Local opinion: Our founding American ideals vs. today's partisan politics

America's 250th anniversary has arrived, and we are celebrating the 4th of July with friends, family and neighbors, I can’t help but be disappointed by the stark contrast between the high-minded ideals upon which this country was founded, and the political machinations we saw at the end of this year’s session of the Arizona state legislature.

I’m a born and raised Arizonan. I love this state, and I ran for office because I was frustrated with the extremism and hyper-partisanship that seems to carry the day all too often. Republicans have controlled the state legislature for over 60 years, but we’ve had good governance during that time. It’s during recent years that the partisanship has gotten much worse.

I have worked hard to reach across the aisle and get things done. I’ve co-sponsored, championed and voted for good ideas across party lines. I’ve been able to sponsor and pass my own bills, with strong bipartisan support.

When I was elected a year and a half ago, I knew that the Republican majority decides every agenda, every committee, every calendar, all the rules, which bills get heard, and which don’t — increasingly, in a politics-first style of decision-making that is similar to Congress.

But this year, at the end of session, in the early hours of the morning, the state legislature hit a new low.

After a slow-moving session — they declared a full month of recess! — the majority suddenly had a lot to do in the middle of the night. And, as you can imagine, with business done while Arizonans were sleeping, it wasn’t pretty.

Republican leadership suspended rules to introduce new measures after the deadline, suspended rules to avoid having committees and public input, and suspended rules to vote immediately.

What was the rush? What were they pushing?

• A measure that is designed to completely cancel out the citizen-led Protect Education ballot initiative IF that initiative is approved by voters in November. It uses references to military families to distract from the real effect.

• A measure that sets an arbitrary 60% school budget metric — defined by an unelected bureaucrat — and says that if a district doesn’t match that, the state will cut funding for local schools. Which districts could see their funding cut? Marana, Amphi, Tucson, Vail, and many more.

• A measure that targets employees' rights to advocate for their working conditions. While the stated intent was to target teachers and other educators (in a state with some of the lowest school funding and the largest class sizes in the country), the language seems to prevent police and firefighter groups from advocating for their working conditions, too.

There is still debate about whether Republican legislators intended to put police officers and firefighters at risk, or whether it was a massive mistake. That’s what happens when politicians make major policy decisions with no efforts to work across the aisle, and no public input, in the early hours of the morning.

There’s nothing wrong with disagreeing strongly on issues — that’s what the founders designed our system to do. But they did not intend the legislative process to be completely taken over by political calculations.

When voters see measures on the ballot, they should know that many of them were born in the cover of darkness, using the most craven display of pure politics that many have ever seen in the Capitol. They’ll join others that were already pushed through on party-line votes, for at least ten. Get ready for a very long ballot, courtesy of legislative Republicans.

What we witnessed recently is a far cry from the high-minded ideals on which America was founded. But the beauty of this 250-year-old democracy is that "we the people" hold the power.

In Arizona, we the people will decide whether we reward these tactics, or reject the legislature’s attempts to confuse and distract. We, the people, will decide if we want to keep this politics-first legislature or choose one more committed to the type of governance our founders imagined. The power is ours.