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A Leader with a Proven Track Record
Senator John Huppenthal has a record that is second to none. In fact, Senator Huppenthal has sponsored and successfully
helped pass more bills than any other legislator in Arizona history.
Senator Huppenthal has distinguished himself as a compassionate conservative who gets results. His hard work in the State Legislature and the Chandler City Council
has made a positive difference for our families and community.
John Huppenthal: Positive Results for Arizona
• Arizona State Senator (2004-Present)
• Arizona State Representative (2000-2004)
• Arizona State Senator (1992-2000)
• Chandler City Councilman (1984-1992)
Arizona State Senator (2004-Present)
Senator Huppenthal has been the successful prime sponsor of 204 pieces of legislation in his legislative career. This is by far the
most legislation by any sitting legislator in Arizona.
In the 2006 legislative session, the Gov. Janet Napolitano signed into law 30 bills which Senator Huppenthal had introduced. Examples include legislation for protection of victims
of violent crime, legislation for post-conviction review of capital crime convictions, legislation to provide to notification to citizens when their personal
identification information has been stolen from financial institutions and other businesses, legislation for best practices in education technology, and
legislation for identification of excellent schools.
Arizona State Representative (2000-2004)
As a State Representative, Huppenthal continued to focus on making government more efficient and effective. Senator Huppenthal
was instrumental in passing key measures to improve Arizona schools, and improve Arizona transportation.
As House Health Committee and Retirement/Government Committee Chairman, Senator Huppenthal successfully led prime sponsored
legislation that:
• Expanded disability benefits for police officers.
• Cleaned up abuses in the retirement system.
• Expanded firefighters' cancer insurance.
• Made the corrections officer retirement plan easier to buy into, thus attracting more officers to Arizona.
• Allowed retired dentists to continue working as consultants.
• Made it tougher for bad doctors, chiropractors, dentists, optometrists and psychologists to obtain/maintain a license to practice.
• Developed bioterrorism protocols for communication, emergency response and coordination.
• Decreased court and monitoring costs for custodians of dementia patients.
• Expanded the human rights committee on the mentally ill to review non-seriously mentally ill persons receiving behavioral health services.
• Expanded the role of physician assistants to compensate for physician shortages.
• Expanded the well-woman health check program to include treatment for women with breast and cervical cancer.
• Designated research monies for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's research facilities.
• Improved patient access to laboratory testing reducing costs of health care services.
Arizona State Senator (1992-2000)
Team Accomplishments
• Tax cuts of $1.2 billion dollars in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997 and 1998.
• Fixed-length prison sentences.
• Elimination of the marriage penalty.
Personal Accomplishments as a State Senator
Education
• As chairman of the Senate Education Committee, Senator Huppenthal achieved successful Senate passage of current year funding
for Chandler, Kyrene, Mesa, Gilbert and Laveen schools. This additional funding amounted to millions of dollars of additional support for our teachers,
parents and students. It also helped to make schools even more student and parent focused.
• Senator Huppenthal developed and achieved passage of legislation reducing the time to dismiss non-performing teachers to the shortest
in the nation.
• Senator Huppenthal developed and achieved passage of legislation implementing pay for performance in Arizona’s schools. Numerous
school districts employing over 15,000 Arizona citizens used this legislation to better serve parents and students. The number of parents rating their
child’s school "excellent" increased by 30% in these schools.
• Senator Huppenthal helped lead a team of Mesa school board members, administrators and teachers achieve successful incentive
pay in the Mesa school district. Following that implementation, the percentage of parents in the Mesa school district rating their child’s school
excellent increased from 42% to 54%. Following Mesa’s lead, 22 other school districts tested this plan to implement incentive pay for
teachers. This included eight schools in the Chandler district.
• Senator Huppenthal provided school districts with more budget flexibility to move unspent budget balances forward into the next
school year. This eliminated the incentive to wastefully spend cash reserves.
• As a Senate Health Committee member, Huppthenal developed Arizona’s teen pregnancy prevention legislation. Under this
legislation, a bipartisan group developed a consensus approach centered on abstinence as a means of reducing teen pregnancies across the state.
Transportation
• As a Senate Transportation Committee member, Huppthenal successfully developed and achieved passage of legislation
updating Arizona’s transportation laws and reforming transportation policy in Maricopa County. His legislation implemented the “design-build” approach
to freeway construction, reverse auctioning to acquire land and streamlining citizen input into freeway development.
Security Laws Reform
• Senator Huppenthal developed and achieved passage of legislation updating Arizona’s securities laws. Arizona is now in the
top 10 in the nation in venture capital formation.
Welfare
• Senator Huppenthal successfully eliminated over $37 million in welfare spending. This spending had created incentives for
illegal aliens and drug addicts to become welfare dependent.
Government Efficiency and Accountability
• As a subcommittee appropriations chairman of Health, Welfare and Transportation, Huppenthal was a key part of paying
off the state’s credit cards and putting some cash in the bank. This financial integrity will enable the state to avoid mid-year revertments. These
mid-year revertments had badly damaged our universities, K-12 schools and state agencies in the past.
• Senator Huppenthal chaired State Senate appropriations committees reducing state spending by $40 million dollars.
Protecting Arizona Families
• Senator Huppenthal developed and achieved passage of legislation streamlining the combat readiness process for Arizona’s Army
and Air Force National Guard. This legislation reduced the paperwork processes by 50% and helped ensure that the children of Guard members who die
in combat will be properly cared for.
• Senator Huppenthal initiated the design of legislation using Tobacco Tax monies (the tax implemented by citizen initiative
and vote) to fund organ transplants.
Chandler City Councilman (1984-1992)
• As a City Council member, Huppenthal quickly developed a reputation for outstanding constituent service.
• While on the City Council, Huppenthal helped Chandler's government effectively serve the needs of its citizens as the
city grew to over 100,000 from 35,000 residents. To meet the challenges of growth, Huppenthal developed and implemented a comprehensive, citizen-focused city
government culture and service system. He also helped implement a pay-for-performance system tying city worker pay to the percentage of citizens
rating city government as "excellent."
• These key reforms helped improve the percentage of residents rating city government as “excellent” from 18%
to 35%, and raised the percentage of residents satisfied with Chandler city government from 85% to 97%.
• Huppenthal’s performance-based pay reforms resulted in a city employee productivity improvement of nearly 30%,
with each worker supporting 155 citizens as compared to 120 citizens previously.
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