Opinion: The narrow Republican majority that controls the Arizona Legislature has taken steps to block the public's ability to monitor their activities.
The Arizona Legislature doesn’t want you to know what it’s doing.
Recently, however, the Legislature has expended vast sums of public money to persuade the courts that the open government laws of this state do not apply to itself. The Senate, by stonewalling access to records of its partisan “audit” of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, and the thin Republican majority in both the House and Senate today, have decided that public awareness of their lawmaking activities should be severely curtailed.
In short, the Legislature fought tooth and nail with public dollars to ensure that a committee quorum could attend an ALEC summit without complying with the open meetings law – no notice, no agenda, no right of the public to attend and listen to these meetings – and the state Supreme Court agreed. “It is the public policy of this state that meetings of public bodies be conducted openly and that notices and agendas be provided for such meetings which contain such information as is reasonably necessary to inform the public of the matters to be discussed or decided. Toward this end, any person or entity charged with the interpretations of this article shall construe this article in favor of open and public meetings.
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