SYLVIA ALLEN TALKS ABOUT GOVERNOR HOBBS AND OTHER TOP ISSUES

We talk with District 7 rep Sylvia Allen about Gov Hobbs, and other recent issues.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

And you're listening to iTalk 1067 FM, the voice of the mountain. I'm your host, Janine Ford, so glad you're uh back with us here and on this great Monday. And I have our District 7 representative Sylvia Allen on the phone. And Sylvia, I hope you had a wonderful 4th of July.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Oh, it was excellent. Just had a wonderful time.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

I know. So, so incredible. Fireworks all over.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

And you guys and you were in Heber with the big giant new flag, right?

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Yes. Uh-huh. Yes, I was.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Wow, that's okay. I love I love the Hebrew fireworks. We were up in S uh Springerville Eager, but I can't wait to see that flag. Okay, I noticed a post you had. I I follow Sylvia on. She has some really thoughtful, thought provoking posts, and I saw the one about Katie Hobbs, and she's taking all this credit for the budget, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Right, she is, and for especially for the tax uh conformity that we insisted on, and the legislature sent her three different budgets. She vetoed all of them because she did not want the tax conformity, and that was the big thing that the legislature said this is absolutely uh what we have to have, and there'll be no budget without it, and so we can't commit that tax conformity, she does not get credit for that.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

I know, she didn't want it and just was pushing it off, pushing it off. Then the minute she it she uh you know the the budget is agreed upon, she's taking full credit for all of it. That's just such a joke. It seems like what the Dems do all the time.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Absolutely, and it's just totally wrong. Yeah. No, I'm very, very proud of the budget and and the way the legislature both the Senate and the House, we were totally united about the things that were most important in that budget, including Okay, I think I'm losing, yeah. Medicaid.

unknown 2:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

Okay, good. Including what did you just say, including what? Uh Okay. We're gonna clear up our signal here in a minute, okay, get everybody. Keep it right here. We'll have more from Sylvia Allen. She's getting through a little dead spot. She's on her way down to the valley. Keep it right here. I talk 1067 FM, the voice of the mountain. And she's through her little dead spot on the way to do her work down in the valley. Sylvia, we were talking about uh Katie Hobbs and all of this. And this is a perfect example of why everyone needs to vote. Like right now, the early voting's going on and uh get g you know, everyone needs to vote, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Absolutely. And what is so tell telling about Governor Hobbes, if you look at the over 400 bills that she vetoed, uh you can see exactly what her philosophical beliefs are because of the way she vetoes bills. And then she tries to come across in her advertising that she's so moderate and so reasonable, uh, like the housing situation. Well she put a moratorium on houses being built. Um and and as far as utility bills, she is pushing solar all over our state lands, solar, which causes our electricity to be h bills to be high.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

Higher and higher and higher. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Yeah, we're kicking off our ranchers and anybody else that leased that land. And so people have just got to be better informed and realize how important it is. If we want Arizona to move forward in the way that it needs to, we've got to have a new governor. Oh, she be told any bill that had to do with election integrity, any bill. Everyone should be told.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Yeah, they don't want they don't want any election integrity. They want to continue doing the scammy stuff they do. And and the answer to that is for us to flood the vote like we did this last time with President Trump, right? Flood the vote.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Absolutely, absolutely. Everybody has to get out and vote. Get every get your grandkids, your kids, your neighbors, your nieces, nephews, aunts, and uncles. Uh you know, everybody just needs to be a voice to encourage people to vote. To be and it's really important. If you're if you want to vote with the ballot, fine. That means early voting. That means you vote early, that means you send it in early. It means you don't drag it out until election day to where that slows down the vote count because they have to uh look at your signature and verify your signature.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Yeah, it just drags it all out, get that done early. Um, yes, and and and that's the that's the big thing is that they they're just we ha we really have to turn Arizona around, turn this whole tide, and uh I personally am hoping we turn it with Andy Biggs, you know.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Absolutely. Andy Biggs that he'll be a phenomenal governor, he has such wonderful leadership qualities, and he knows and understands budgets like you wouldn't believe, but he also he just his experience in Congress, he was a really good congressman for us. Yeah, he was always pushing and trying to, you know, correct things on a constitutional level.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Yes, and he and Eli Crane have worked so hard up in these parts. I mean, and they also they worked really hard uh, you know, as far as the the energy situation and we got good news about APS. That's great news. Yeah, they're gonna bring the gas to APS and reopen Choya, part of Choya, so that's gonna be a big deal, and um I'm really excited for that one. And and you know, it's uh it's one of those things where um Katie Hobbes, most people are saying, most people do say that the thing she's doing with our state trust lands is illegal. I mean hundred-year leases with these solar fields and um just covering them all up, fencing them off, and if she puts a moratorium on any b you know, building and all that sort of thing, that just drives the prices of houses away up, drives the price of energy up. It's just foolish.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

It it is. And you know the the state lands were set aside to help constant to help the uh uh to fund our education into the future, to always be there to be a source that could help fund our education in Arizona. So we have to be extremely careful about how w we use our state lands and how we make money off of them because it's important for our education.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Yeah, how we move on.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

So they really need a moratorium placed upon any more green uh solar wind on state lands until there can be a study done to really understand and realize what kind of uh liability is going to be on the state when it comes to these uh wind turbines and the solar panels, what we have to do to get rid of them coming down 20 years in the future when they die, you know, and what kind of liability is that gonna be on the state and what's that going to mean environmentally to the land uh going forward. And so we need to study. We really need to study.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Yeah, that's that's very smart. And and you know, the as far as the ranchers and our food security, there's all sorts of layers, you know. And that's that's smart to have a moratorium to wait and see. And you know, like um Biggs has talked about too, some of those state trust lands, a few of them that are down in the valley, like there's a section really close to Scottsdale that would be absolutely perfect to put houses on, right? And then that's old that is sold. And it is uh a ton of money for our education system. Instead of doing a a hundred year lease that they said like ten years out, it'd be like they're paying five dollars a month. I mean, really bad with inflation and stuff. And you know, it's it and then you're bringing the ha pri uh prices of houses down for young people, you know. So there's so many, you have to look at the big picture, you know. But then um, you know, and there's still a lot of things um supposed to have APS on this week. I'll have our Board of Supervisors uh uh on tomorrow, Jason Whiting talking about this great announcement with APS with uh, you know, natural with gas, gas coming to APS. And now with TEP getting some gas and this and that, hopefully it'll hold off and hold off some of the renewables, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Right. That's what we're so hoping for, and it has to happen. We but that's just such the wrong direction. And another thing I want to bring up about the housing, people forget we live in a western state that is sixty seven percent controlled by the federal government because of all of our federal lands. And that's another reason why housing is so much higher than when you go back to a state that has ninety percent of its its land and and the y I mean, you know, go back to Missouri, you can buy two hundred acres for three hundred thousand dollars with a barn and a house on it. I mean, it's just unbelievable the house prices of houses when you go back east in the Midwest and here in the West our house prices stay so high because one thing we have less land to build houses on. So that's another thing we need to take in consideration and we really need to landlock communities like Hebrew Overgard, Sholo, Pine Top Lakeside. We need to the federal government uh ought to release some of the land that it's surrounded, a little bit of it so that we can spread out.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

And also there's the water situation. Do uh you know, will we have enough water to spread out? And that's an ongoing fight. So water conservation is gonna be a big thing, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Well, and water believe it or not, you can create water, you really can. I mean uh this statement I say all the time, if three people do not exhaust resources, they create them. It's true. America, we can solve any problem. And and we there's just things that we can do in our state to create and and conserve and and get more water. Uh you know, we have um we just there's just different ideas and things that I know that Andy Biggs is talking about good different ways. Like salination, everybody laughs about that, but I mean we bring pipelines hundreds and hundreds of miles bringing gas in. Well you can bring a pipeline from the uh Gulf of America and and pipe s uh water in and s and clean it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

Yeah, desalinization is a great way and that that's gonna be toward the future for sure. You know? It's smart and like you say, the gas pipelines and all these things go forever, so they can definitely do that with water, you know.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

I d I just want us to always have an attitude that we're America, we can do anything, we can solve any problem if we put our heads together and and not have this attitude of of being so fearful and having to lock everything up and control everybody because th that's what usually ends up happening. It's just control, control, control. And instead we need to to think outside the box and Yes, you know, I mean if we can go to the moon, we can figure this out.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

Right, right. We absolutely can. Absolutely. And we can have smart development, which is really, really smart, yes. And not r and and also looking at our food supply. I loved when he was talking about, you know, Yuma and how much produce Yuma produces. Oh my gosh. And we need to watch out for our farmers and ranchers and everybody and manage our forests better. You know, I saw your recent post on that. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Oh, that is such a passion of mine. We have got to have we need to rebuild sawmills all over this the mountain communities and bring in particle board factories or another paper mill. I mean, we have enough fiber to do that, and our forests will be so much healthier and our fires will not be as catastrophic if we if we manage this forest better. But what that means is we've got to have a guarantee from the Forest Service that we're gonna keep these types of that volume of timber sales up for the next thirty years so people can realize their investment and get their investment back. Right. So we've got to change NEPA, we've got to change some uh uh regulations that are governing the forest and um make it to where we can become more aggressive in putting up timber sales. Um one thing is the environmentalists insisted that we have to put a cap on the diameter of the tree we cut down. We can only cut down a tree up to sixteen inches diameter.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

And and you can't you you need to be able to cut you need to be able to cut all size of trees to keep our forest healthy. You can't just have an old forest with big trees you know, diameter of trees that eventually die. And and so you need to selective cut and also so that you can have the sawmills that produce the larger boards for building and uh that makes it more economical for them to invest twenty million dollars to build a sawmill. You know, and so we've got to think these things through and realize that that some stupid people have been controlling our forest and and um insisting on things being done a certain way. And and also in NEPA is the the ability for radical environmental groups to constantly sue the Forest Service to stop timber sales. So here comes a timber company, they get a timber sale, they sign a contract, and all of a sudden this third party can come in and say, Oh, I'm messing with your contract. I don't like that contract. I don't like that the Forest Service is allowing you to cut here or to do this or to do that, and they file a lawsuit and hold it up.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Yeah, that's how they destroyed it to begin with. Yeah, the lawsuits are so sad and so ridiculous and how they and how they do this, you know, and it's and I I am super happy about Trump reopening the lands that were grazed in the forest, right? And reopening a bunch of those areas. And I I know of some ranchers that are applying for those right now and getting their applications in. And uh so that'll that'll help, you know, to get the grazing back because they shut off a lot of that for for grazing for the environmentalists, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

We were moving to make the forest into nothing but a big wilderness area, uh you know, take away multiple use. Our forest lands were always to be under multiple use. That means that we could use it for many, many things, including everything from mining, ranching, logging, recreation, fishing, hiking, camping, you know, it was multiple use.

SPEAKER_02 14:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

And we have enough land and and we did it for years and the Forest Service cre uh um they were one agency that uh created enough money from the multiple use of the lands that they didn't have to have any tax appropriations from Congress. And that's totally changed. Now they've become a firefighting what they do is just firefight and it sucks the tax money. They have to have huge budgets every year. They're not making the money that they used to. And the other thing about the people didn't realize on these timber sales, twenty five percent of every timber cell went back to local government in that area in lieu of the fact that there was no private land, that the federal government controlled all the land. So in Flitma that was created back in nineteen seventy-four when the f the Congress says, Well, we're never gonna give these lands back to western states, they're never gonna get all their land back. So instead we'll give them these forest fees, these uh pelt payments so that it'll make up for it. And and so supposedly that the counties that were located in these forest areas got twenty five percent of timber sales and that was to be used for schools and roads. Well, that's all dried up, you know. I mean every year we have to fight for pelt payments and um they're just not coming off the timber sales like they used to. So, I mean there was a lot of consequences to when we started locking up our forest.

SPEAKER_02 16:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

And so we've just I'm just so excited that President Trump is there trying to restore our country all the way across uh in every area to restore it, to go back to being this great country where we can manage and make our forest healthy and create jobs and an uh economic base for our rural communities.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Yes, this is gonna be great. And and that's the thing is that we need all of us working together, but the extreme left has been pretty darn scary. So again, they are uh and Sylvia, thank you so much for checking in with us. I know you're on your way down to the valley to do your great work. We so appreciate all the good work. And uh thank you, thank you, thank you. And uh we'll talk to you again. Keep us posted on any new developments, okay?

SPEAKER_01 17:02

All right, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Our district seven representative Sylvia Allen. We love her. Bye Sylvie. We can be safe going down the valley. Okay, thank you. I will. Bye. Bye bye, sweetie. All right, everybody, keep it right here. ITOK 1067 have and the voice of the mount.