on Wheels, state facilities and senior transportation programs are on the table this year too.

“Do they expect these people to become homeless transients living on the streets?” she said. “We need to make their today the tomorrow that they worked so hard to achieve.”

McGuire added that the cuts affect rural Arizona the most.

“Rural areas suffer, I think, more hardship than the urban areas,” she said. “Urban areas have more resources.”

Winkelman resident and World War II veteran Gordon Tebben, 88, said he and his 92-year-old wife, Belan Cluff, are lucky enough to enjoy a pleasant retirement. Unfortunately, he said, some seniors in his area aren’t so lucky.

“It’ll hurt them most,” he said. “The politicians always talk about how they’re going to hit the rich. Well, it’s a reverse in this situation.”

Dale Vaughan, a 77-year-old Mammoth resident, said he hopes Gov. Jan Brewer accepts the maximum federal stimulus dollars possible and allocates some for seniors. He said he doesn’t understand concerns that some GOP leaders nationally have raised about strings attached to stimulus money.

“I think that’s a bunch of malarkey,” he said. “They should match any fund that the federal government is offering.”

———

Arizona’s senior citizens

— By 2020, 26 percent of Arizonans are expected to be over the age of 60. That figure stood at 17 percent in 2000.

— By 2030, the number of Arizonans over age 65 is expected to equal that of children 17 and younger.

— In the decade leading up to 2005, the number of Arizonans over age 85 increased 82 percent, more than any other age group.

Source: Aging 2020, Arizona’s Plan for an Aging Population, Governor’s Office.

Navajo legislator: little knowledge on native history

PHOENIX – A lack of knowledge about American Indian history hinders politicians as they deal with issues important to Arizona’s tribes, a Navajo lawmaker said Wednesday.

“We need to educate them on the foundations of native governments,” Sen. Albert Hale, D-Window Rock, said as the Legislature’s Native American Caucus held its first meeting. “We can step forward and be an example of how we can deal with these issues in Arizona.”

Hale, former president of the Navajo Nation, paired with fellow Navajo lawmaker Rep. Chris Deschene, D-St. Michaels, to start the caucus, a bipartisan forum for legislators to discuss issues facing Arizona’s 21 federally recognized tribes, which have more than 400,000 enrolled members.

Addressing the group, Ben Shelly, vice president of the Navajo Nation, touted a New Mexico law requiring that any state employee who has contact with Indian nations be trained in Native culture.

“Twenty-two tribes supported this bill, and we had unity on it,” he said. “And I really believe Arizona can do that.”

The law also requires the governor to meet with tribes at least once a year. Katosha Nakai, Gov. Jan Brewer’s policy adviser on tribal affairs, told the group that Brewer is already doing that and will maintain healthy relationships with tribes.

“She is continuing meetings she started almost immediately after becoming governor with tribal leaders,” Nakai said. “She’s trying to get a sense of what they really want moving forward.”

Twenty-three legislators attended the meeting, some from districts with large tribal populations and some whose districts have no reservations. Deschene said since he and Hale are the state’s only Native American lawmakers, the rules for caucus membership aren’t as strict as those for tribal membership.

“If it was an all-Native American caucus, it would be Sen. Hale as president and me as vice president, and that would be it,” he joked. “We decided, to make this more beneficial to the Legislature, to make this open to anyone who has tribes in their district.”

Senate President Bob Burns, R-Peoria, took a break from budget talks to wish the caucus luck.

“I did want to stop in and at least say hello and ask that I can be kept in the loop at least with what goes on in the organization to stay in touch,” he said. Rep. Phil Lopes, D-Tucson, said he looks forward to fostering deeper ties with the Indian community.

“I think that it is well worth pursuing to have some codified interaction between the state Legislature and the Native American legislature,” he said.

Hale agreed, saying Arizona needs to solidify relationships with tribes, especially because it has the most reservation land of any state.

“It promotes good relationships and good neighbors,” he said.

———

Arizona’s American Indian tribes

- Number of tribes: 21

- Total enrolled population: 413,000

- Acres of reservation land: 40 million

- Largest tribe: Navajo Nation, 275,000 members

- Smallest tribe Tonto Apache, 110 members

Source: Inter Tribal Council of Arizona Inc.

PHOENIX — Upgrading ports of entry along Arizona’s border is essential to improving trade with Mexico, the state’s biggest trading partner, according to the newly appointed executive director of the Arizona-Mexico Commission.

“We have a lot of opportunity to make the process better for border crossing,” said Margie Emmermann, re-appointed by Gov. Jan Brewer last week to the position she held under Republican Govs. Fife Symington and Jane Hull.

But at the same time, Emmermann, who also will be Brewer’s policy adviser on Mexico and Latin America, said she knows there are a slew of other trans-border issues to be dealt with, including security, environmental protection, cultural awareness and enhancing tourism.

The commission, approaching its 50th anniversary this year, is a nonprofit group composed of 13 bi-national committees of business and public leaders. Its goal: promoting advocacy, trade, networking and information sharing.

“We just want to make sure to continue the great work that has been done by this commission,” Emmermann said. “Continue enhancing the work of the Arizona-Mexico Commission and continue enhancing the relationship with Mexico.”

Emmermann had served as director of the Arizona Office of Tourism and was director of the state Department of Commerce before that. She also has headed marketing and community relations for Bank of America in Arizona and US West Communications.

Rep. Russell L. Jones, R-Yuma, who served with Emmermann during her first tenure as the commission director, said her re-appointment signals the commission’s return to a strategy of private sector cooperation, a mission he said it has strayed from in recent years.

“It’s perfect timing, given all of her expertise and language skills that she has and her experience, that we bring back a person who was so integral to the commission’s evolution,” he said.

The commission initially had a much more symbolic role, entertaining foreign dignitaries more than advancing an agenda, Jones said.

“We restructured the whole commission. We empowered and sought a much more dynamic board of directors from the private sector,” he said. “We started thinking more holistically as a region as an economic driver.”

Emmermann knows her way around the public and private sectors on both sides of the border, said Carlos G. Velez-Ibanez, chair of the department of transborder Chicana/o and Latina/o studies in Arizona State University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

But of chief concern, Velez-Ibanez added in an e-mail interview, is stressing not just economics but also educational and institutional collaboration to foster an educated workforce on both sides of the border.

“Her biggest challenges are going to be continuing the sound relations between Sonora and Arizona especially in light of the vitriol about immigration and the deep concerns regarding drugs,” he said.

Emmermann witnessed these concerns firsthand, she said, during a vacation to Rocky Point earlier this month. Though she said the popular tourist destination seemed quite safe, many Arizonans are still scared to travel there.

“One of the ways the Arizona-Mexico Commission can help is making sure the right information about how to travel safely gets out,” she said.

———

Arizona-Mexico Commission

— Created in 1959 by Gov. Paul J. Fannin, who stated, “God made us neighbors, let us be good neighbors.”

— Mission is improving the economic well-being and quality of life for residents of Arizona through a strong cooperative relationship with Mexico and Latin America.

— The commission’s membership consists of several hundred public and private sector leaders from throughout Arizona.

PHOENIX – With three state parks shuttered due to budget cuts and more closures possible, Gov. Jan Brewer issued an executive order Wednesday reviving a task force that will recommend ways to preserve parks.

The order asks the Sustainable State Parks Task Force to discuss creative options that would allow the parks system to achieve financial self-sufficiency, including leasing, selling or cooperatively managing parks.

The governor appointed former Arizona Diamondbacks’ president Rich Dozer to chair the group. In a telephone interview, Dozer said everything is on the table, including privatization, because park closures would have considerable economic ramifications for small towns.

“We’re just trying to keep these great jewels operating and help the areas that they’re in,” he said. “A lot of the towns rely on the money from tourism from people that come to visit these parks.”

Dozer said the task force will convene later this month or early April.

Facing $35 million in legislative budget cuts for fiscal 2009, the Arizona State Parks Board has already temporarily closed Tonto National Bridge State Park near Payson, Florence’s McFarland State Historic Park and Jerome State Historic Park.

Park officials said they will consider closing several more at an April 3 board meeting.

Grady Gammage Jr., a Phoenix-area lawyer named to the task force, said because cities, towns or counties benefit economically from park tourism, one solution could be an arrangement whereby the municipalities share administrative duties and costs with the state.

“The idea of cooperative management strikes me as a particularly good idea,” he said. “Some parks are especially valuable to the community in which they sit.”

Former Gov. Janet Napolitano created the Sustainable State Parks Task Force last December before she left office to become Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

In the tumult surrounding Napolitano’s departure and Brewer’s transition, however, the group never met, said Jay Ziemann, assistant director of Arizona State Parks.

While he looks forward to the task force’s recommendations this time, he said selling parks likely wouldn’t be a popular idea.

“I don’t know that the public would be supportive of completely privatizing any park,” Ziemann said.

———

PARKS TASK FORCE

Gov. Jan Brewer named the first members of the 21-member Sustainable State Parks Task Force:

Chairman

Rich Dozer, Phoenix, president of GenSpring, an investment company, and former president of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Members

• Bill Cordasco, Flagstaff, member of the Arizona State Parks Board.

• Diana Freshwater, Tucson, executive director of Arizona Land and Water Trust.

• Glen Kerslake, Tucson, president at Colonianueva Inc., a real estate consulting and project management firm.

• Grady Gammage Jr., Phoenix, lawyer at Gammage and Burnham. Harry Papp, Phoenix, and investment adviser at L. Roy Papp & Associates.

• Jeffery Williamson, Phoenix, president of the Arizona Zoological Society.

• Robert McLendon, Yuma, regent of the Arizona Board of Regents, former House representative.

• Walter Meek, Phoenix, president of the Arizona Utility Investor Association.

• William Roe, Tucson, board member of the Arizona Land and Water Trust and member of the Arizona State Parks Foundation Board.

PHOENIX – Dead people can’t vote, so one legislator wants to take extra precautions to make sure they don’t.

Sen. Jack Harper, R-Surprise, authored a bill to allow legislators and political committees to inform the Secretary of State’s Office via Internet if they find the name of a deceased person on a voter roll.

“Right now it’s done manually,” he said. “I’m looking at some way to modernize the process.”

But after a recent meeting, Harper and Secretary of State Ken Bennett determined that the state could accomplish the bill’s goals without a law. The solution will allow political committees and legislators to report deceased voters while filing campaign finance reports on the secretary of state’s Web site.

“We like the intent and we’re going to work toward just doing it without a bill,” Assistant Secretary of State Jim Drake said. “Any time we can clean up the voter rolls because there are factual errors in it, we’re for it.”

Harper said he got the idea while canvassing his district, which includes the retirement communities of Sun City and Sun City West. He’d often knock on a door to ask for a vote only to find that the person had passed away.

“I probably run into his more than most legislators,” he said. “It’s embarrassing.”

Under the proposed Web-based system, the Secretary of State’s Office would pass along a reported death to a county’s elections department, which would then confirm it with the registrant’s family before removing the name.

Under the current system, county voter registration clerks pore over obituaries, death certificates and notices from poll workers or health departments, said Jolene Juarez, a clerk for the Maricopa County Elections Department.

“We get notifications from families saying, ‘Please take them off the voter rolls,’ ” she said.

Juarez said names sometimes fall through the cracks, especially if a voter dies in another state where the health department doesn’t communicate with election officials in Arizona. She recalled finding one name that stayed on the voter rolls for 12 years.

Linda Weedon, deputy elections director for Maricopa County, said the change couldn’t hurt but wouldn’t really modernize anything.

She said anyone can already e-mail elections departments if he or she thinks a name should be removed from the roll, and legislators already do, so the new system would just change the notification format from an e-mail to a Web link.

“To me, it’s just a different way of reporting someone’s dead,” she said. “We get lots of folks telling us people are deceased, so we already do a follow up.”

Senate panel told problem plays out in various crimes in state

PHOENIX – Pima and Cochise counties are seeing more and more “rape trees,” places where Mexican drug cartel members rape female border crossers and hang their clothes, as signs mount that border violence is increasingly Arizona’s problem, a state lawmaker said Monday.

Sen. Jonathan Paton, R-Tucson, invited law enforcement officials to describe the problems to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he chairs. With seized weapons on display, the officials described how border violence plays out in human smuggling, home invasions, rapes, auto thefts, kidnappings and mounting danger to law enforcement officials.

Paton said violence along the border has escalated dramatically in the past year, spilling into Arizona.

“We want to go after these crimes,” he said before the hearing. “It’s an unbelievable situation, and we can’t allow that to go on in this country.”

State Attorney General Terry Goddard pointed to a .50-caliber rifle with a tripod mount as he described some of the weaponry law officers face as the deal with the fallout of drug violence.

“Those bullets pierce armor,” he said. “They will go through armor, and they will go through tanks.”

Calling the fight against drug cartels the organized crime issue of this century, Goddard described operations related to drug smuggling. One last year, dubbed Operation Tumbleweed, led to 59 arrests and broke up a ring believed to have smuggled 400,000 pounds of marijuana into the U.S. annually for several years.

“To be effective against this threat, law enforcement must be coordinated on the state, local and federal level,” he said.

Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall said the problem is immense.

“What we see here is an international and national issue that far exceeds the capacity of the state Legislature to handle in any meaningful way,” she said.

Paton is sponsoring Senate Bill 1280, which would make knowingly harboring an illegal immigrant a felony, and SB 1282, under which those who aid transportation, money transfers or communication for smugglers would be prosecuted along with the smugglers.

SB 1281, also sponsored by Paton, would include in the definition of sex trafficking coercing someone into stripping or other commercial sex acts.

None of Paton’s bills has been heard in committee because the Senate has focused on the budget.

Paton said he would go to Mexico next month to discuss the problem.

“It makes a lot of sense for us to cooperate with Mexico,” he said.

TEMPE – Stephen Happel won’t be cheering when President Obama tells Arizonans how his $787 billion economic stimulus will provide relief to one of the states hit hardest by the recession.

An economics professor at Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business, Happel says the stimulus, while well intentioned, will do little to resolve the long-term economic problems America is facing.

“It’s heart over mind. It’s hope over reality,” Happel said in an interview. “The only way I can see that the Obama plan works is if it gives vast numbers of people hope that the recession is about to end.”

The president, scheduled to visit Mesa on Wednesday to discuss how his plan will help beleaguered homeowners, maintains that the stimulus is vital to jump-starting the U.S. economy. But Happel said that isn’t a popular argument in the school’s department of economics.

Happel said he prefers a hands-off approach: let the businesses that made bad decisions fail and then lower tax rates for consumers and small businesses and allow the market to right itself. And he opposes taking on debt to pay for the stimulus.

“A lot of it is robbing Peter to pay Paul,” he said. “The younger generation is going to take it in the shorts.”

In Happel’s corner: Edward Prescott, the W.P. Carey Chair of Economics and winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in economic sciences. Prescott said most anybody trained in macroeconomics, or the study of national or regional economics as a whole, opposes the bill.

“The intellectual support for the stimulus is just not there,” he said in a telephone interview. “Nobody’s coming out here saying there’s a tested theory that has worked.”

Prescott said he just doesn’t believe government intervention can create lasting economic progress and that much of the money could end up being misused.

“The more we have out of Washington and the more it is, the worse it is,” he said. “When things get centralized, they start being used for political reasons rather than economic reasons.”

The difference in opinion between the president and these economists highlights the distinctions between Keynesian theory – economic thought pioneered by 20th-century British economist John Maynard Keynes that stresses government involvement – and free-market economics.

Happel, Prescott and two other ASU economics professors joined more than 40 economists who signed an open letter published last week in newspapers including The New York Times and The Arizona Republic. Sponsored by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, the letter challenges Obama’s suggestion that most economists support the stimulus.

“When Barack said we’re all Keynesians now, I just wanted to get up in my chair and say, ‘I’m not Keynesian,’ ” Happel said. “We’re free-market economists here.”

Still, not everyone at the Carey School is vehemently opposed to the stimulus.

The dean, Robert E. Mittelstaedt Jr., said he supports some government intervention, but he thinks the stimulus is too big and too vague and won’t necessarily help.

“It’s like saying to a drug addict, ‘We’re going to help you by giving you a little drugs,”‘ he said. “All it’s doing is supporting the same habits that got us into this.”

Nevertheless, Mittelstaedt said, a healthy academic debate reinforces the American political system.

“The best part of universities is you are going to have a lot of bright people around and you’re not always agree, but you can never say there’s not good discussion,” he said. “We would do well to listen deeply to why people are for or against something like this.”

———

Who signed the letter?

Here are members of the Arizona State University W.P. Carey School of Business faculty who signed an open letter from the Cato Institute objecting to the economic stimulus package pushed by President Obama:

• Edward Prescott, W. P. Carey Chair in Economics

• Stephen Happel, economics professor

• Allan DeSerpa, economics professor

• Nancy Roberts, economics senior lecture

Arizona would get $12 million in federal funds if it adopted a law allowing officers to ticket drivers solely for failing to wear seat belts, a state highway safety official said.

State Sen. Linda Lopez, D-Tucson, is sponsoring a bill to do just that. She said she proposed SB 1411 in part for the funding but also to get people to wear safety belts.

“Every time they get in the car, they need to put their seat belts on,” she said.

About 60 percent of vehicle fatalities in Arizona involve people failing to buckle up, according to the Arizona Department of Transportation.

Richard Fimbres, director of the Governor’s Office on Highway Safety, said the state could also get up to $1 million in incentives from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to help with freeway safety if another state senator’s proposal on child-restraint systems becomes law.

“It would help us buy more booster seats for the state of Arizona,” he said.

Both proposals are among those that AAA Arizona contends would make Arizona’s roadways safer. The organization is also supporting a bill that would require seat belts on school buses

Sen. Linda Gray, R-Phoenix, has introduced legislation that would require children 8 and younger and shorter than 4 feet 9 inches to be secured in child-restraint systems. SB 1050 also would add booster seats to the state’s definition of child-restraint systems.

Forty-four states including California have laws requiring booster seats, which are used to position seat belts properly on children who have graduated from car seats. In Arizona, only those younger than 5 are required to travel in some kind of child-restraint system.

Gray said her bill could face opposition because it would cost parents money in a tough economy, but she added that the benefits of booster seats outweigh the cost. Kids who aren’t properly restrained are more susceptible to internal injuries in crashes because seat belts lie across the neck and abdomen, she said.

Linda Gorman, a spokeswoman for AAA Arizona, said bills similar to Gray’s have failed to make it to committee in previous sessions. She said she hopes this version will at least get a hearing.

“We view the current law as very flawed,” Gorman said. “Kids should be protected until they’re tall enough to fit into an adult seat belt.”

Under SB 1050, violations would carry a $50 fine, but that would be waived once parents equip their cars with proper child restraints. The fines would be placed in a fund that helps low-income families afford car seats.

Rep. Ben Miranda, D-Phoenix, wants to mandate seat belts on school buses. Neither he nor AAA Arizona expects HB2211 to pass, but Miranda said he raised the issue because he’d like it to eventually move forward.

“Usually it takes more than one effort for this kind of legislation to have success,” he said. “Cost is going to be the primary deterrent.”

———

LEGISLATION SUMMARY

Here are bills introduced this legislative session that AAA Arizona contends would make the state’s roadways safer. For more information on a bill or to track its progress, visit www.azleg.gov and enter the bill number with no space (example: HB2211) in the Bill Number Search box at top right:

• HB 2002: Would require motorists to move over a lane of traffic, if safe, when a tow truck is assisting a stranded motorist on the side of the road. Sponsor: Rep. Konopnicki, R-Safford.

• SB 1050: Would require children older than 5 but younger than 9 and shorter than 4 feet 9 to be secured in booster seats when riding in motor vehicles. Sponsor: Sen. Linda Gray, R-Phoenix.

• HB 2168: Before the installation of a photo enforcement system on any state highway, would require state officials to determine if the location of the device is necessary to ensure public safety. Sponsor: Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert.

• HB 2211: Would require school buses to be equipped with lap belts and require each passenger to be properly restrained. Sponsor: Rep. Ben Miranda, D-Phoenix.

• HB 2297: Would prohibit unconscionable pricing or hoarding of essential goods or services during a state of emergency or market disruption. Sponsors: Rep. David Schapira, D-Tempe; Rep. Edward Ableser, D-Tempe; Rep. Tom Chabin, D-Flagstaff; Sen. Amanda Aguirre, D-Yuma.

• HB 2351: With some exceptions, would require vehicles with a declared gross weight of more than 10,000 pounds to have loads safely covered. Sponsor: Rep. Lucy Mason, R-Prescott.

• SB 1066: Would increase the look-back window for a second or subsequent violation of racing on a street or highway from 24 months to 48 months and toughen penalties for the offense. Sponsor: Sen. Jim Waring, R-Phoenix.

———

ON THE WEB

AAA Arizona: www.aaaaz.com

Governor’s Office of Highway Safety: www.azgohs.gov