By Gary Nelson | The Arizona Republic
It’s springtime in Mesa, and the only thing more predictable than the weeds is the City Council’s annual reaction to what’s going on in the Legislature.
The angst is particularly acute this year as Mesa and other Arizona cities battle a sales-tax reform bill that could hammer Mesa’s finances by as much as $10 million a year.
But that wasn’t the only thing that gave the council heartburn last week as the city’s governmental relations liaisons delivered a briefing on legislative action to date.
During the discussion Councilman Scott Somers said in a Tweet: “Listening to presentation on AZ Legislative session. No matter how cynical I get of the @AZLegislature, it’s never enough to keep up.”
Scott Butler, the city’s government-relations director, said Mesa is monitoring 190 of the more than 1,100 bills that lawmakers introduced this year.
There’s always the possibility, Butler said, that some bill affecting Mesa could be introduced later as part of the Legislature’s “strike-all” tactic, which allows lawmakers to gut a bill and insert new language totally unrelated to the intent of the original proposal. Even without that, he said, Mesa has enough on its hands, the sales-tax bill being particularly worrisome.
