by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Jun 8, 2026 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
For generations, Arizona’s wide-open land has supported ranchers, farmers and the communities that helped build our great state.
Then, the climate activists came along.
Armed with nothing more than junk science from climate “experts” like Al Gore and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, they got busy imposing costly green energy mandates on states across the country—and Arizona’s political and corporate elites eagerly fell in line. Our state’s utilities committed themselves to achieving “Net Zero” emissions by 2050, a goal that will cost ratepayers billions of dollars while doing little to meaningfully impact the environment.
But higher utility bills are only part of the cost.
Not wanting to disappoint some of her largest campaign contributors, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs has been quick to bend the knee to the Green New Scam time and time again. Now, these decisions are not only hitting families in the wallet, but they are transforming our state’s beautiful countryside into an industrial playground for massive, foreign-backed solar and wind developments.
Under Hobbs, the Arizona State Land Department has increasingly operated like a business partner for the solar industry instead of a steward of Arizona’s public lands. The agency now maintains detailed maps identifying the “best” locations for solar development across the state, effectively helping direct industrial solar companies toward Arizona’s most desirable land.
But surely, they must be doing the same for other industries?
Nope…
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by AZ Free Enterprise Club | May 28, 2026 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
For decades, Arizona has been a national model for how to responsibly manage and develop water resources. As a result, our state has enjoyed years of economic growth while welcoming millions of new residents to live and work here.
Then, Governor Katie Hobbs came along.
In 2023, the Hobbs administration imposed sweeping new water rules that effectively halted new home construction across much of the Valley, under the guise that it was needed to “save water.”
Now, a court has struck down the policy, ruling that state regulators ignored the law when creating the rules behind it. But the fallout from this disastrous decision is only beginning. And Arizona taxpayers could soon be forced to pay more than $1 billion for the damage.
Arizona Is Not Running Out of Water
Despite the alarmist rhetoric coming from Hobbs and the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR), our state is not running out of water.
In fact, our state uses less water today than it did in 1990—even though our population has doubled to more than 7 million residents. That’s not a typo. Over the past three decades, Arizona has welcomed millions of new residents while reducing total water consumption.
How is that possible? Through better water management, technological advancements in conservation and reuse, and the gradual conversion of agricultural land to residential development. The result is a system that has allowed Arizona to grow responsibly while protecting its long-term water supply.
But instead of building on this successful model, Hobbs declared a sweeping housing moratorium—halting new single-family housing construction across much of the Phoenix metropolitan area.
A Manufactured Crisis With Real Consequences
In addition to destroying billions in economic activity and further exacerbating the housing shortage crisis, Hobbs’ moratorium created a number of additional problems…
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by AZ Free Enterprise Club | May 22, 2026 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
A recent op-ed in the Arizona Republic by the Arizona Center for Economic Progress argued that the legislature’s budget “doesn’t add up” and that Arizona needs a “reality check.” We agree a reality check is in order, but definitely not the kind being offered.
The argument, which has become the standard refrain from the Left on tax policy, is that Arizonans have enjoyed too many tax cuts over the years (the fault of Republican lawmakers), and that this has left the state anemic in revenues and starved of the ability to provide essential government services.
But the average middle-class, tax-paying resident would probably scratch their head at this. They still have roads to drive on. The police still come when they call (except maybe if they live in Tucson). There are still bureaucrats employed to receive their tax filings and permit fees.
No matter how much the Left likes the story that government is running on fumes, people don’t believe it – and their intuition is right, because none of the actual data supports it. The reality is the very opposite. Arizona’s state budget has been ballooning for years. Our welfare programs have never been more riddled with fraud. And governments of every size in the state just keep sizing up. But most concerning about the myth that state government is poor and taxpayers are too rich is that it belies a philosophy that every Arizonan should find alarming…
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by AZ Free Enterprise Club | May 14, 2026 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
This November, Tucson voters are being asked (again) to approve a 25-year franchise agreement between Tucson and Tucson Electric Power (TEP). Franchise agreements are generally standard arrangements that allow utilities to use public rights-of-way for poles, wires, and infrastructure. But there is nothing standard about this deal. Bundled with it is an “Energy Collaboration Agreement” that will quietly embed climate policy into Tucson’s governance for the next quarter century. Voters should read the fine print (and the price tag) before checking the box.
If Tucson voters are having déjà vu reading this proposal, it’s because it is awfully similar to what they have already said no to. In May 2023, Proposition 412 put a nearly identical TEP franchise agreement before the public, and voters rejected it by a 55-45 margin. That deal included a new 0.75% “community resilience fee” on top of the existing 2.25% franchise fee, with proceeds earmarked for undergrounding utility lines as well as funding the city’s Climate Action Plan. Despite voters already telling the city they don’t want it, city leaders and TEP have assumed residents really just want a more expensive version of the same thing – rebranding and trying to ream through for a second time the same agenda but at a cost of $64 million instead of $56 million.
What the franchise agreement really does is help TEP maintain infrastructure, expedite permitting, and improve outage response. But TEP can still operate without a franchise agreement, meaning this vote is not about whether Tucson continues receiving electricity. Instead, it creates the legal foundation for a broader political partnership between the city and the utility…
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by AZ Free Enterprise Club | May 8, 2026 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
Less than an hour had passed from when Republicans delivered a budget to Katie Hobbs desk yesterday to when she stamped it with a ‘veto.’ No one is surprised, since from the moment she walked out of negotiations six weeks ago and “challenged” Republicans to show their budget hand, she had already made up her mind about vetoing it. She just needed them to do all the work first.
Hobbs has grown far too comfortable being the only one setting conditions on budget negotiations, considering every condition she has set has been unreasonable, unworkable, or erratic.
She tried to anchor the entire budget to an unprecedented raid of the state land trust, speculative revenue requiring voter approval that could never functionally bridge her reckless spending. She wanted to deliver only half the conformity relief Arizona taxpayers are entitled to under the One Big Beautiful Bill, in direct contradiction to tax forms her own Department of Revenue already issued, creating tax filing chaos. She tried to “trade” not forcing that tax hike on Arizonans for kicking kids off the ESA program (insane). And when Republicans said no to all of it, she flipped the table and stormed off, openly admitting she was out of ideas, and demanding Republicans produce a budget on their own.
While the veto from Hobbs was largely expected, Hobbs’ explanation for her veto was such brazen hypocrisy that it raises the genuine question of whether she is being ironic or fails to see the numerous contradictions in her opposition to the GOP budget…
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