"Meeting" means the gathering, in person or through technological devices, of a quorum of members of a public body at which they discuss, propose or take legal action, including any deliberations by a quorum with respect to such action IS TAKEN.

I can understand why Republicans in the Arizona legislature would want to pass a bill like SB 1435 . Here's the crucial change that the bill makes to the old language about open meetings:Got that? To comply with the state's open meeting law , and yet meet in secret, they've simply changed the definition of "meeting." No longer does it mean legislative committee hearings, school board meetings, or other public agency sessions where ideas, bills, budgets, and laws are debated and discussed—and where the public can listen and speak. Now it only means those occasions where "action is taken." Great, we get to watch them vote.

They're not only denying the public the right to witness the deliberations of people we pay to make laws, they're denying people a voice in governance. If they limit the public only to meetings where elected officials take action, it's too late, that sausage has been made.

Like I said, I get why the GOP wants to pass this bill. After all, the video above is what passes as enlightened deliberation at the Arizona legislature. To no one's surprise, Sen. Sylvia Allen is a sponsor of SB 1435. It's not hard to see why she and her GOP colleagues don't want the public or the press anywhere near her philosophizing.

Sen. Allen sits on several environmental committees and the education committee. Gulp. This year she's the sponsor of a bill that requires students to pass a civics test before they can graduate. Evidently, given her loud support of SB 1435, democracy is not part of the test. Nor is science. If it were, our students would know that the stuff she wants to mine near the Grand Canyon, uranium, is the same stuff that proves the earth is a bit older than 6,000 years.

Last week Gov. Doug Ducey said he was going to eliminate the visitor log from the Governor's Office, so we wouldn't really know who he met with as our chief executive (a decision he quickly rescinded). Then the GOP decided to close Republican caucus meetings to the public, and now Ducey's party wants to bypass open meeting laws. I recall a line from "Arizona Roadmap to Opportunity and Freedom," Ducey's campaign manifesto, which goes something like:



Government needs to be transparent and accountable to citizens.

But you do the opposite when your extremist agenda includes huge corporate giveaways, deep education cuts, and ugly assaults on immigration, LGBT, the poor, the environment, and women (another abortion restriction passed today). So much for transparency.