It's great to be back
Welcome to 2023, where I'll have a full year to request and write about public records in Arizona. Let's begin.
It was an eventful end to 2022 where I barely checked Twitter and only paid attention to the crazy election lawsuit nonsense in passing. My mental health thanks me, but after all this time off I’m ready to get started on a new year filled with some juicy public records.
In between hacking up a lung (it’s not Covid or the flu, but it’s not fun regardless) I wanted to kick off the new year with my return since the new Democratic-led offices begin their work this week and the 2023 legislative session will follow shortly.
This year will be my first in five years not heavily dedicated to following the work at the Capitol, but instead I plan to pick and choose some bills and request records around them: of course please let me know if you have any suggestions on what I should look into as I am just one person and can’t catch it all.
Last year ended with me awaiting several records to be fulfilled and like clockwork, former Gov. Doug Ducey’s office waited until 10 pm on their final day to send over nine months worth of calendars and a few others1.
It wasn’t everything I had requested, but it means I have some documents to parse through and write about in the coming days. I hope to work with Gov. Katie Hobbs and her staff, who have been rather helpful when at the SOS Office on records requests.
Shortly after my final post of 2022, there was some breaking news that almost brought me back for a quick post, but since it wasn’t groundbreaking I figured I would wait and just write about it today.
As I’m sure you all know Senator Kyrsten Sinema left the Democratic Party to become independent –– making it more challenging for herself to win another election in Arizona.
My longtime subscribers and readers know how much I enjoy writing about voter files of prominent Arizonans so I of course had to double check to see if she did actually switch parties when she claimed she did.
And she did.
It was the first time she updated her voter registration form since July 2013.
That’s the only document I’ll have for you today, but many more to come as soon as I start going through them all.
Send me ideas at dillon@fourthestate48.com. I’m excited for what’s to come this year.
Lastly, since who knows what will happen with Twitter, you can find me on Mastodon and Post now, too.
They of course denied one record exists and another they didn’t fulfill completely.