Tag: Val Longhurst
House Incumbents Spending Taxpayer $$’s To Fend Off Primary Challengers?
It sure looks that way. Both Valerie Longhurst and Dennis E. Williams have sent out official House correspondence to their districts that are little more than taxpayer-funded campaign pieces. There may well be others who have done the same.
The supposed deniability comes in that these are allegedly legislative updates to constituents. They are sent on their personal House letterhead, in House envelopes, and likely through state mail. And they are prepared in-house by state employees on state time. They tout the alleged accomplishments of the legislators, and, as campaign pieces are prone to do, try to mislead voters on issues where the incumbents are vulnerable. Oh, and so far, they’ve only been sent out by incumbent House members facing primaries.
When I worked in the Senate, we were forbidden from doing this. During the brief time that I worked for the House, then-Speaker Terry Spence allowed us to send such mailings. Of course, it’s likely not coincidence that this policy was set during the election season that the Rethugs were desperately trying to hold onto their majority, and if they did it, he had to let us do it. Truth be told, most of July and August were spent on preparing and sending these mailings.
Only one person can authorize such mailings: The Speaker of the House. It’s likely legal, as the General Assembly routinely exempts itself from laws that apply to everyone else. In fact, apparently it’s technically legal to send out these sorts of mailings up to 35 days prior to an election. But I submit that it’s a wasteful misuse of taxpayer funds.
General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Tues., May 6, 2014
Ban the Box passes! HB 167( J. J. Johnson), which would ‘prohibit a public employer from inquiring into or considering the criminal record, criminal history or credit history or score of an applicant before it makes a conditional offer to the applicant‘, passed the Senate 15-5 on Thursday. As we’ve previously mentioned, the bill does:
specif(y) that once a background check is conducted an employer shall only consider felonies for 10 years from the completion of sentence, and misdemeanors for 5 years from the completion of sentence. Further, employers are required to consider several enumerated factors when deciding whether to revoke a conditional offer based on the results of a background check.
HB 167 does not apply to those positions where a criminal background check is statutorily mandated (law enforcement, the courts), but it does apply to contractors with state agencies. Sens. Greg Lavelle and Ernie Lopez were the only Rs to vote yes. Credit where credit’s due. The bill now heads to the Governor’s desk. BTW, Rep. J. J. Johnson is one of our most effective legislators. He is low-key, doesn’t call attention to himself, but he quietly gets things done. Apropos of nothing, he’s also a serious jazz buff. He deserves to be better-known.
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