Arizona Hospital Worker Minimum Wage and Insurance Regulations Initiative (2020)

Arizona Hospital Worker Minimum Wage and Insurance Regulations Initiative
Election date November 3, 2020
Topic Healthcare and Minimum wage
Status Not on the ballot
Type State statute	Origin Citizens
List of Arizona ballot measuresArizona Proposition 207Arizona Proposition 208Submit

The Arizona Hospital Worker Minimum Wage and Insurance Regulations Initiative was not on the ballot in Arizona as an initiated state statute on November 3, 2020.

The ballot initiative would have increased the minimum wage for direct care hospital workers, including nurses, aides, technicians, janitorial and housekeeping staff, food service workers, and non-managerial administrative staff. The minimum wage for hospital workers would have increased 5 percent from the previous year over the course of four years, leveling out at $14.59 per hour.

The ballot initiative would have enacted several changes to healthcare insurance regulations, including prohibiting insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions under state law, providing the factors that insurance companies must use to determine premium rates, and prohibiting what the initiative calls surprise out-of-network bills, among other changes.

The ballot initiative would have also required private hospitals to meet national standards regarding hospital-acquired infections and empower the Arizona Department of Health Services to fine hospitals that do not meet those standards.

On August 2020, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that circulators were not qualified and, therefore, the signatures collected by those circulators could not be verified. Without those signatures, the initiative did not receive enough to make the ballot.

Text of measure

Full text

The full text of the ballot initiative is as follows:

Support

Healthcare Rising AZ led the campaign in support of the ballot initiative. The chairperson of Healthcare Rising AZ was Jenny David, a registered nurse, and the treasurer was Suzanne Jimenez, the political director of the SEIU-UHW West. David said Healthcare Rising AZ reached out to SEIU-UHW West about supporting the ballot initiative.

Supporters

• SEIU-UHW West

Arguments

• Jenny David, chairperson of Healthcare Rising AZ and a registered nurse at St. Joseph’s Hospital, said:
  • "This package of improvements will fix a number of major problems in our state’s health care system to ensure that everyone can get the affordable coverage and safe care they need. These are sensible, important changes that we need to protect ourselves and ensure quality care."
  • "I’m a nurse and we work just tremendously stressful days and extremely long hours. All of us are interconnected, between the nursing staff, the food staff, the cleaning staff, all the support staff—we all work really closely together. When one area is understaffed or overworked, then it affects everyone. We have a real high staff turnover. I really believe that between the stress of the job and the pay of the job, it drives the turnover. We get someone trained, and then they stay for a little while, and then they leave. I believe that if the pay was increased, we would have a more stable staff. The stability of the staff I think will go a long way towards providing better patient care, and providing a better standard of living for folks."

Opposition

Opponents

• Governor Doug Ducey (R)
• Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association

Arguments

• Jennifer Carusetta, executive director of the Health System Alliance of Arizona, said, "This proposal by a California-based union is the beginning of the effort to replace our quality health care provider workforce with a government-run system in Arizona. It will undoubtedly raise health care costs and threaten access to quality care for Arizona residents."

• Ann-Marie Alameddin, CEO of the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association, stated, "This California-based union, famous for picketing hospitals, is asking Arizonans to vote for an initiative that won’t improve their health care and will end up costing them more. Moreover, it has a track record of using ballot initiatives not to improve health care in Arizona but to leverage its bargaining position with California hospitals."

Campaign finance

See also: Campaign finance requirements for Arizona ballot measures

The campaign finance information on this page reflects the most recent scheduled reports that Ballotpedia has processed, which covered through July 18, 2020. The deadline for the next scheduled reports was October 15, 2020.

The Arizonans Fed Up with Failing Healthcare (Healthcare Rising AZ) PAC was registered in support of the ballot initiative. The PAC received $7.15 million in contributions, with the funds coming from the SEIU-UHW West and affiliated committees and organizations.

	Cash Contributions	In-Kind Contributions	Total Contributions	Cash Expenditures	Total Expenditures
Support	$6,665,000.00	$484,415.71	$7,149,415.71	$6,355,328.38	$6,839,744.09
Oppose	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00
Total	$6,665,000.00	$484,415.71	$7,149,415.71	$6,355,328.38	$6,839,744.09

Support

The contribution and expenditure totals for the committee in support of the ballot initiative were as follows:

Committees in support of Arizona Hospital Worker Minimum Wage and Insurance Regulations Initiative (2020)
Committee	Cash Contributions	In-Kind Contributions	Total Contributions	Cash Expenditures	Total Expenditures
Arizonans Fed Up with Failing Healthcare (Healthcare Rising AZ)	$6,665,000.00	$484,415.71	$7,149,415.71	$6,355,328.38	$6,839,744.09
Total	$6,665,000.00	$484,415.71	$7,149,415.71	$6,355,328.38	$6,839,744.09

Donors

The following were the top donors who contributed to the committee:

Donor	Cash Contributions	In-Kind Contributions	Total Contributions
SEIU United Healtcare Workers West	$3,313,967.14	$5,573,917.17	$8,887,884.31
SEIU-UHW Political Issuess Committee	$6,165,000.00	$0.00	$6,165,000.00
Healthcare Rising AZ	$0.00	$261,988.39	$261,988.39
Healthcare Rising AZ (SEIU-UHW)	$0.00	$14,217.12	$14,217.12

Path to the ballot

See also: Laws governing the initiative process in Arizona

Process in Arizona

In Arizona, the number of signatures required to qualify an initiated state statute is equal to 10 percent of the votes cast for the office of governor in the most recent gubernatorial election. Petitions can be circulated for up to 24 months. Signature petitions must be submitted four months prior to the election at which the measure is to appear.

The requirements to get initiated state statutes certified for the 2020 ballot:

• Signatures: 237,645 valid signatures were required.
• Deadline: The deadline to submit signatures was July 2, 2020.

If the secretary of state certifies that enough valid signatures were submitted, the initiative is put on the next general election ballot. The secretary of state verifies the signatures through a random sampling of 5 percent of submitted signatures working in collaboration with county recorders. If the random sampling indicates that valid signatures equal to between 95 percent and 105 percent of the required number were submitted, a full check of all signatures is required. If the random sampling shows fewer signatures, the petition fails. If the random sampling shows more, the initiative is certified for the ballot.

Stages of this initiative

The committee Arizonans Fed Up With Failing Healthcare (Healthcare Rising AZ) filed the ballot initiative on October 4, 2019.

The campaign announced on March 21, 2020, that signature gathering was suspended on March 15 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Citing an article written by Dr. Christopher Salvino, the campaign tweeted, "Dr. Salvino is correct that it's not safe to gather signatures for ballot measures while we try to slow the spread of COVID19. That's why [Healthcare Rising AZ] pulled our petition circulators off the street last Sunday. Public health is our top priority."

On May 15, 2020, Healthcare Rising AZ resumed in-person signature gathering. The campaign required signature gatherers to wear face masks; be checked for symptoms at the start of each shift; provide signers with single-use, pre-wrapped pens and disposable gloves; and have petitions laid out on tables so that a six-foot distance between gatherer and signer can be maintained.

On July 2, 2020, Healthcare Rising AZ filed 405,281 signatures. On August 19, 2020, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs announced that an estimated 285,471 signatures were valid based on random samples.

Petitioning of U.S. District Court

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On April 2, 2020, two ballot initiative campaigns filed a legal complaint asking the U.S. District Court for Arizona to allow the campaigns to gather signatures through E-Qual, which is the state's online signature collection platform, or a similar system during the coronavirus pandemic. E-Qual is available for federal, statewide, and legislative candidates but not ballot initiatives.

The legal complaint stated, "None of the emergency orders issued by the Governor or any other state official provide relief for obstacles to ballot access faced by initiative proponents, signature gatherers, or those who wish to support initiatives in light of COVID-19. ... Failure to obtain the required number of signatures under the Secretary’s strict enforcement during the quarantine and social-distancing period, and thereby fail to qualify for the November 3, 2020 General Election ballot, in effect restrains the Plaintiffs’ freedom of speech and association."

The two ballot initiative campaigns that filed the petition were:

• Arizonans for Fair Elections, which was behind the Voting and Campaign Finance Policies Initiative, and

• Arizonans Fed Up with Failing Healthcare (Healthcare Rising AZ), which was behind the Hospital Worker Minimum Wage and Insurance Regulations Initiative.

On April 17, 2020, Judge Dominic Lanza rejected the legal complaint. He said, "Although the public has a strong interest in enacting laws through the initiative process, and although the court is loathe to take any action (or inaction) that would expose Arizonans to an increased risk of harm during these challenging times, the signature requirements (the lawsuit) seeks to displace have been a part of Arizona's constitutional and electoral landscape for over a century."

Challenge from Arizonans for Better Healthcare

Arizonans for Better Healthcare, a political action committee, and state Sen. Vince Leach (R-11) filed a lawsuit against the proposal in the Maricopa County Superior Court. The lawsuit said that the 100-word petition language “paints a misleading picture of how the initiative will actually impact patients, healthcare workers and hospitals.” Plaintiffs also stated that the process was flawed because the SEIU-UHW West should have been identified as the initiative's sponsor. Rodd McLeod, a spokesman for the initiative campaign, responded, "This lawsuit is just an admission by the hospitals that they're not going to be able to convince Arizonans to vote against affordable health care at the ballot box so they're going to try to deny voters a chance to have a vote at all."

On August 14, 2020, Judge Pamela Gates ruled that not enough signatures were valid because some circulators were not qualified. She also stated that 332 subpoenaed circulators did not appear in court; therefore, the signatures that those circulators collected could not be counted. Gates also ruled that the petition language was misleading. Rodd McLeod said the campaign would appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court.

In August 2020, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that circulators were not qualified and, therefore, the signatures collected by those circulators could not be verified. Without those signatures, the initiative did not receive enough to make the ballot.

See also

2020 measures

• 2020 ballot measures
• Healthcare on the ballot
• Minimum wage on the ballot

Arizona

• Arizona ballot measures
• Arizona ballot measure laws

News and analysis

• Ballot measure lawsuits
• Ballot measure readability
• Ballot measure polls

External links

• Initiative 24 (2020)