by Staff Reporter | May 17, 2026 | Education, News
By Staff Reporter |
Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) is once again facing another Open Meeting Law complaint over a non-public advisory committee.
The complaint, filed last month with the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, claims that SUSD Superintendent Scott Menzel has again violated Open Meeting Law during his phased approach to closing schools.
The Scottsdale resident who filed the complaint told AZ Free News that he felt compelled to look into SUSD’s process for school closures in response to the community shock over the governing board’s decision to close Pima Elementary School and Echo Canyon School last December.
The closures brought $2.5 million in savings to the district. SUSD began looking into the closing and consolidating of schools, among other solutions, to address an $8 million budget deficit driven by declining enrollment.
This latest complaint claims that SUSD’s non-public Phase II Design Advisory Team was formed at the direction of the board and therefore required to be open to the public. Superintendent Menzel encouraged the governing board to authorize the design advisory team during a regular governing board meeting last November.
The next month, during the same meeting to close the Pima and Echo Canyon schools, the governing board discussed the design advisory team’s formation. In that meeting, Menzel and SUSD governing board president Donna Lewis strategized on ways for the board to direct the design advisory team’s formation but style it as a superintendent’s committee. The board indicated that it wanted Menzel to move forward with the team, but didn’t take a vote to create the team.
The design advisory team operates under the classification of a Superintendent Advisory Committee, which is exempt from Open Meeting Law requirements. The newly filed complaint alleges that the governing board’s involvement in the creation of the Phase II Design Advisory Team makes that classification untrue.
The Phase II Design Advisory Team is charged with crafting recommendations on schools to the board, including further closures or consolidations.
The resident behind the complaint told AZ Free News that he filed against the district after SUSD personnel denied him entry to one of the design advisory team’s meetings in person.
SUSD told AZ Free News that it hasn’t received notification of this complaint.
SUSD got into trouble last year for similar non-public advisory committees.
Last summer, Attorney General Kris Mayes found SUSD had violated Open Meeting Law for using advisory committees in a manner similar to the alleged violation outlined in the complaint.
“The Open Meeting Law does not permit a governing board to evade the public meeting requirements by ‘informally’ forming or establishing, or by directing a superintendent to establish, a committee to perform work that would otherwise need to be conducted in public,” stated Mayes. “[W]e caution against an overly narrow reading of the law focused exclusively on the circumstances of a committee’s creation.”
The Phase II Design Advisory Team has held five meetings since it began in March. The team consists of two facilitators, Karen Benson and Quintin Boyce, and 45 members.
28 parents or guardians on the team represent current students at 11 schools: Anasazi Elementary School, Cheyenne Traditional School, Copper Ridge School, Desert Canyon Elementary School, Desert Canyon Middle School, Desert Canyon Mountain High School, Redfield Elementary School, Laguna Elementary School, Saguaro Middle School, Mountainside Middle School, and Mohave Middle School.
Other team members include eight SUSD staff members, six homeowners in the community, one community organization member, and one university partner.
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by Staff Reporter | May 17, 2026 | News
By Staff Reporter |
State Rep. Ralph Heap (R-LD10) would like to take the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) off the path of green energy and onto a different path in line with President Trump’s energy agenda.
The state’s largest regulated utilities, APS and TEP, are pursuing 14 percent rate hikes with the ACC after receiving other double-digit rate hikes the past few years. Heap, an “Arizona First” candidate, argues that the ACC should be prioritizing ratepayers, and that his approach to the ACC would end the constant upward trend of rates.
Heap’s platform prioritizes individual ratepayers over trendy policy and cash-flush companies: implementing greater protections for rural Arizonans’ energy and water access, rejecting “radical” agendas like the Green New Deal and “corporate welfare” programs, encouraging a free-market energy system, and creating more resistance to rate hikes.
The lawmaker laid claim to the engrossment, passage, or sponsorship of multiple energy-related bills from 2024 to present. Those bills were:
- HB4097: authorizing “bring your own power,” or self-supply, for large customers to expand energy supply options without creating an open retail-choice program;
- HB2679: establishing a defined legal path for financing utility transition costs;
- HCR2022: committing support for nuclear generation through the Palo Verde Generating Station;
- HB2042: creating enforcement on geoengineering activity by prohibiting intentional in-state release of materials for solar radiation management, prohibiting public funding for those technologies, and authorizing attorney general investigations;
- HB2328: limiting rate disparity in intermunicipal water service by requiring municipal providers selling water to another municipality’s public to charge rates constrained by specified comparators;
- HB2331: ensuring reliability within long-range resource planning by requiring covered public power entities and electric utilities to ensure at least 85 percent of relied-on generating capacity comes from reliable resources by 2030;
- HB2915: granting county-administered property tax reductions to homeowners suffering depleted property values due to nearby renewable energy facilities; and,
- HB2918: ending property tax breaks for new utility-scale renewable energy projects.
Since taking office last January, Heap has maintained several leadership positions, including vice chairmanship of the Natural Resources, Energy, and Water Committee.
Prior to his legislative service and ACC run, Heap practiced orthopedic medicine in the East Valley for nearly 40 years. During that time, he participated in medical missions to developing countries where the presence or absence of reliable energy meant life or death. Heap attributes his “ratepayer first” attitude and interest in reliable, affordable energy to those experiences.
Heap married his high school sweetheart, Denise. Together they have three children—including Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap—and eight grandchildren.
As part of his “ratepayer first” approach, Heap qualified as a Clean Elections candidate. He has sworn against taking money from regulated utilities or their PACs.
Heap has received many endorsements from grassroots leaders along with state and municipal elected officials, including former ACC Commissioner and current state representative Justin Olson (R-LD10), Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ-02), and a leading Republican lawmaker who resigned earlier this year to run for Congress, Joseph Chaplik.
Many of the heavyweights in the Arizona legislature put in their support for Heap: Arizona Freedom Caucus leader and State Sen. Jake Hoffman (R-LD15) as well as State Reps. Michele Pena (R-LD23), Laurin Hendrix (R-LD14), Khyl Powell (R-LD14), Lisa Fink (R-LD27), Rachel Keshel (R-LD17), Alexander Kolodin (R-LD03), Beverly Pingerelli (R-LD), Michael Way (R-LD15), John Gillette (R-LD30), Teresa Martinez (R-LD16), Leo Biasiucci (R-LD30), Pamela Carter (R-LD04), and Chris Lopez (R-LD16).
Among those municipal endorsements were supervisors from Gila and Navajo counties; the mayors of Payson, Snowflake, and Springerville; and council members for Payson.
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore / CC BY-SA 2.0
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by Staff Reporter | May 16, 2026 | News
By Staff Reporter |
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors (MCBOS) lost again in a court battle to keep election powers away from the county recorder.
The Arizona Superior Court issued a short, two-page ruling on Wednesday denying a motion from the MCBOS to stay pending appeal an earlier ruling by the court that ordered the Maricopa County Recorder’s powers to be restored.
Judge Scott Blaney denied the argument by the MCBOS that restoring election powers to Recorder Justin Heap this late in an election season would burden election workers and complicate the voting experience. Blaney refused to suspend disbelief to entertain a notion that the MCBOS hadn’t planned to lose the court case.
“But the Court finds it inexplicable that the Board of Supervisors — in the nine months since Recorder Heap filed the present lawsuit — would not have considered and planned for the possibility that the Court would rule in favor of Recorder Heap,” said Blaney.
Blaney also commented on a recent filing by Supervisor Mark Stewart, who was the sole “no” vote to appeal Blaney’s initial ruling in Heap’s favor. Stewart requested court-ordered mediation between MCBOS and the recorder. Stewart expressed concern that the court ruling hadn’t yielded the resolve either party had desired.
“While it appears that the Supervisor Stewart filed his request in good faith, the Court has little confidence that parties will use this stay for good faith negotiation and will instead see it as an opportunity to moot the Court’s Ruling through extended delay,” stated Blaney.
Blaney concluded by encouraging the MCBOS and Heap to engage in negotiations for a partial or full resolution of their election powers spat. Regardless of the outcome, Blaney pledged support for any mutual agreement.
“The Court remains willing to defer to the parties’ judgment as elected officials if they mutually reach a resolution through good faith negotiation,” said Blaney.
Heap said in a press release that the ruling further affirmed his right to maintain certain election authorities.
“This case was never about personalities or politics,” said Heap. “It was about whether Arizona law still means what it says. The Court answered that question decisively. It is time for the Board to accept reality, respect the rule of law, and focus on preparing for the upcoming elections.”
MCBOS appealed Blaney’s ruling, which was decided last month. That ruling rejected the MCBOS claim of plenary authority over elections administration, and ordered the board to restore to the recorder his elections personnel, systems, and equipment.
The board chair, Kate Brophy McGee, called the ruling “a total bust” rife with “so many fatal errors” in an interview with KTAR News last month. McGee explained that the motion for a stay pending appeal was to allow this election to be conducted under the ruled-against arrangement, so that questions of dividing elections powers could be figured out later.
McGee said the ruling failed to specify what elections administration powers ought to be restored to Heap.
“There is no clarity. There is confusion,” said McGee. “There is further potential for conflict, and we have to get this figured out[.]”
Arizona’s primary elections are scheduled for July 21, followed by the general election on Nov. 4.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
by Staff Reporter | May 15, 2026 | News
By Staff Reporter |
Activist organizations are promoting online “neighborhood defense” trainings that teach participants how to canvass communities and prepare local businesses for potential Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, according to event listings and organizing materials circulated in Arizona and California-linked activist networks.
The trainings, promoted under the title “WOB Neighborhood Defense Team Training,” are scheduled as recurring virtual sessions and described as instruction on how to “canvass your community to prepare people in case of an ICE raid.” A May 14 event listing states that ICE raids are “intensifying across the country” and that worksites and businesses are being targeted.
One Reddit post, circulated through the Arizona-focused “AZAdvocacyHub” community, advertised the training as an online event hosted by Organized Power in Numbers, encouraging users to register even if they could not attend live to receive “the recording of the training and the materials.”
According to the event description, the trainings take place monthly on the second Thursday of each month over Zoom. An additional event listing published by Indivisible Roseville in California described the sessions as “Neighborhood Defense Team Training” events designed to prepare communities and businesses for ICE enforcement activity.
Organized Power in Numbers describes itself as an organization that combines organizing, digital infrastructure, and data strategy to “build worker power in the South and Southwest.” The organization’s website lists campaigns including “Workers Over Billionaires” and “Power Up AZ.”
The organization’s resource pages include downloadable “Know Your Rights” materials and workplace guidance concerning immigration enforcement encounters. One document distributed through the group advises businesses that ICE officers may not enter “private areas” of a workplace without permission or a judicial warrant signed by a judge.
Organized Power in Numbers has also promoted what it calls an “Emergency Worker Defense Fund,” launched in partnership with the Los Angeles Worker Center Network, to support workers affected by ICE enforcement operations in Los Angeles and the Southwest.
The trainings and organizing efforts come amid continuing national debate over immigration enforcement policy and workplace raids.
According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, worksite enforcement investigations are intended to reduce illegal employment practices, hold employers accountable for unlawful hiring practices, and protect lawful employment opportunities. ICE states that Homeland Security Investigations conducts worksite enforcement operations targeting employers suspected of knowingly employing unauthorized workers or engaging in labor exploitation and related crimes.
Immigration enforcement operations have increasingly become flashpoints in states such as California, where state and local officials have enacted sanctuary policies limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
California officials have also expanded worker notification requirements related to immigration enforcement activity. Earlier this year, the California Department of Industrial Relations announced implementation guidance for a state law requiring annual workplace notices informing employees of their rights during immigration enforcement encounters, regardless of immigration status.
Supporters of the “neighborhood defense” trainings characterize the efforts as legal-rights education and community preparedness intended to ensure that workers and residents understand constitutional protections during enforcement encounters.
Critics, however, argue that activist-organized ‘community defense’ infrastructure risks crossing the line from legal education into organized interference with federal immigration enforcement operations.
Immigration attorneys and advocacy organizations, however, commonly advise employers and workers regarding distinctions between public and private workplace areas during enforcement encounters.
The issue has gained renewed attention as federal immigration enforcement priorities continue to expand under the Trump administration. Reuters reported earlier this year that the administration was planning broader immigration crackdowns and increased workplace enforcement efforts. The Department of Justice has also challenged sanctuary policies in several jurisdictions, including Los Angeles.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
by Staff Reporter | May 14, 2026 | News
By Staff Reporter |
Kari Lake has been nominated to serve as the next ambassador to Jamaica.
A Senate confirmation of Lake’s appointment would close the chapter on the Trump administration’s push to dismantle the Voice of America (VOA), an effort spearheaded by Lake. The administration has indicated that it no longer desires to eliminate the agency but instead repurpose it.
Trump initially named Lake to the VOA directorship shortly after his election in December 2024. The administration quickly pivoted and moved Lake into a special advisory role within VOA’s parent organization, U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). It was from that role that the Trump administration encouraged Lake to take on greater authority within USAGM to exemplify the greater initiative of cuts to that which the administration characterized as bureaucratic, anti-American bloat.
In accordance with the Trump edict, Lake ordered the termination of over 1,000 of USAGM contractors and employees and proceeded with the sale of the agency facility in D.C. last March. Full-time employees were placed on paid administrative leave, and promptly sued.
Amid the court challenge to her authority by sidelined VOA employees, Lake attempted to wrest more control over USAGM by taking over as its acting CEO last summer. That declaration of power, along with her reforms, wouldn’t stand in the courts.
In March — a little over a year into her fight to bring the VOA to heel — a federal judge rejected Lake’s claim of authority and ordered her to reinstate VOA operations and staff.
Around the same time, Trump nominated a replacement for Lake as USAGM CEO: the State Department’s Under Secretary Sarah Rogers. That confirmation has yet to take place.
The Trump administration filed a partial appeal of the ruling related to the reinstatement of the VOA employees on paid leave. A federal appeals court paused the order to reinstate those employees.
Lake’s initial statement on X accepting the ambassadorship made no mention of her VOA exit.
“Jamaica is a country I know very well, full of incredible people, and if confirmed by the Senate, I look forward to strengthening the partnership between our nations, advancing America’s interests abroad, and building on the deep friendship shared by the American and Jamaican people,” posted Lake. “Honored to continue serving in this HISTORIC Administration!”
Later that day, Lake posted another update on her new appointment mentioning a call with Trump and her USAGM tenure.
Lake offered a sunny portrayal of her time as USAGM head: one of accountability, reform, and advances into an America First revamping of the agency. Lake said she would remain at USAGM pending her Senate confirmation.
Following those failed efforts to dismantle the VOA, the Trump administration has reportedly looked to reform the VOA by claiming greater influence over the content it publishes.
Reporters Without Borders, the U.S. affiliate of the international nonprofit organization that sued on behalf of the VOA employees, filed another lawsuit in late March on behalf of VOA journalists challenging this renewed strategy to exert administration control over the VOA.
The lawsuit alleged that Lake and other Trump administration officials had suppressed certain news coverage, especially in Iran, and instead promoted “political propaganda.”
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