Add your voice to the Arizona state legislature

VIA SBINSIDER| January, 2022

Every year the Arizona legislature meets and you can add your voice\opinion to any bill that they might consider. The on-line system is now much more accessible than in previous years. In the past, in order to search and comment on a bill, you needed to initiate an account by physically appearing at the offices of the Legislature and register your information to create an account! Who was going to go to that kind of trouble right? Only committed political activists.  (and they sometime used a friend to create an access account for them)

This session should be much more lively due to the fact the Governor is a Democrat (Katie Hobbs) and both Houses are majority Republican by one vote. So, the Governor Hobbs may have to entice, coerce and\persuade elected members from the  opposition to get her priorities into law. Especially on budget matters, where the Democrats want more funding for education and to raise taxes on higher-earning citizens.  However, with a one vote margin, Democrats can also leverage that margin for things they want.

The system allows you to track and read all the bills submitted to the House and Senate, including committee hearing dates where public comments are made. You may also enter a request to speak at a hearing and the Chair of each committee has the option of whom to allow public appearance time.

If you are a person who has an interest is joining the debate or simply tracking specific legislation, you must create an account at this link:

https://apps.azleg.gov/Account/SignOn

TV VIEWING

In addition to the commenting aspect, you can watch much of what goes on via the ACTV live in your browser. you do not need an account to watch. This is the link:

https://www.azleg.gov/actvlive/

The video activity is not that exciting but does allow you to hear the arguments on different bills and meetings of the Committee of the Whole, which is when the full Senate or House meets.