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GLORIA REBECCA GOMEZ
Arizona Mirror
The Democratic state representative caught hiding two Bibles in what she claimed was a protest should be punished for disorderly behavior, according to the final report released on Friday by the House Ethics Committee.
In April, Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton, D-Tucson, was videotaped placing two Bibles underneath couch cushions in the lounge of the state House of Representatives. The camera that captured the footage was installed at the direction of GOP leadership, after weeks of confusion over the often displaced texts, which have been in the lounge since at least the 1990s. Stahl Hamilton’s actions elicited outrage from Republican lawmakers and spurred a formal investigation by the Ethics Committee.
The five member committee, made up of three Republicans and two Democrats, unanimously decided that Stahl Hamilton’s behavior merited punishment from the full House of Representatives, which reconvenes June 12. What form that punishment should take, however, is left up to the full House to decide. The committee could have chosen to recommend either a censure or an expulsion but ultimately advocated for neither in the final report. It’s unlikely, however, that an expulsion will occur, as doing so requires a two-thirds supermajority vote, while a censure needs only a simple majority and Republicans currently outnumber Democrats by only one vote in the House.
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