Local opinion: Restore health and safety power to the people locally

and analysis of the writer:

First, agreement on the “principle”, then the “devil” in the details can be harnessed in the debate.

Advocates for decentralized government in our federal system should also be advocates for decentralized power within states so that more power should be given to local governments — power closer to the people. This would be the founders’ “federalism” principle applied to state government.

If states are the “laboratories of democracy” as SCOTUS Justice Louis Brandeis termed them in 1932, then local communities should be the laboratory Petri dishes to see what laws work best for “the people” where they live, work, play, and worship. Nothing could be more democratic. Republicans who claim to hate the federal government and centralized authority should give their hate some legs and support this principle.

Arizona Legislature MAGA Republicans who say they hate government should also keep their grubby centralized-authoritarian hands off “privacy” rights of citizen residents who can best make their own health and safety decisions within their own families, communities, and local governments who partner with local private-sector entities.

The muse for this piece is the out-of-control Legislature. There are many examples over many years, but three should suffice: Abortion, public education, and firearms safety.

Through the initiative process, Arizonans have spoken on the reproductive rights of women, but the Republican Legislature’s 2021 ultra-restrictive abortion law now has been resurrected. The law, or parts of it, might be enforceable if an anti-abortion state attorney general is elected in the future.

The 2021 law now likely violates the state constitution (thanks to the recently adopted abortion-rights initiative, Proposition 139), but as the initiative did not specifically overturn the 2021 law, and the legal challenge to the 2021 law now has been dropped. Armed with an anti-abortion attorney general-ideologue, a MAGA Legislature would almost certainly try to mess with the peoples’ will.

The Arizona voucher program (Empowerment Scholarship Accounts or ESAs) originally designed to provide additional resources to help pay for the more costly education for children with disabilities and special needs, has been expanded to fund “private” education (religious, secular, and homeschooling). “Privatization” of public education is the goal, and the state’s voucher program is cited by Project 2025 as the model for the country.

In Arizona, the open availability of “public” funds to all applicants to help fund “private” education and home schooling (with scant structure, oversight, or accountability) is sucking already-insufficient resources from public schools. Public education should be properly resourced and management of those resources should be largely left to local school district control.

And now, the Legislature has positioned itself as an enforcement arm of the federal government’s DEIA-cleansing demands on America’s universities and colleges, including the U of A. Threats of loss of funds for research and other programs are being used by Senate President Warren Petersen to bludgeon U of A President Suresh Garimella into submission.

The Arizona Board of Regents, the U of A President, and all of the U of A stakeholders (including donors) and constituencies should be the ones grappling with how to respond to Trump. The Legislature should stay out of it.

Every local community grapples with gun violence. Guns in the hands of criminals, convicted felons, minors, mentally unstable people with grievances, drug and alcohol addicts, abusive husbands and partners all constitute a public health hazard in our communities.

Community and law enforcement officials, schools, churches, volunteer organizations, and the entire medical and public health community should be given sufficient public funding and statutory tools to deal with this “local” issue.

Instead, the Legislature is hell-bent on denying Tucson and Pima County the tools they need to try to prevent, reduce, and manage gun violence. Case in point, as recently reported in the Arizona Daily Star: Senate Bill 1705. The bill targets the Pima County Board of Supervisors, whose common-sense ordinance required gun owners to report the theft or loss of a firearm or face a fine. The ordinance was struck down as being in violation of the state statute that disallows any local ordinance stronger (in a regulatory sense) than state law.

That’s not enough for the Legislature. Senate Bill 1705 would impose personal liability (a $5,000 fine) on any local officials who passed an ordinance deemed to conflict with the Legislature’s centralized, authoritarian preemption-over-local-government doctrine. Katie Hobbs will not always be available with her veto pen.

The Legislature is autocratic and out of control. Local health and safety should not be sacrificed to Republican orthodoxy and autocracy.

Watchdog groups who believe in common-sense local decision-making should put forth an initiative to sensibly limit state control over local governments. “The people” locally should be able to adopt the ordinances they need locally — with the adequate resources to do so.