Rebecca Timmer introduced this month’s spotlight committee member, Zach Sakas of Greenberg Traurig. Their specialties include:
- Work with a variety of Pinal County entities bringing Wall Street finance to rural communities.
- Works with cities to help with legislation to help finance projects through Community Facilities Districts
- Last year worked with ADWR to develop new bonding authority.
- This year working with improvement districts to refine legislation to allow more rural communities to take advantage of the new financing options
Rebecca Timmer introduced Senator T.J. Shope to discuss highlights from this year’s legislative session that finished within the past month and included:
- Final bill SB1102 took up in senate was Maricopa County’s tax extension Prop 400E
- Biggest consternation in the past 2 sessions because Maricopa is the only county that has to go to legislature to approve.
- Impacts other counties as freeways used by Pinal are partially in Maricopa and funding supports improvements impacting I-10, 347 and SR24
- Pinal commuters utilize these roads and improvements will be serving both outbound and inbound commuters
- More support in revised bill than previously vetoed by governor with better chance of passing voter approval
- 11 bills signed; some will have impact on daily life
- First session on Health and Human Services Committee to highlight
- Arizona has one of the highest senior populations and worked on discharge planning requiring hospitals to communicate with care facilities
- Especially important for families who have parents that retire here and want more oversight on their care
- Bi-partisan support all around
- Developed Alzheimer’s Plan, second only to Florida implementing actual full-time employees that work specifically on dementia services to ensure people get the care they need
- Yuma County has the highest population of dementia patients in the country
- Family caregivers are often the most impacted and need support services as well
- Pinal County specific:
- Post 2020 census review of state statute access to funds with different population thresholds to ensure Pinal County stayed below thresholds for non-metro counties under 500,000; may be the last time to take advantage of these funds
- Standardized as much as possible population thresholds for different programs
- SR 347 $18 million for improvements at Casa Blanca
- SR24 $9 million for planning and design
- Coolidge, Eloy, SR87 benefits with multi-million dollar pools for transportation
- I-10 expansion grant received support across board to provide additional dollars to complete; timeframe for evaluation in question
- Veteran suicide prevention bill sponsored by Senator Shope was successful and we’ll be hearing more about that soon
- Bill signed by governor for SRP irrigation districts working with local communities, such as Ak-Chin
Water issues are receiving national media attention and will be key in the next session regarding connectivity issues and pressure on the water council created by the governor to provide solutions. There must be genuine engagement and recent rainfall, snowpack has made the issue less intensive.
Senator Shope felt the session went well to address most of the key issues in successful bills.
Representative Seaman reiterated consensus building was a big part of getting things done this session. He is serving on the transportation committee representing the rural voice among mostly Maricopa County representatives. Key bill lobbied for by the Arizona Trucking Association was the passage of HB2288 to improve safety on Arizona’s roundabouts to give priority to semi-trucks needing use of multiple lanes to navigate.
The next PPGRC Meeting will be on September 26th. Our next Monthly Breakfast Meeting will be on September 22nd at CAC Signal Peak featuring Local Solutions to Water Stewardship. Invitation email and details will be forthcoming.
