by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Nov 17, 2021 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
People are fed up. And parents, in particular, are frustrated with school boards across the state. Now, they are starting to speak up. But it’s not just with their voices at local school board meetings. Last week, they spoke up at the ballot box.
Across Maricopa County, multiple bond and override elections were held affecting various school districts. And in a year that didn’t include a midterm or presidential election, you would expect a low-turnout election like this one to benefit the funding proponents.
But the results were very telling.
Most of the bonds and overrides affecting school districts in suburban areas failed. And in many cases, they weren’t even close.
Override continuations were voted down in the Buckeye, Agua Fria, Liberty, and Litchfield school districts while bonds went unapproved in the Higley, Cave Creek, and Queen Creek school districts. A budget increase for the school district in Fountain Hills also failed.
The only suburban areas that were exceptions were Kyrene and Chandler. This must have the left in a tizzy.
>>> CONTINUE READING >>>
by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Nov 7, 2021 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
Devastating. That’s how it felt earlier this week when the Arizona Supreme Court upheld the trial court’s ruling in Arizona School Boards Association v. State of Arizona. This decision strikes down critical reforms contained in a series of Budget Reconciliation Bills passed by lawmakers and signed by Governor Ducey earlier this year.
And it’s a big blow to the people of Arizona.
This past July, Arizona lawmakers took important steps to protect our state from more COVID mandates and government overreach. Among the laws passed were bans on:
- A county, city, or town from issuing COVID ordinances that impact private businesses, schools, churches, or other private entities, including mask mandates.
- K-12 schools from requiring vaccines with an emergency use authorization for in-person attendance.
- The state and any city, town, or county from establishing COVID vaccine passports or requiring COVID vaccines.
- Public universities and community colleges from mandating COVID vaccines and vaccine passports.
- A city, town, county, school board, or charter school from mandating students and teachers to be vaccinated or wear masks.
But COVID wasn’t the only thing these Budget Reconciliation Bills addressed.
>>> CONTINUE READING >>>
by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Nov 2, 2021 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
Invest in Arizona wants you to believe that they ran a grassroots campaign. But that notion is absurd. And you don’t need to look very far to find out.
Recently, the political committee filed its campaign finance report. And lo and behold, what does it show? That the National Education Association (NEA) and Stand for Children, two out-of-state special interest groups, purchased the referendum against historic tax cuts that Republicans delivered earlier this year.
Just look at the numbers. In Quarter 3, Invest in Arizona received just over $16,000 from individual donors. Now, compare that to the nearly $2.4 million it received from the NEA and the more than $2.3 million it received in cash, goods, and services from Stand for Children.
That’s more than $4.5 million—basically their entire budget—with the overwhelming majority spent on gathering signatures.
So much for “grassroots,” eh?
Of course, Stand for Children is trying to claim that its money came from its Phoenix office. But these groups can’t be trusted…
>>> CONTINUE READING >>>
by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Oct 27, 2021 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
This past July, Arizona lawmakers and Governor Ducey did the right thing. Through a series of Budget Reconciliation Bills, they took important steps to protect the people of Arizona from more COVID mandates and to prevent children from being indoctrinated in public schools by Critical Race Theory.
While COVID was certainly an issue that warranted some action, it never should have included trampling on the rights of the people. And we definitely should not be wasting tax dollars on lessons that teach public school students that one race, ethnic group, or sex is in any way superior to another.
Not surprisingly, these laws sent teachers’ unions into a tailspin. As students headed back to campus, some Arizona schools decided to teach students that it’s ok to violate the law. And the Arizona Board of Regents recently announced that all three state universities will require their employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by December 8.
Then, there’s the lawsuit…
>>> READ MORE >>>
by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Oct 10, 2021 | Opinion
By the AZ Free Enterprise Club |
Laws are meaningless if they aren’t enforced, are misapplied or misconstrued. The duly elected Arizona legislature crafts and passes election bills, and the Governor signs them into law. The Secretary of State, however, is tasked with prescribing “rules to achieve and maintain the maximum degree of correctness, impartiality, uniformity and efficiency” in implementing those laws.
This is done through the Elections Procedures Manual (EPM). But instead of crafting this with “impartiality” to attain the “maximum degree of correctness” Secretary of State Katie Hobbs seems intent on subverting state law in some instances, obfuscating in others, and as highlighted in a previous article, doing an end-run around a United States Supreme Court decision that upheld an Arizona election integrity practice.
The good news is that Hobbs doesn’t have unilateral authority to do this. She was required to submit this draft manual to Attorney General Brnovich and Governor Ducey by October 1st. Both have to sign off on the draft manual for it to go into effect. If they decline, we stick with the 2019 manual and Hobbs’s changes die…
>>> READ MORE >>>
