Todd: 00:00 Well, welcome back to the podcast. Today we are honored to have Susan Anable, who's the VP of Government and Public Affairs at Cox Communications, also a member of our board and the chair of our public affairs committee. Susan, welcome.
Susan Anable: 00:12 Thank you, Todd. Thanks for having me. I'm honored to be here.
Todd: 00:15 Awesome to be here and we've been friends for a long time, but I'd like for people to maybe get to know you a little bit better. They have seen you on the stage or read your bio, tell us a little bit about yourself and then maybe something that's not on your bio.
Susan Anable: 00:28 Okay, great. Well, I've been in Arizona for 33 years. I consider myself a native of sorts and those of you who've been around for a while, you know you get native status after about five years. But just have really enjoyed the opportunities I've had here in Arizona. Graduate from ASU and had the good fortune to spend the first 10 years of my career working in the legislature, which is where we met and got to work together. And for the past now 20 plus years, I've been with Cox Communications here in the valley and just really can't say enough about all the great opportunities that have been afforded to me living in Phoenix, Arizona. It really is terrific.
Todd: 01:05 It is. And came from Wyoming.
Susan Anable: 01:08 That's right.
Todd: 01:10 Tell us something about yourself that we wouldn't find on your bio.
Susan Anable: 01:12 Wow. Okay. Well my go-to is summer job during college, worked for a natural gas company and was certified to operate a bucket truck.
Todd: 01:23 There you go, see. I love that.
Susan Anable: 01:26 Skills that might come in handy someday. I mean, who knows if I need to re-career.
Todd: 01:30 Absolutely. You never know when you're going to need to be able to operate a bucket truck.
Susan Anable: 01:32 Exactly.
Todd: 01:33 Well, that's fantastic. Well, obviously you in your day job do a lot in the policy realm and certainly you help lead the chamber's policy work. Just had an election, so break it down for us. There certainly were a lot of predictions before the election. There was the talk about the red wave nationally and in Arizona. What happened?
Susan Anable: 01:53 I think everybody's got their Monday morning quarterbacking on how the elections went down. But I think my take on it, Todd, is that I think the voters of Arizona ultimately said the things that are important to us may not be the things that are important to the fringe ends of the parties. And I think that's really my takeaway from what happened with the election is we ended up with some results that seem to indicate that that's where the majority of people sit.
02:21 I will say, and I know you've been around politics for a long time here in Arizona too, that sometimes the best policy comes from when you don't have one party controlling both houses and the governor's office. And as much as you'd like to think there's alignment and there's consistency in policy, sometimes the best needs of the state are met when there's give and take and there's the horse trading that has to go on down at 1700 West Washington to get policy done. So that said, I'm cautiously optimistic. We'll see. I actually feel a little better about it now than I did before the election when there was so much uncertainty.
Todd: 02:57 Agreed. And I like your point about govern when you have a split. We were there obviously when Governor Napolitano was there and you saw that they had to compromise and we compromise in our daily lives in our families and that's what normal people do and you do get good policy outcomes when you have to do that.
Susan Anable: 03:15 Yes. And I think that's going to be good for the state of Arizona ultimately. I sure hope so. I think we're all crossing our fingers and toes and anything else we can.
Todd: 03:23 You bet. So obviously we have a new governor, Governor-elect Hobbs. What advice would you have for the governor? Clearly she's the product of the legislature and also secretary of the state, but what were some advice you'd have for the governor?
Susan Anable: 03:35 I think what I would say to Governor Hobbs is you don't have to boil the ocean. There are some things that are working incredibly well right now on Arizona. So for all of the advice she's going to be given and all the people who think she needs to address this issue and take on that issue and you need to clean house and this agency and make all these changes, I think taking a moment to reflect on what's going well in her state that she's going to be responsible for, on the administrative side. I'll give you an example, the Arizona Commerce Authority. Stable, nonpartisan, getting it done, making things happen for the state, let them keep working. I know it's a different construct for the way that office is set up, but when you've got agencies that are doing their jobs well and they are not in the middle of political issues, take on the things that you need to take on but don't feel like you have to do everything.
Todd: 04:31 I could agree more. I mean you look at some of the successes we've seen in just a few years, yesterday we had TSMCs opening and that's a huge deal for Arizona and certainly, Sandra Watson and her team have done incredible work there.
Susan Anable: 04:45 And again, Todd, you saw Democrats and Republicans standing side by side celebrating that victory. That's something that everybody in Arizona should be able to get behind and celebrate regardless of what side of the political aisle you sit on.
Todd: 04:57 I couldn't agree more. And thinking about next year, one of the things that I think has carried over and it's been talked a lot out there is the expenditure limit for education. Can you maybe frame that issue a little bit and why we need to address it or why not?
Susan Anable: 05:13 I think it's one of those maybe a little bit of a bitter irony in the way that policy making goes and legislation goes is even when you think you've got the legislature and the governor in alignment around solving for the problem. And in this case it was the expenditure limits that the schools are dealing with, there's always devil in the details. And the reality is now we've got a situation where the schools are authorized to spend the funds, but there's this little minutia that happens in the authorization side of it that has to be fixed. And I don't know that anybody doesn't think it should be. I think to a person, we said we were going to do this, this is what needs to happen. And to keep the education community and teachers and parents up in the air about this is rather unfortunate.
06:05 That said, it's politics and you can understand it's such an important issue and it's often those really important issues that get leveraged and it's hard not to believe that isn't happening at all of this. And that's just the nature of politics. I think it's going to get done, Todd. I think it's the posturing, it's the leveraging. It's all the stuff that most of the public doesn't understand or and finds incredibly distasteful about the process, but there it is.
Todd: 06:34 Well, and I think but also the misunderstanding that this is new spending. It's been authorized by the legislature already, but now it's permission.
Susan Anable: 06:41 Yes. We said you can spend it, but wait, we haven't really said you can spend it yet.
Todd: 06:45 So our prediction is that either in special session or next session, this is something that that's going to get resolved.
Susan Anable: 06:50 Yeah, I have to believe it does. Letting people flounder with that uncertainty, even if the detractors don't like it, the matter's been settled by and large.
Todd: 07:04 So speaking of next session, what are some of the issues out there that you think we need to be focused on as a business community down at the capital?
Susan Anable: 07:13 I think obviously educational continue to be an issue and that really translates to workforce development for the chamber and for businesses. I think as parents we all want to see our kids get educated, we'd like to see our kids have jobs and stay in the state. So that's a piece of it. But as businesses we need employees and it's darn hard to find them right now. It's still hard and I don't think that's going to change overnight. So I think education tied to work for us, that'll be a big issue. Water. Water's going to be a critically huge issue. It always is, but probably even now more than ever given the current status of the Colorado River.
07:56 Again, that's something that shouldn't be a partisan issue. It typically becomes an urban versus rural issue. So I think that's where you see the fighting and the bunkers people go into about water issues for sure. And I think obviously the border and immigration are always going to be issues. I'm very hopeful that maybe Congress might be able to get that issue under control, at least in the way that matters to the state right now. The more they can get into the legislation that Senator Sinema is working on right now, the better as far as getting certainty and hopefully taking away the current situation we have with people coming across the border without certainty, but with ultimate desperation.
Todd: 08:42 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the immigration system is pretty antiquated today and doesn't really fit the requirements of the modern world. And certainly that would be welcome for not only the country but for Arizona, so much of the impact. We were heard this morning that the state revenues are coming in way ahead of budget another year. I think when you and I were there, there was no such thing really as a surplus, which can make things harder. Any thoughts on the spending that might or may not occur?
Susan Anable: 09:11 I think with the very close split between the House and the Senate and a Democrat sitting in the governor's office this year, I think there'll be some greater pressure to take some of that favorability and solve for some of the problems. And everybody's got their lists. These are the things that are the priorities and Democrats and Republicans alike. Well, I'm sure many of the Republicans will say spending is the domain of the Democrats, but the reality is that everybody's got their priorities. So I think there'll be a lot of gnashing of teeth over how to spend those dollars.
09:46 I think what we've learned through now two very interesting, very different, you can call them recessions, whatever we want to call them, economic disruption that we've faced in Arizona in the last 15 years is that planning for the future makes sense. So I think you're going to see some of the more conservative Republicans saying, "Okay. The sun's shining right now, but we know, bring the rainy day fund up again." But that idea about making sure that the state is not committing to long-term year over year expenditures. So hopefully that means that the legislature will focus on some of the things that need critical attention one-time expenditures. We'll see.
Todd: 10:26 Absolutely. And I think you talked a little bit about this a minute ago. You talked about how people eyes glaze over when you start talking about this, but clearly this has impacts on all of us. What happens at the capital can have direct impacts on all of us. Why should the business community care what's happening down at 1700? Why should they be involved?
Susan Anable: 10:48 Yeah, no, this is a great question and I think this is the reason why we have chambers of commerce and why they have the important role that they do, which is to say that everything that the legislature does, even if it isn't directly and specifically tied to a "business issue", has tangential impacts. And it has indirect impacts on what we do as a business community from having a good education system in Arizona so that we can attract quality workers who will be willing to come and live here because they know their kids will have a good education system to making sure that there's adequate housing. So that as the TSMC that come online and other employers know that their employees will have housing.
11:32 So I don't know that there is an issue that you can really say the business community doesn't have some interest in. Clearly there's core issues we care about. Light regulation, good tax policy, all of those things. But I think that there's always some thread with almost every policy that can affect you in how you run your business on a day-to-day basis from requirements for how you stripe your parking lot for waste removal, for emissions. I mean there's really no limit to the ways in which government and laws touch businesses, local, state, and federal. I
Todd: 12:13 I hear a lot of times, "Well, we know Cox is down there and these other companies down there, so we don't need to worry about it." What about that?
Susan Anable: 12:19 Clarify question for me.
Todd: 12:20 Meaning that there's already people down there talking to lawmakers, why do I need to get involved? Why does it matter if other businesses get involved with what's happening down there?
Susan Anable: 12:29 Well, companies like mine, we have people that we pay to go down to the legislature. This is their job to lobby, to influence on behalf of the company. So to a lawmaker, that's our job. We go down there and we try to influence on behalf of the company. But for a person running a small business who doesn't have a contract lobbyist, who can't afford to hire somebody to do this hearing from them as a business owner, business operator, somebody making payroll has incremental value. And I don't mean to diminish the value of a contract lobbyist and a paid lobbyist to do that work, but when lawmakers hear from people who are trying to run their businesses, pay their employees and take care of their benefits and be successful, that voice of that business owner has exponential value.
Todd: 13:22 I couldn't agree. Why I think some of the most powerful voices of the capital are those of small and mid-size businesses that are saying, "Hey, I'm trying to meet a payroll here and if you do this, it's going to have an impact on our employees in your district." And that's why we always encourage people to get involved in the process. So thank you for that.
13:39 So let's then go to public affairs. Your second time around, we recruited her back and there's a reason for that because she was also head of research in the Senate and I was just an analyst so we had to go to the right person here. But tell us a little bit about the process, how public affairs works, and how do we engage at the legislature?
Susan Anable: 14:00 So our public affairs process with the chamber has been in existence for a long time and it's been vetted and tested and it is a very good model. And Todd, the way that we arrive at our guiding principles is as a process of bringing together issue committees. So we have this incredible wealth of talent and knowledge and expertise in the members that serve on the public affairs committee. And we bring in other board members who are interested subject matter experts. And in these issue committees look at all these policy issues to say, "Okay. What do we want the chambers agenda to look like?" We've got Mike Huckins on your team who is down at the Capitol, and he's got to have some a roadmap to say, "This is where the chamber's at on these issues." So I can go and either advocate for or try to defeat or modify bad legislation.
14:48 So this process that happens typically the summer and fall prior to legislative session is the issue committees meet, we look at our guiding principles, what needs to be updated, what needs to be changed. So it's this iterative process that every year we refresh it, make sure we've got the chambers, priority issues documented there. We share that with legislators once the boards adopted it. And then that is really our moment of truth. That's what we utilize to get through the legislative session. Once the committee is done with that work, we meet regularly during the legislative session and so vast majority of the issues are very clearly falling one way or the other in our guiding principles. We will support that bill because it clearly lines with our principles. We'll oppose that one because it's clearly in opposition.
15:35 But then there's all the gray stuff that comes in between. So during the session we have our biweekly meetings, we bring some of these bills to the committee, we have a robust discussion. We might bring in the proponents and have a conversation around it, but we'll give direction to Mike Huckins and his team on how to lobby the issue with the board's knowledge and council as well. So like I said, that process has been around for a long time. It works very well, it's very consistent. And I would say it's respected in the legislature too. I think they understand that when the chamber stands up and testifies on an issue, it's with thought, input, diverse views from the members and with a sound guiding principle policy to stand behind.
Todd: 16:19 I agree. I mean certainly there's no wild, wild west where Mike's just making up where a position the chamber's going to be in. There's a very iterative process. And I think it's also interesting that a small business could have the same voice. That's really cool. And that's where I think there's a real opportunity for small mid-size business owners to be a part of a process and have their voice heard in terms of the process.
Susan Anable: 16:43 Absolutely. I think it's the great moderator in terms of the voice of the business community, because you're exactly right Todd. It is the opportunity for a larger company like a Cox or others to stand with their brethren behind the name of the chamber. But that includes every chamber member. So it's a value that if those businesses had to go and find that and pay for it on their own, it's very expensive and it's not something that business owners want to have to spend a lot of their time doing, even though as we discussed earlier, hearing directly from them is important, but this is what the chamber does. So it's just an incredible part of the value proposition.
Todd: 17:25 Absolutely. Well, I want to address, obviously we've had a lot of talk there about elections and if we had the Georgia runoff recently and that election was called very quickly. Our elections are a little bit different. You want to talk about what maybe draws out the counting period here in Arizona so much.
Susan Anable: 17:45 Yeah. And I think everything that happens, once there is national media interest and there's high political interest in what we do in our processes, everybody's an expert and I think this is really no different. And that's not to say that every election is run flawlessly and doesn't have its issues. Every election does. And if you talk to people who run elections all across this country, they're never done perfectly and flawlessly. But that said, I think our process, which has been established by the legislature I might add, so if you know don't like the way it's being run, there are certainly ways that it can be changed. But the process of allowing people to drop off their mail-in ballots on election day, that requires a signature validation process and that takes time. And we had so many more people do that this year than ever before. That certainly drew out and added to the time it took for those votes to be counted.
18:47 And if you are a candidate, you want the results now. I get it. I totally get that. But you also want to make sure that the electorates votes are counted and counted properly. So I think for the elections folks and the county workers that run these elections, they're in a no-win situation. They want them counted fast, but the process is not designed to be counted fast and they want them to be accurate. And there's a high level of scrutiny on the accuracy. I don't know that there's anything that's more scrutinized than our elections complete with video cameras and observers in the whole nine yards.
19:24 So I can't honestly say 20 years ago I would've ever thought this would be the top media issue and the top issue for the state of Arizona during the elections, is the election process itself. Not necessarily the outcome but the process.
Todd: 19:42 Are there some things we can do, for instance, around early ballots, bringing in early ballot that might speed up the process next time?
Susan Anable: 19:48 Yeah, no, I think one of the ideas on the table, I'm not sure it speeds up the process because it takes more time at the polling place, but allowing people who come in with their mail-in ballot where they've signed their envelope, but they would rather just run it through the machine. There's got to be a process to validate that voter's identification at that point to make sure there's not double counting of ballots. So that will take more time at the polling place, which means maybe longer lines, maybe we need more polling locations. But that is certainly one of the ideas that's been floated around to address the problem with having so many of those mail-in ballots being dropped off on election day. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of conversation down at the legislature this year about it and a lot of ideas from people that maybe sit on either side of the aisle politically, or maybe just people that have a passion for making sure the voter's voice is heard. We'll see.
Todd: 20:43 Absolutely. But what I'm hearing from you is it's not necessarily an integrity issue, it's the opposite side of the spectrum that we want to make sure we cross every t and dot every I, so that it does take longer?
Susan Anable: 20:53 Yeah. I can't imagine the pressure that Maricopa County was under, that they were being scrutinized, they had to make sure they got it, they had to make sure everybody's vote was counted. And yet with the way the law is written, there's a process and they have to follow that process as well. And sometimes those issues are at odds with each other in terms of the expectation of the public, the expectation of the candidates and the expectation of the media. Let's not forget them and all of this.
Todd: 21:21 Absolutely. They were happy to talk about it.
Susan Anable: 21:24 Yes. And they wanted the results and they wanted to know when the next data dump was going to be. And yeah.
Todd: 21:28 Thank God the data grew.
Susan Anable: 21:30 Yeah.
Todd: 21:31 So I want to shift gears a little bit because we both came up in the process a while ago when things have changed a lot. What would you tell somebody that maybe is thinking about, "Man, I'd maybe get into public affairs?" Is this something you'd recommend still today?
Susan Anable: 21:45 Absolutely. I think that from the standpoint of just being curious about how your government is run and being curious about how laws are made and being curious about the type of people that put their lives on hold to go down to the legislature for six, seven months of the year. And for all of the, I think the negative perceptions and the criticisms people have of people who are in elected office, it is a sacrifice. So I think for people to learn about it and understand how it works, especially if you're running a business, if you don't have some intellectual curiosity about why this matters, you may find yourself on the wrong end of a policy. Someday you're going to say, "Wait a minute, what happened? What do you mean that law changed? I didn't know anything about it."
22:40 To the point of a potential career path, I think you and I can certainly say it's been very good to us in our career path. I can tell people, and I mean this with all sincerity, I learned something new every day in my job, whether it was inside the legislature or outside the legislature. What an incredible gift and opportunity to get to be engaged with people who are making the decisions and influencing the decisions that decide what our state looks like and how it runs.
Todd: 23:09 No, I agree. Point well taken. And I think to your point about these players, I mean, we see these keyboard warriors storing bombs that people they've never met. And when you get down there and actually meet them in person, it's a different deal and it's a little bit different. And I think you learn a lot about people and it has been, I think a really interesting career path. No [inaudible 00:23:29] are the same.
Susan Anable: 23:30 Yeah. That is absolutely true.
Todd: 23:32 Well, before we wrap up, I'd like to do a quick lightning round. Since our policy geeks here, tell me who is your political role model? And you can give two if you'd like.
Susan Anable: 23:44 I'm a big fan of Condoleezza Rice. I always have been steady, brilliant, respected, calm. She's my quintessential hero.
Todd: 23:55 She's amazing.
Susan Anable: 23:56 Yeah.
Todd: 23:57 Okay. Excellent choice. And then you talked about jobs, but what was your first job?
Susan Anable: 24:03 Let's see if you don't count the paper route-
Todd: 24:05 Correct. Well, you could.
Susan Anable: 24:07 Sure. It would be my job working for the natural gas company I shared with you. That was my college job. I will say it's interesting that my career path led me to a company that works in the infrastructure business, now delivering something different. Not natural gas, but broadband but, yeah.
Todd: 24:24 Besides learning how to drive the bucket truck, which is invaluable, what did you learn from that first job?
Susan Anable: 24:31 I think I learned to appreciate my college education. I'm being perfectly honest. Hard work and people that keep our country running because they're doing the jobs that need to be done to keep the gas on, to keep the roads built, to keep things moving in our economy. Profound respect for what it takes physically and all of that. It really made me appreciate that role, but it also made me appreciate my college education.
Todd: 25:02 Well, 100% I think you knew the difference from that experience. I those of us in COVID, like there was somebody keeping the lights on. It was not at home. Somebody was at Cox out in the field making sure we had the internet to attend our Zoom meetings and no unimportant jobs out there. It's so true.
Susan Anable: 25:22 And on that point, during COVID, we had our employees that showed up and connected and fixed people's internet every day, went to people's homes, stood outside their homes and figured it out. To me, all of those people not just in our industry, in our business, but they're the true heroes.
Todd: 25:37 I 100% agree. And it's true. You heard stories about crew from Cox having to connect people through a window.
Susan Anable: 25:40 Yeah, absolutely.
Todd: 25:42 And they were-
Susan Anable: 25:43 Using cell phones to explain to them how to do their self install.
Todd: 25:46 Make sure kids could go to school. Okay. And now we know you love your job, but dream job?
Susan Anable: 25:54 Wow. I think I would love to be a travel writer. I love to travel. I love to write. And if somebody would pay me to do both, yeah, for sure.
Todd: 26:08 Well, if you need a travel writer, you know where to go. Well, Susan, it's been such a pleasure. Thank you for spending time with us today, but also for your leadership at the chamber. Your job is probably one of the hardest volunteer jobs we've got and you're back again. So we thank you for that, and certainly thank you for your leadership in the community one level.
Susan Anable: 26:26 Thank you. Honored and appreciate your trust in me. Thank you, Todd.
Todd: 26:29 All right. Take care.