The U.S. Supreme Court last week heard arguments in a Colorado case that cited the 14th Amendment as a reason to keep former President Donald Trump from voting. The issue is also expected to be debated in the Arizona Legislature this week, albeit in a different form.

Howard Fischer from Capitol Media Services joined The Show for weekly commentary on what's happening at the Arizona State Capitol.

Mark Brody: So what's going on with the 14th Amendment? Why is the Legislature debating it this week?

Howard Fisher: Well, obviously there are people who are very concerned about what happened in Colorado and whether the U.S. Supreme Court will uphold what Colorado has done in terms of removing the president from the ballot. is certainly questionable.

The bill proposed by Republicans would essentially say the president cannot be removed from the vote. If you are a party candidate, the 14th Amendment does not apply. Now, whether state law overrides the U.S. Constitution is an interesting question, but it's a political statement to say the courts won't allow it to go there.

Well, there were no particular problems at this point. In fact, the only challenge was by John Castro, a guy who was running for office as a Republican, and he went to federal court and a federal judge threw it out and said, “You're not even a serious person.'' Ta. candidate. You have no standing to sue. ”

So you may be solving a problem that doesn't exist. But again, we're in the Arizona Legislature.

Brody: Yeah, that's what happens on Capitol Hill sometimes. Howie, let me ask you about a problem that probably many people have faced in the past when it comes to driving on the highway. Perhaps you are in the passing lane. As the Eagles taught us, stay in the left lane. You're stuck behind someone who won't move on and won't run as fast as you want them to. One state lawmaker thinks there should be a law about it.

Fisher: Well, either that or put a battering ram in front of the car. But that aside, it's already against the law to drive slowly in the passing lane, even if you can actually drive in the right lane. But (Republican) Sen. David Gowan, apparently traveling from Sierra Vista, got stuck standing behind someone on that two-lane stretch of Interstate 10 that they probably want to widen. So he's introducing a bill that would actually impose a $250 fine on people who drive slowly in the passing lane.

Now, will this solve the problem? Well, again, that's already against the law. Do you see DPS saying, “Oh, we're going to trap those guys,” given all the other circumstances and traffic? No, but again, this It's one of those bills that makes you feel good. “We've solved your problem here.” Then we can go home and get re-elected because we've made driving slowly in the passing lane a big fine.

Brody: So those two bills will be introduced today. Tomorrow, Howie, we're going to see something that's become an annual tradition in the Legislature in terms of trying to split Maricopa County into smaller counties.

Fisher: oh my god. This has probably been the case since Maricopa County was founded. At that time there were only four counties, but now there are 15.

There are some interesting questions there. When does a county with about 76% of the state's population (or about 7.4 million people) become too big to govern? Well, it depends on who you talk to. The (Maricopa County) Board of Supervisors will tell you: We have various committees. we can understand what is happening. ” However, there are supervisory districts that are sometimes larger than parliamentary districts in terms of the number of people they represent.

So the idea would be to find a way to do that if we had maybe four separate counties. There are some logistical issues there right now. We have county bonds. I think we can put them all together because we have things like community college districts. There's a sense of planning. But another part may be political. I can't help but believe that some of the people who want four counties are going to say, “Hey, there's a supervisor's seat that I can choose from.” So now we have five supervisors. There may be as many as 20 supervisors.

Now, is that a small government? It's hard to say. But we're also talking about the creation of four different county transportation agencies and four different county environmental agencies. Then, the logistics become an issue. And is this really small government as we speak?

Are we doing well because there may be things that are better integrated? This is the same group of legislators who argue that school districts should be consolidated because they are more efficient and don't need more bureaucracy.

Brody: Current Maricopa County has not been very fond of this proposal in the past. Aren't they still big fans of this proposal?

Fisher: Oh, I think you're saying don't fix it because it's not broken. They don't believe it's broken. Now, could you please talk to some of them? probably. But I think some of them believe this is being pushed by the same people who say Maricopa County itself is broken because of the way elections are run.

Remember, it's not just the 2022 election that we're still litigating. In a sense, we are still litigating the 2020 election as well. And some people there believe that if they had a separate election division, maybe the new East Valley County, Red Mountain or Hohokam or whatever it was called, could do a better job. I think there are people who do. So there's a lot of politics behind this.

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