John --

It’s Week 5 at the legislature, although it often feels like Week 50. This session definitely seems busier than previous sessions – fifteen hour work days are becoming the norm.

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Next week is the final week to hear bills in committee in their chamber of origin (except for Appropriations, which gets an extra week), which means the next two weeks are going to be filled with LONG committee hearings. With nearly 2,000 bills introduced this session, that’s a lot of bills that have to clear the committee process. Expect lots of late nights as we wade through these bills.

I am happy to report that *three* of my bills are in committee hearings this week! We also hope to have a few more the following week. It’s pretty rare for Democratic bills to get committee hearings, so the fact that we potentially have a half dozen or more speaks to our bipartisan sponsorship of the bills and the relationships I’ve built with colleagues throughout the legislature.

The first bill, SB 1284, unanimously passed the Senate Higher Education committee yesterday. It’s the same bill I ran last year that passed out the Senate unanimously, and has to do with creating a promise program scholarship for lower-income students going to community college to study in CTE (Career and Technical Education) programs. The goal here is to market these programs to high school students who might want to do something other than go to college. It’s a last-dollar scholarship, which means it comes after Pell Grants and other forms of aid. It has an appropriation of $5 million per year for four years, and is intended to be a pilot program.

I have two bills being heard later today in the Senate Education committee, and both have to do with mental health support for students. The first, SB 1444, would clarify that for excused absences In K-12 schools, those absences for mental and behavioral health reasons count. A couple of states including Oregon and Utah have recently passed similar legislation, and I think it’s critically important that we add Arizona to the list to better educate and inform parents and schools about the importance of mental health breaks.

The second, SB 1445, continues the work we did last session on suicide prevention training at the university level. Our bill last year required students at our state universities who were studying to become teachers to have suicide prevention training be a part of their school curriculum. SB 1445 expands that list to include students studying to be school counselors and school social workers as well.

There is a third bill, SB 1446, that we are working to get a committee hearing on next week, the final week that bills can be heard in the Education committee. That one has to do with student ID cards at the high school and university/community college level, and would require a suicide prevention hotline or text based number on the back of newly issued student ID cards starting in the fall of 2021. Many high school districts, including Chandler and Tempe Union, already do this, and this would require every high school in the state to follow.

So we are excited that some of our bills are moving, and I’m working on getting a few more bills through the process. One of those bills, SB 1545, is especially important to me, and is a bill I’ve run three years in a row in some variation.

It has to do with conversion therapy. Conversion therapy is the idea that someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity can be changed, and it is especially harmful and dangerous for young people. SB 1545 would ban youth conversion therapy for people under 18.

Nineteen states, including Utah, have banned this practice, a practice that has been found to be ineffective, harmful, and hurtful for LGBTQ youth. LGBTQ youth have higher rates of suicide, depression, and anxiety, and the idea that something is wrong with them because of their sexual orientation or gender identity is hurtful to families and those around them.

Like I said above, this is the third year in a row I’ve run the bill. This year’s version is a little different, because the language is modeled after Utah’s recent passage. If a state as conservative as *Utah* can do this, there is no reason why Arizona shouldn’t be next.

I’ve been working hard on this bill in recent weeks, and just had a long series of meetings with key stakeholders yesterday afternoon. I’m talking with many of my Republican colleagues about the bill and why it’s so important, and I’ve been encouraged by our conversations.

There is no guarantee that the bill will cross the finish line, of course, but I’ve been very encouraged by these conversations in recent days. It’s an election year, and many of my colleagues want to wrap up session as quickly as possible and are very reluctant to take up any “controversial” bills that might cause them trouble.

I don’t see this as a controversial bill of course, but as I continue to have conversations with colleagues, I am reminded of why I ran for this job in the first place. Banning youth conversion therapy in Arizona would be a *significant* milestone, and would undoubtedly save lives and improve the lives of LGBTQ youth. The work can be hard, tiring, and often frustrating, but it’s issues like this that remind me why I’m here – to fight for those who need it the most.  

I’ll keep you updated on the bill’s progress in future updates – with the deadline for non-Appropriations bills to be heard hitting next week, we’re getting closer and closer to the finish line.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s update – stay tuned every Tuesday morning for more updates! And on Monday mornings, I post a weekly video on social media outlining the week ahead at the Senate.

Thank you for all your help and support – please consider a contribution today as we gear up for this fall <[link removed]>!

Sean


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