A Tucson restaurant owner has sued the Hobbs administration over its newer mandate that only cage-free eggs be produced or sold in the state.
Last week, the Goldwater Institute and Pacific Legal Foundation sued the Arizona Department of Agriculture (AZDA) on behalf of Grant Krueger, owner of Union Public House, Reforma Modern Mexican Mezcal + Tequila, and Proof Artisanal Pizza & Pasta.
In a press release, counsel and Krueger asserted that AZDA had surpassed their constitutional authority by bypassing the legislature; they dubbed AZDA the “egg bureaucrats.”
“Unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats shouldn’t be able to arbitrarily impose these kinds of harmful mandates on small business owners like me,” said Krueger. “If the government can do this with eggs, what else can they do it with?”
Krueger estimated that his restaurants purchase over 2,000 eggs weekly; he employs about 225 people.
Per his lawsuit, lawmakers directed egg producers to petition the AZDA for a rule on requiring cage-free housing for egg-laying hens, as the COVID-19 pandemic had disrupted law making procedures at the time. AZDA published the contested rule in April 2022, under then-Gov. Doug Ducey and then-AZDA Director Mark Killian. The rule began to be enforced on Jan. 1 of this year.
“Neither Arizona’s statutes governing executive branch rulemaking nor the Arizona Constitution permit AZDA to promulgate rules pursuant to such a standardless grant of authority,” read the lawsuit.
AZDA claimed authority for rulemaking under A.R.S. § 3-107(A)(1) and A.R.S. §3-710(J). The legal organizations countered in their lawsuit that the two statutes’ general authorization of rulemaking authority didn’t articulate the specific authority to enact a cage-free rule. Further, they argued that the Arizona Constitution didn’t allow for the delegation of legislative authority to an executive branch agency.
“The appropriate housing arrangement for egg-laying hens in Arizona and egglaying hens producing eggs for sale in Arizona is a major policy question that must be decided by the legislature,” read the lawsuit.
Per the lawsuit, AZDA had passed the rule to circumvent the effort of a similar ballot initiative, which the egg producers found objectionable due to the proposed timeline being too long.
The lawsuit warned that the new law will cause a significant increase in egg prices for both business owners and consumers: up to $66 million. For consumers, that would come to an additional 39 cents per dozen.
Per AZDA data, cage-free housing of egg-laying hens would increase egg production costs by up to 41 percent for labor inputs.
The Arizona Farm Bureau also stands in opposition to the sweeping cage-free egg mandate.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Despite its name and alleged purpose, Arizona State University’s (ASU) The Integrity Project (TIP) appears to fall short on achieving honesty and transparency.
AZ Free News discovered that TIP was formerly a nonprofit established in the first year of former Donald Trump’s administration with the primary purpose of undermining the former president. Yet today, TIP describes itself as an “apolitical” nonprofit aimed at combating misinformation, with its core values rooted in transparency, impartiality, and honesty.
“Our mission and our work are intended to be transparent to the public,” states TIP. “Malicious actors are undermining the stability of democracies, communities, families, and even friendships. We will fight back with the truth.”
Yet, TIP’s hidden past raises questions of transparency and intent for the ASU partner.
“The Integrity Project was created due to a frustration with the politicization of the truth. What was once the foundation that unified our democracy, the facts themselves had become the very thing that could collapse our society,” reads the TIP members and partners page. “All of our founders and members set aside their personal beliefs in order to serve something bigger than themselves. Misinformation has eroded the foundation of our democracy, with manipulated facts becoming the catalyst for mistrust and division that has our society on the road to ruin. The purpose of The Integrity Project is to restore the legitimacy of information, and nothing more.”
Initially, the nonprofit branded itself online as “Lead Not Greed” after September 2017, when its X (formerly Twitter) page launched. In the following months, it rebranded as the “Campaign for Accountability and Transparency,” and then “Make Integrity Great Again” (MIGA). Several websites were presented on the X profile at some points: “holddjtaccountable.org,” and then “makeintegritygreatagain.org.”
As of this publication, the MIGA url still redirects to TIP’s website.
In June 2018, MIGA filed a widely-reported complaint attempting to revoke the liquor license for the Trump International Hotel on the basis that Trump allegedly lacked good character. The District of Columbia Alcoholic Beverage Control Board dismissed the request several months later.
“Donald Trump needs to choose: he can either be the president, or he can be a businessman, but he can’t be both. Lead Not Greed is fighting back by finally hitting Trump where it hurts — in the pocketbook,” stated the organization.
The lawyer that filed suit on behalf of MIGA was Joshua Levy: partner at Levy Firestone, former counsel for the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs as well as Sen. Chuck Schumer.
Around the middle of 2022, the MIGA website transitioned to TIP and existing social media slates were wiped clean. None of these changes were disclosed on TIP’s website or social media pages as of press time. In fact, prior posts by its past versions were wiped entirely.
MIGA was established by Jerome “Jerry” Hirsch, a self-identified Republican, founder and longtime chairman of the Lodestar Foundation in Phoenix. Hirsch’s foundation has projects including ASU’s Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation, a partnership between ASU and the Kellogg Foundation, as well as an active partner in TIP; the Collaboration Prize, a contest recognizing the best nonprofit collaborations in the nation; and the Nonprofit Collaboration Database, an online database of more than 1,000 nonprofit collaborations, maintained in partnership with The Foundation Center.
Hirsch was also one of the 2022 participants of the globalist Sedona Forum hosted by the McCain Institute.
Ten years ago, Hirsch was credited by the ASU Foundation as one of the principal “university founders” of the modern ASU, dubbed the “New American University.” Last December, Hirsch and ASU President Michael Crow were among those who signed onto the letter to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) petitioning for citizenship rights for illegal immigrants remaining in the U.S. under the protection of the DACA program.
Unlike his MIGA endeavor, it doesn’t appear that Hirsch has spawned a similar effort to counter President Joe Biden’s foreign business dealings.
The ability to use #misinformation and #disinformation without any scrutiny – even if the public may be harmed – appears to be an area Congressional leaders wish to defend as free speech with arguments centered in governmental overreach or weaponization.https://t.co/PhzxgBMbL1
— The Integrity Project (@MakeIntegrity) July 11, 2023
TIP’s current board of directors doesn’t include Hirsch. Current board members are:
Mi-Ai Parrish, overseer of Arizona PBS and Media Enterprise; former president and publisher of The Arizona Republic; a friend of Biden-appointed Ninth Circuit Court Judge Roopali Desai; former market president at USA Today;
Wellington “Duke” Reiter, special advisor to Crow with responsibilities in higher education, sustainable urbanism, and advancement of the New American University
Barry Burden, University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor, director of the Elections Research Center, and Lyons Family Chair in Electoral Politics;
Byron Sarhangian, attorney for Snell & Wilmer;
Craig Krumwiede, president and CEO of Harvard Investments, founding member of Social Venture Partners Arizona (tied to Hirsch’s Lodestar Foundation);
Joe Blackbourn, founder of Everest Holdings
Blackbourn recently took credit for founding TIP, but made no mention of its past as MIGA.
Despite MIGA’s newer presence online in 2018, with few followers and only two posts — as other users at the time pointed out — MIGA and its attempt to revoke Trump’s hotel liquor license gained the attention of other major leftist personalities such as Mindy Schwartz, Bill Prady, Jordan Uhl, Leah Greenburg, and Need to Impeach.
Although the website for MIGA said that their nonprofit was also named “Make Integrity Great Again,” the group used its former name, “Campaign for Accountability and Transparency,” as the primary identifier for all of its tax filings, dating back to the 2017 fiscal year.
MIGA’s first tax filing showed that it was created on Sept. 14, 2017. That was the day that Trump signed a resolution condemning white supremacy and hate groups following his controversial remarks on the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“You know, you have some pretty bad dudes on the other side also,” said Trump.
That first year, MIGA spent over $184,600 to create a website “to educate the public concerning the importance of addressing the character of public officials and candidates, and promote integrity as the basic tenet of American democracy.” It gave over $121,500 to a New York-based nonprofit, Purpose Campaigns (now Purpose Foundation), to undertake full operations and management of their campaign.
In 2018, MIGA spent over $153,200 on its website and over $358,000 on research for undisclosed “potential future programs” and challenges of qualifying as a nonprofit, among which it noted was the creation of the MIGA name. MIGA also spent a combined $309,000 on legal services from two Washington, D.C. law firms: Zuckerman Spader and Cunningham Levy Muse.
MIGA listed its two other officers as Lois Savage, secretary, and Sandra Horn-Goul, treasurer.
Savage and Hirsch have run the Lodestar Foundation since 1999; she was also the first executive director of a Lodestar spinoff, Social Venture Partners Arizona (of which TIP board member Krumwiede is a founder), and the initiator of the Arizona Grantmakers Forum. Savage served on former Gov. Janet Napolitano’s Interagency and Community Council on Homelessness.
Both Savage and Crow served on the 2009 Center for the Future of Arizona project “The Arizona We Want”: Crow on the steering committee, Savage as a critical reader.
Horn-Goul is the wife of the late Michael Goul, formerly ASU’s Department of Information Systems chairman and senior associate dean for faculty and research and professor of information systems.
TIP featured speakers this year have centered discussions on disinformation, misinformation about the 2022 election, media literacy and information quality, the spread of false beliefs through misinformation, and the anti-science nature of vaccine skepticism.
In addition to events, TIP has a three-year plan: a two-year research project to monitor misinformation in Arizona, publication of a media literacy curriculum through ASU’s journalism school, and increasing dissemination of their research online.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Grand Canyon University (GCU) is appealing the $37.7 million fine issued by the Department of Education (ED) for allegedly advertising false degree costs.
GCU maintains ED targeted their institution over ideological differences, not the public allegations of misrepresented doctoral program costs. GCU is a private Christian university.
In a press release on Thursday, GCU President Brian Mueller said that thousands of students, parents, employees, alumni, and community stakeholders felt ED was behaving tyrannically and had been weaponized against them.
“American people are losing confidence in the federal government to be fair and objective in their operations and there are clearly no checks and balances to prevent this type of behavior from the Department of Education, which is out of control and continues to broaden its authority and selective enforcement powers,” said Mueller.
ED announced its fine against GCU on Halloween. The agency accused the institution of deceiving over 7,500 doctoral students since 2017 — 98 percent of students reviewed — into paying more than advertised. ED said that GCU’s advertised cost of $40,000 to $49,000 amounted to false claims that violated the Higher Education Act, federal regulations on substantial misrepresentations, and Title IV’s fiduciary standard.
ED said that 78 percent of GCU’s doctoral program graduates paid $10,000 to $12,000 more in tuition costs for continuation courses to complete their dissertation requirements. The agency declared that GCU’s various fine print disclosures given to students were “insufficient to cure the substantial misrepresentations regarding cost.”
In addition to the fine, ED issued five conditions for GCU to meet: give prospective or current doctoral students the average total tuition and fees paid by graduates and the maximum number of credits that a student can take that are eligible for Title IV funds, and engage a monitor to oversee compliance; issue quarterly reports to ED about investigations, actions, or other legal proceedings by its accrediting agency or any government agency, as well as pending litigation in which a plaintiff seeks class certification; send a notice to all currently enrolled doctoral students informing them how to use ED’s feedback center to submit a complaint to ED; and send a notice to all current employees who provide recruiting, admissions, and other services to doctoral students about how to use the Federal Student Aid Tips line to submit information about misconduct or violations.
As AZ Free News reported previously, the ED investigation began after GCU challenged ED’s rejection of GCU’s nonprofit status by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 2019. After several years of attempting to overcome ED’s denial, GCU sued in 2021. Following that, ED announced a coordinated effort with the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Veterans Affairs to investigate GCU for unfair or deceptive practices.
As part of GCU’s appeal, Mueller maintained that GCU doesn’t mislead or deceive its students. Mueller cited his institution’s favorable federal court rulings in Young v. GCU, in which two courts rejected claims of misrepresentation regarding the time or cost for doctoral program completion.
Mueller also cited a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report from last November, which determined that 91 percent of colleges mislead or understate the net price of financial aid to prospective students.
Additionally, GCU noted that it has undertaken its own preliminary internal study of doctoral program costs at 100 other universities. The university claimed that only two percent of those universities disclose full costs, 51 percent failed to clearly or fully disclose anything about the need for additional courses to complete a dissertation, and 45 percent made statements that a doctoral degree could be earned in a set number of years despite the varying length of time needed to complete a dissertation.
Mueller said that there was little incentive for their university to deceive doctoral program students, since it was their smallest degree program containing less than five percent of students. He pointed out that GCU hasn’t raised its tuition in 15 years.
“If our goal was to generate more revenue, rather than allegedly deceive students we could simply increase tuition three to four percent a year for a few years — as most universities have done — and no one would bat an eye,” said Mueller. “We haven’t done that. In fact, we have frozen tuition on our ground campus for 15 straight years because our innovative approach to managing this university, which the Department objects to, has allowed us to do that for the benefit of our students.”
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
The city of Flagstaff is poised to implement a uniform ban on all paid advertising at the Pulliam Airport following the threat of a lawsuit for banning a firearms ad.
This latest proposal comes after pushback to the city’s proposed prohibition on firearms advertising, a policy that came about after denying admission of an ad from an indoor shooting facility, Timberline Firearms and Training.
During the city council’s work session meeting on Tuesday, councilwoman Lori Matthews said that the city didn’t rely on the airport advertising for its revenue stream, and that determining what could be deemed offensive was too time-consuming and problematic.
“I feel that that’s a more equitable way to do it so that we’re not having discussions every time there’s something we didn’t think about,” said Matthews.
City manager Greg Clifton concurred with Matthews’ view that the potential cost and effort of defending advertising policy to the public and in court would far exceed the airport’s revenue stream.
“We’re talking, maybe, tens of thousands of dollars annually,” said Clifton. “This is not worth it.”
Mayor Becky Daggett agreed; she said that they’d already spent far too much time on their part and on staff’s part to review, debate, and refine the policy.
The Goldwater Institute, which sent a demand letter on behalf of Wilson, told AZ Free News that this latest move by the city was an effort to maintain control and shut out opposing views.
“The city is tying itself in knots to suppress viewpoints it doesn’t like. First, the city violated Rob’s constitutional rights by falsely claiming his ad shows ‘violence or anti-social behavior.’ Then, officials got to work crafting a new airport advertising policy specifically meant to target Rob and his business: an unconstitutional ban on all firearms-related airport ads,” said the organization. “After the Goldwater Institute made clear this new policy wouldn’t stand up in court, officials are now considering a blanket ban on all advertising at the airport rather than defend an indefensible position. There’s a better way: the city should simply allow Rob to run his harmless ad, as he has already done thousands of times, with no complaints.”
The Goldwater Institute sent legal notice to the city last month. In September, Republican lawmakers also warned the city that their proposed ban would be unconstitutional and unlawful.
During the Tuesday meeting, deputy city attorney Kevin Fincel discussed the new draft city advertising policy. Part of the presentation lamented that widespread press coverage of the firearms ban portion of the policy had resulted in controversy, and that some quotes by the press were inaccurate or misleading.
Specifically, the city took issue that multiple outlets included the following quote from the Goldwater Institute claiming that Flagstaff was “abusing its power to push an anti-gun agenda.”
Fincel noted that Timberline Firearms hadn’t run an ad in the airport since 2019. The city maintained that it hadn’t banned the shooting range from advertising, just that specific ad submitted.
“I don’t think Timberline was denied the ability to run an ad at the airport. I think, again, Timberline wanted to run a certain ad at the airport that staff took issue with or possibly discuss to edit,” said Fincel. “I think there was a narrative too, […] it was never an attempt to prevent Timberline from advertising, definitely not from the city,
The city included a July 7 email from Economic Vitality director Heidi Hansen to Wilson, citing it as proof that the city offered alternative advertising opportunities through Discover Flagstaff. The email offered no guarantee that the alternative would allow Wilson’s ad.
“Further, to our Discover Flagstaff, business relationship, they are very good at listening, understanding and then providing a plan,” said Hansen in the email. “They are very accessible, responsive, and reactive, they pivot when we need to pivot – they understand our business as many staff have worked in Destination Marketing Organizations (DMO). If you are interested in learning more and seeing how they might be able to cast a local net for you, I would give one of them a call to get more information. It’s an extremely targeted way to advertise.” (emphasis added)
City staff charged with reviewing ads for approval took issue with the ad because it depicted an individual firing a gun at a paper silhouette target. The city claimed that the ad conflicted with guidelines barring the representation of “violence or antisocial behavior.”
The contested ad by Timber Firearms and Training may be watched below:
The city plans to take action on a finalized version of the ban on paid advertising at the Pulliam Airport on Nov. 21.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
On Tuesday, House lawmakers convened to discuss the impact of universal school choice in the state.
The House Ad Hoc Study Committee on Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA) Governance and Oversight heard public comments and expert testimony from Alan Maguire, a consultant with the Maguire Company; Patrick Moran, a Joint Legislative Budget Committee (JLBC) staffer; and John Ward, executive director of the ESA Program at the Arizona Department of Education (ADE).
Maguire said that ESA recipient growth has slowed as the school year has gone on, which he said was typical. He expressed the expectation that almost no matter what happens, the ESA Program’s implications for the state budget would be significant but manageable.
“I don’t think [the changes] we’re facing as a result of changes in the ESA recipients will be that challenging; challenging, but not scary challenging,” said Maguire.
Moran, the JLBC staffer, addressed the K-12 financing issues related to student movement between district and charter schools and the ESA Program. The Arizona Department of Education has $11.8 billion, but public schools receive funds from the Basic State Aid (BSA) Formula, which has $9.7 billion.
The BSA Formula factors funding based on average daily membership (ADM) student counts: enrollment of full-time/fractional students for the first 100 days, minus withdrawals, wherein students must meet the minimum requirements for total instructional hours/courses to be counted. The unweighted student count for the 2024 fiscal year was about 1.1 million.
Then, the ADM is weighted based on several grouped statutory factors: Group A weights adjust for school size, location (whether urban or rural), and type (K-8 or high school); Group B weights adjust for specific student populations, such as special education, English learners, or K-3 reading programs. With these group weightings, the 2024 fiscal year count reached about 1.56 million.
The BSA Formula components within the enacted budget established a base funding level of $7.8 billion, additional assistance at $1.04 billion, and transportation at $213 million. Property taxes fund nearly $2.6 billion of the public school formula, which the state partially offsets with a homeowner’s rebate (50 percent in the 2024 fiscal year with a cap of $600).
The enacted budget projected that the ESA Program would cost $625 million for 68,000 enrollees. However, actual enrollment is currently at about 70,000, and the ADE reported that awards have reached $665 million — $40 million over what was assumed in the budget. Moran said that this didn’t necessarily qualify as a shortfall for the ADE because they lack the data on where those new ESA students hailed from.
“We can’t determine the impact of ‘switchers’ in real time, because we don’t know of those 70,000 how many were in public school in FY 2024 and FY 2023,” said Moran. “We also need to know how much formula funding those students were generating in the district or charter school they were previously attending to calculate that net impact.”
Moran said that the average student award was lower from the ESA Program than for public district schools.
“Based on the data that ADE has shared with us, we think the average ESA [award] across all populations original and universal would be about $9,700 [per student], so it would be lower than the $12,200 [for charter schools] and lower than the $14,000 figure [for districts],” said Moran.
State Rep. Judy Schweibert (D-LD02) stated that Arizona ranked 48th in the nation for public school funding, based on federal data. House Speaker Ben Toma (R-LD22), the committee chairman, rebutted that the federal rank may not be entirely accurate, arguing each state’s funding formula for schools was unique and therefore not an apples to apples comparison.
Ward with the ADE offered management and administration updates concerning the ESA Program. Ward reported that the program has grown to nearly 70,200 students from over 13,400 students last September just prior to universalization. He projected that the ESA Program may reach anywhere from 90,000 to 100,000 students by the beginning of the next school year.
Ward projected that ESA awards may reach about $780 million by the end of the 2024 fiscal year. He dismissed concerns that the awards would bankrupt the state, reporting that even at that total the program would have a $57 million surplus in BSA.
Ward touched back on Moran’s assessment that public school student allocations were higher than ESA student allocations: $13,400 for public school students in the 2022 fiscal year versus $9,800 for ESA students in the 2024 fiscal year.
He reported that of the over 15,000 applications reviewed, several thousand were dismissed as incomplete. Additionally, almost 2,200 ESA accounts were suspended because of records indicating they were still enrolled in public school; their annual awards totaled over $21 million.
The ADE will be automating some of its processes going forward concerning purchase approvals and enrollment. ADE has partnered with ClassWallet to curate the catalogs of vendors on the marketplace and establish a rules engine, as well as to deploy directpay, reimbursement, and debit card auto approval through scanning technology and another rules engine.
Additionally, the ADE plans to improve data transparency by publishing a data dashboard. Types of data will include the number of ESA participants by eligibility type, grade level, gender, age, zip code, and county; number of students previously in a public school; number of applications coming in weekly and monthly; and average and median award amounts.
State Rep. Nancy Gutierrez (D-LD18) asked whether the surge in ESA Program popularity had to do with private school families. Moran said that 40 percent of ESA students came from public schools this fiscal year (2024), an increase from the last fiscal year (2023) prior to universalization.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
