by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Jan 6, 2024 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
After several years of inflated budgets propped up by trillions in unsustainable COVID cash flowing to the states from the federal government, Arizona lawmakers will be coming into the new year and the new legislative session facing a potential shortfall for the budget year in excess of $400 million. Naturally, the left and their sycophants in the media have for months been decrying this to be the result of 1) historic tax cuts enacted by Republicans in 2021 and 2) the successful universal expansion of school choice in 2022. This couldn’t be further from the truth, and there are three key facts that need to be remembered when discussing the state budget and a potential funding gap.
1. The Shortfall Is a Fraction of the Arizona Budget, Nothing Like California’s Crisis
The projected $400 million shortfall represents less than 5% of the total state budget, which spends $17.8 billion this year. Far from catastrophic. Compare this to our neighbor California, facing a $68 billion dollar deficit (nearly four times the size of our entire budget), which represents 22% of their $308 billion bloated budget – up from less than $200 billion only four years ago.
Opposite to our approach, California has continuously increased taxes, having one of the highest income tax burdens in the country. They also don’t provide choice to parents and families to make educational decisions themselves. Surely, if Arizona taking less of the people’s hard-earned money and providing ESAs to all families is the cause of our small funding gap, California, doing the exact opposite, should place them in tip top shape, right?
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by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Dec 22, 2023 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
If someone wants to own an electric vehicle (EV), it is perfectly within their right to do so. That’s what it means to have freedom. But EV owners should be the ones to bear the burden of any costs associated with the necessary infrastructure improvements. And they should absolutely be responsible for paying for any excessive demand placed on the grid.
But that’s not the way the left sees it.
As part of its Green New Deal dream, the left has been pushing an agenda that significantly increases the amount of EVs on the road despite slowing demand from consumers and companies like Ford losing billions on them just this year. And Arizona utilities have fallen right in line, planning for 1 million EVs by 2030 while APS alone plans to have a 100% “carbon free” vehicle fleet as part of its commitment to go “Net Zero” by 2050.
So, how exactly was APS planning to do this?
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by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Dec 9, 2023 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
A History of Harmful Mandates
Arizonans have faced repeated attempts over the last six years by various interest groups to impose costly Green New Deal energy mandates on utility ratepayers. In 2018, liberal billionaire Tom Steyer bankrolled a statewide ballot measure to require utilities to obtain 50% of their energy from renewable sources by 2030. Voters realized the danger of this California-style energy plan and rejected it by a 2 to 1 margin.
Immediately after the Steyer initiative failed at the ballot, the Arizona Corporation Commission began considering their own green energy mandate to completely ban fossil fuel generation in Arizona by 2050. The Commission’s plan was even more radical than the energy initiative, and this time the mandate was being pushed by our regulated utilities, not far left radicals. This caught most observers by surprise—the utilities were among the opponents of the Steyer initiative, and now they were cheerleading energy mandates.
Why the change of heart by our monopoly utility providers? The reason is simple—they knew that if the Commission adopted official policy requiring Green New Deal mandates, they would be guaranteed full cost recovery from their captive ratepayers. After fierce opposition from ratepayers and organizations like the Free Enterprise Club, this proposed mandate was rejected by the Commission in early 2022.
Unfortunately, this victory for ratepayers was short lived. Almost immediately after the Commission voted to reject costly energy mandates, the utilities announced that they would be implementing their clean energy agenda anyway, irrespective of what their captive ratepayers thought about it. This didn’t come as a total surprise, considering these utilities have gone all-in on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) and the accompanying “Net Zero” commitments to ban fossil fuels in their SEC filings to shareholders, which our organization began advocating against at the Commission earlier this year.
We told the Commission that if the utilities are allowed to operate under ESG, every downstream policy decision would be shaped by it—ultimately resulting in massive ESG rate hikes for Arizona ratepayers. Based on the energy resource plans submitted by the utilities last month, it appears our predictions have been proven correct…
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by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Nov 29, 2023 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
We’re less than a year away from our next election, and if Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is serious about doing his job, his primary focus should be on ensuring a process where it is easy to vote and hard to cheat. Instead, Fontes has been attempting to implement an Elections Procedures Manual (EPM) that is ripe with unlawful provisions all while ignoring a giant (and growing) elephant in the room.
In its last two quarterly reports to the Arizona state legislature, the Secretary of State’s office reported that over 78,000 individuals have been identified on our state’s voter rolls as noncitizens or nonresidents. This number includes:
- Over 53,200 individuals who were reported to have been issued a driver’s license or the equivalent of an Arizona nonoperating license ID in another state.
- Over 1,300 individuals who admitted to not being a U.S. citizen on a jury questionnaire.
- Over 23,600 individuals who admitted to not being a resident of a county on a jury questionnaire.
These numbers should be great cause for alarm—especially when you consider how close some of our state’s races were in 2022—and these individuals should be immediately removed from our state’s voter rolls. So, what did Fontes do in response to this news?
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by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Nov 19, 2023 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
If you look up “failure” in the dictionary, it’s probably only a matter of time until you start seeing images of Katie Hobbs’ time as Governor of Arizona. Hobbs kicked off her reign back in January and immediately got off to a rocky start. After being in office for just over a month, Hobbs had her inauguration fund called into question, had her pick to lead the Arizona Democratic Party rejected, and was booed at the 16th Hole of the Waste Management Phoenix Open.
If that wasn’t enough, Hobbs’ nominations for agency directors have been a complete disaster. Her pick to lead the Department of Health Services, Dr. Theresa Cullen, was rejected for her COVID imperialism. Her nominee for Housing Director was rejected due to a history of plagiarism. And she was forced to withdraw her nominee for Arizona Registrar of Contractors, former Democratic State Senator Martín Quezada, over his alliance with antisemitic extremism. It’s no wonder why Hobbs was listed as one of the least popular governors in the nation.
That’s probably why Hobbs is willing to do anything she can to get some good publicity, but her latest stunt was another misfire…and broke the law…
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