The Arizona Automobile Hobbyist Council was founded in 1973 to combat bad legislation and to support legislation that is good for the transportation hobby. We have proudly served the Hobbyist of Arizona for almost five decades and have been very effective in protecting the automotive hobby. We have been on the job as your watchdog taking on the constant threats from scrappage bill, aggressive zoning laws, and many other ideas that would harm our hobby.
Our organization has a great history of clout, based on the hobbyists we represent. In the past, the AAHC fought the 4% sales tax on private sales imposed by Gov. Ev Mecham back in 1989. We were responsible for the 15 year vehicle emission exemption for classic vehicles with collector insurance that went into effect in March 2008. The AAHC struggled for 5 years with the EPA to get the exemption passed. We also worked to change the automatic exemption from 1966 to 1974, exempting all pre-catalytic convertor vehicles. The bill was passed by the Legislature and signed by then Gov. Jan Brewer, but the EPA has still not passed it.
Recently the AAHC has spent the last 10 years behind the scenes fighting to keep all toll roads out of AZ. We ran petition drives in 2014 and again 2016 to put the issue before the voters, but our organization was too small to collect 250,000 signatures to put the initiative on the ballot. We did make enough of a problem for ADOT that they have backed off their plans to implement “Fee Based Managed Lanes” for now. Imagine paying 50 cents per mile to use the freeways during rush hour? That is the amount proposed by ADOT back in 2013 at a meeting at the MAG building attended by AAHC Board Members.
Success
On May 8th, 2023 the current Governor of AZ, Katie Hobbs, signed the “No Toll Roads” Bill passed by the Legislature.
This bill will prohibit the converting of any publicly funded roadway in Arizona into any form of Toll Road or fee based managed lanes.
Our Slogan has always been:
“United We Drive, Divided We Park”
Please join the AAHC now to help our hobby. We face some very unusual threats to our hobby and can use all the support we can get.
