By Howard Fischer
Mail | X: @azcapmedia

PHOENIX - Republican House Speaker Ben Toma has formed a special panel to look into the practices of state elected officials - starting with Democrat Kris Mayes.

In an announcement Tuesday, Toma said he wants a committee of five Republicans and three Democrats to investigate allegations of abuse of power, dereliction of duty and malfeasance.

The panel is supposed to develop legislation "and other measures'' to "promote the rule of law and deter partisan abuse and weaponization of the office of Arizona Attorney General or other state offices,'' according to the statement.

Toma told Capitol Media Services there is no one thing that led to his decision.

"She potentially crossed the line a few different times,'' he said.

One, said Toma, was bringing felony charges against the two Republican supervisors in Cochise County, accusing them of interfering with the 2022 election. They initially refused to complete the canvass after the vote amid what they said were questions about whether the machines used to tabulate the ballots were properly certified.

A trial for Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd is slated for later this year.

Toma also cited threats against Mohave County supervisors to prosecute them if they pursued their plan to scrap machine counting of ballots in favor of a hand count. The supervisors backed off, though one of them, Ron Gould, filed his own lawsuit asking a judge to stop what he called Mayes' "threats and intimidation.''

And the speaker said there have been complaints that she has threatened parents who use the program that provides universal vouchers of tax dollars so parents can send their children to private or parochial schools.

Mayes did issue a warning last year to parents that they may risk losing certain protections if they use vouchers leave public schools. She said those include free and appropriate education for students with disabilities and access to a child's educational records, both guaranteed to parents of public school children under federal law.

That's not her role,'' Toma said. "That shouldn't be her role.''

The attorney general also has been a critic of the program. And she has brought charges against some individuals in connection with voucher-related fraud.

Mayes, for her part, called the whole thing an effort by Toma to boost his chances of winning what could be a close race to be the Republican nominee for the seat in the U.S. House being vacated by Debbie Lesko.

"Apparently, every legislator currently running for Congress can't move fast enough to open a new inquiry into how I've done the job of attorney general,'' she said in a prepared statement. "This is just another political stunt from a majority party that doesn't seem to have solutions for many of the major issues facing our state.''

And House Minority Leader Lupe Contreras said he won't be appointing any Democrats to serve on the panel.

"Republican lawmakers should be focused on doing their jobs passing bills and making policy, not doing everybody else's work,'' he said.

Toma said that's up to Contreras and the Democratic caucus to decide. But he said it won't sideline the investigation, saying there is an "inherent obligation'' under the Arizona Constitution to conduct "appropriate oversight'' of the executive branch. And, for the moment, that starts with Mayes.

Toma said it wasn't a rash decision.

"This has been in the works for awhile,'' he said.

"I didn't want to rush it,'' Toma said. "I just felt that now is the time.''

Mayes, in her own statement, said she won't be deterred by the probe.

"As I have done for the past year, I will continue to focus my time and the resources of my office on protecting Arizona consumers from fraud and corruption, prosecuting elder abuse cases, protecting the environment and our groundwater supply and fighting the fentanyl crisis,'' she said.

While the investigation is billed as seeking facts and proposing new laws, that still leaves the possibility of a different legislative action: impeachment.

It takes only a simple majority of the House to bring charges and force a trial in the Senate. And Republicans control 31 of the 60 seats.

"I suppose anything's possible at this point,'' Toma said, though he said that's not what was behind the initial decision to launch the investigation.

"The job of the committee is to determine if laws were broken,'' he said. "If laws were broken, we'll have to decide what's next.''