For several years, Arizonans have faced a threat of radical renewable energy mandates being imposed on our grid. In 2018, the voters overwhelmingly rejected a measure that would have required utilities to generate 50% of their energy with “renewables” by 2030. Then, in 2021, the Arizona Corporation Commission considered, and rejected, a 100% renewable mandate completely banning fossil fuel generation by 2050. But now, the utilities have voluntarily committed themselves to these goals, known as “Net Zero by 2050”, under the broader requirements of their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) commitments.
K-12 schools in Arizona are currently flush with cash. Between billions in increased state spending from the legislature, COVID cash from the feds, and declining student populations, district school spending is at an all time high. But next week, voters across Arizona will decide the fate of 23 bond requests from schools that total a historic $3.5 billion.
This level of borrowing being sought by local school districts is both unwise and unnecessary, especially given the large amounts of money that have been pumped into the system. State funding has increased so quickly in the last 36 months that the legislature decided to override the constitutional spending limit the last two fiscal years. This is funding over and above the formulaic cap in the constitution that exists to protect taxpayers from runaway and unaccountable spending.
And contrary to what you probably hear from teachers’ unions and their sycophant friends in the media, lawmakers continue to increase school spending with every state budget. With all this new spending, district schools receive more money per student than ever before, and it’s not even close.
Not included in the state spending cap, however, are federal funds. And when schools were shut down during COVID, the federal government poured trillions of dollars into them. Many of the school districts asking their taxpayers to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds next week are still sitting on a pile of unspent COVID cash…
Following in the footsteps of his predecessor (now-Governor Katie Hobbs), Secretary of State Adrian Fontes appears determined to implement an Election Procedures Manual (EPM) that is ripe with unlawful provisions. The EPM is used by election officials throughout the state as the rulebook to conduct and run elections, so it is critically important that every provision in the manual strictly adheres to state law.
Now, fresh off an important legal win over the illegal signature verification process in the EPM, the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, along with the Thomas More Society, is suing Fontes once again—this time over unstaffed ballot drop boxes…
An Illegal Method of Voting
Arizona law establishes four different methods for secure early voting. According to A.R.S. § 16-548(A), an early ballot shall either be:
Delivered to the officer in charge of elections, typically the county recorder.
Mailed to the officer in charge of elections, typically the county recorder.
Deposited by the voter at any polling place in the county.
Deposited by the voter’s agent (family member, household member, caregiver) at any polling place in the county.
Did you catch that? Nowhere in the law does it allow for the use of unstaffed drop boxes. In fact, if you read through Fontes’ EPM, you’ll notice something…
For the Democrats and their sycophant media allies, the problem is always too much parental choice in education and letting taxpayers keep more of their hard-earned money. Yet this narrative couldn’t be further from the truth. A closer look at Arizona’s budget and the projected budget deficit reveals that we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem…
Projected Budget Shortfall Is a Spending Problem
Just 5 years ago, the legislature enacted the FY 2019 budget that included $10.1 billion in on-going spending, plus $500M in “one-time” expenditures ($10.7 billion total). By last year, that number had exploded to nearly $15 Billion in ongoing spending, a 50% growth in ongoing spending in 5 years! The most recent budget negotiated with Democrat Katie Hobbs earlier this year kept ongoing spending at a lower trajectory but included “one-time” outlays that brought the total budget cost to $17.8B…
“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Unless you are New Mexico Governor Lujan Grisham, who thinks she can just declare a public health emergency and ignore what the Constitution says. Yes, in her view, she can declare an emergency and then all “rights” are on the table, and she is free to suspend them as she wishes.
Thankfully, this was too far for even anti-gun politicians like Rep. Ted Lieu from California and New Mexico’s own Attorney General who said he would not defend the declaration in court. In other words, it was so clearly unconstitutional that even the most radical gun control advocates distanced themselves from it.
Abuses of Emergency Powers During COVID
But it is an important reminder of the abuse of emergency powers we all experienced during COVID, and why it is critical to rein in these powers. While it’s clearly unconstitutional to suspend the 2nd amendment with an emergency declaration, most states over the last 100 years have granted extremely broad powers to the executive branch to declare so-called public health “emergencies…”
