Rep. Jake Hoffman /Capitol Media Services 2021 file photo via video
By Howard Fischer | Capitol Media Services
Rep. Jake Hoffman | Capitol Media Services 2021 file photo via video
With some verbal slaps at how Doug Ducey has handled the current emergency, Republican lawmakers voted Friday to ask Arizona voters to give them the right to quash future declarations.
The 31-25 party-line vote in the House comes even as Ducey’s order, issued in March 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, still remains in place. That, according to Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, is unacceptable.
Nothing in SCR 1003 can change that.
But Rep. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, said that, if ratified by voters, the measure will limit the chances that any future governor can follow suit.
“If this last COVID emergency taught us nothing else, it’s that the people have to be protected from the government, not protected from themselves,” he said. “They have to be protected from the power of force that is the government.”
This isn’t the only effort to restrain gubernatorial powers.
