by Daniel Stefanski | Oct 7, 2024 | Economy, News
By Daniel Stefanski |
Arizona voters are increasingly worried about the rising cost of housing as the November General Election approaches.
Last month, Noble Predictive Insights (NPI) released the findings of a poll, showing that “affordable housing has officially cemented its status as a top-tier issue for Arizona voters.”
In the top issues facing Arizona for this survey, “Affordable Housing” registered third in importance. “Inflation” and “Immigration” were the top two issues on the minds of Arizonans.
Affordable Housing was ranked as the third-highest issue for Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike. Inflation was also a top three issue for all three voter demographics.
“Immigration, abortion, inflation – when these issues come up, the parties know what they’re talking about. And voters know who they trust. Housing is a different animal. Housing costs are just too high, and it’s becoming a bipartisan concern,” stated David Byler, NPI Chief of Research. “This is a rare opportunity for both parties – an important issue where neither side has a pre-existing advantage or even a defined message. The party that figures out how to win on housing will benefit hugely.”
The survey conducted by NPI occurred in mid-August with just over 1,000 registered voters.
According to Zillow, the average home value in the State of Arizona is $431,492 as of August 31, which is up 2.4% over one year. Meanwhile, the average United States home value, per Zillow, is $361,282, which is up 2.9% over the past year.
Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen addressed the poll’s findings with AZ Free News, saying, “The American dream of homeownership has become unattainable for the working-class under the Biden-Harris Administration. We attempted to make homes more affordable last year for our citizens with the Arizona Starter Homes Act, but unfortunately, the Governor vetoed the bill after caving to pressure from special interests and the Biden-Harris Administration’s Department of Defense. To add insult to injury, the Governor halted home construction in two of the most booming areas of the Valley, worsening Arizona’s supply shortage. Republicans at the Legislature will continue to draft commonsense solutions to get government out of the way, and to speed up home construction, so prices can come down. We’re hopeful the Governor will do the right thing by signing those bills into law.”
In a piece for The Heritage Foundation this summer, EJ Antoni, a Research Fellow, wrote about the reasons for skyrocketing home values and costs in Arizona. He said, “Over the last four years, the federal government spent trillions of dollars it didn’t have and far more than it was capable of even borrowing. To cover the shortfall, the Federal Reserve created money for the Treasury to borrow and spend. While that solved the federal finance problem, it also unleashed the worst inflation in four decades and spawned a cost-of-living crisis. While inflation causes prices everywhere to rise, the housing market in particular has seen stratospheric increases in sales prices. Part of the Fed’s plan of creating trillions of dollars for the Treasury was keeping interest rates artificially low, and that made borrowing extremely inexpensive, including borrowing for a home.”
Antoni added, “Potential home buyers had access to so much cheap credit that they collectively bid up the prices of homes to never-before-seen levels. After the Fed’s low interests and easy credit created inflation, however, the central bank swung the monetary levers in the other direction and initiated fast interest rate hikes. That suddenly made borrowing prohibitively expensive for countless Americans.”
As Antoni concluded his piece, he stated that “in Arizona, it has reached the point where a single working adult needs to earn $97,000 to live comfortably. That’s over 50 percent higher than the median income for a single full-time worker. If you want to comfortably support a family of four in Arizona, you’ll need to earn $231,000. Even with two working adults, they’d need to each earn almost twice the median income of a full-time worker to hit that annual income.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Daniel Stefanski | Oct 7, 2024 | News
By Daniel Stefanski |
A Republican State Senator is bringing attention to the work she and her colleagues have accomplished for Arizonans in the recently completed legislative session.
State Senator Janae Shamp released a statement last week to mark the bills that went into effect in the Grand Canyon State this September. For most bills passed by the Arizona Legislature and signed by the governor each legislative session, those policies go into effect ninety days after the adjournment of the state House and Senate.
“Bills signed into law during legislative session this year officially took effect in September, with a few exceptions,” said Shamp. “Senate Republicans championed impactful laws that will combat issues such as child abuse, retail theft, and the use of artificial intelligence for malice, as well as laws to help support patients with serious mental illness and prospective homebuyers in Arizona.”
The first-term lawmaker highlighted one of her own bills that became law last month – SB 1232. Shamp added, “I personally made it my mission to help protect Arizona’s most vulnerable population from predators. I had several bills signed into law to protect our children and inform our communities, and I’m proud to say life imprisonment is now on the table for criminals who commit the most heinous crimes against our children! Sexual misconduct with a minor is now considered a class 1 felony punishable by natural life imprisonment if the child is 12 years old or younger and suffers serious physical harm.”
In the Fifty-Sixth Legislature – Second Regular Session, there were 259 chaptered bills that became law in Arizona. That number was up from the previous year’s session, when there were 205 chaptered bills that became law.
However, the number of bills becoming law in a divided state government, with Republicans controlling the Arizona Legislature and a Democrat in the Governor’s Office, was far lower than when Republicans had full control of government. In 2022, the last year of Republican Governor Doug Ducey’s administration, 388 chaptered bills became law. And in 2021, there were 447 chaptered bills that became law.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Matthew Holloway | Oct 7, 2024 | News
By Matthew Holloway |
Democrat leaders from across the country gathered Tuesday to lavish praise on former-Phoenix Mayor-turned-Congressman Greg Stanton at a celebration naming the new downtown Phoenix transit hub after him. The new hub, under construction at Central Avenue and Van Buren, is slated to open in 2025. The station is part of a slate of transit projects pushed through by Stanton during his mayoral tenure. It was rolled into a 2015 ballot measure that replaced a sunsetting 0.4 percent sales tax with a 0.7 percent sales tax to spend a projected $17.3 billion in taxpayer dollars on transportation and public works.
Democrats, including House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, assistant minority leader Joe Neguse, Rep. Ruben Gallego, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, Chandler Mayor Kevin Hartke, and Tempe Mayor Corey Woods were all on hand for the ceremony according to Axios. They publicly lauded Stanton, who was present for the festivities and called the hub a “true game-changer” for the city.
Jeffries joked, “Most will never achieve this honor. Some just hope to have a broom closet named after them. But Greg Stanton has earned this incredible designation for all that he has done.”
Co-Host of the Breaking Battlegrounds radio show & podcast Sam Stone, chief of staff to former Phoenix Councilman Sal DiCiccio and 2022 candidate for City Council, had other ideas to memorialize Stanton’s term as mayor. He wrote in a post to X, “If govt naming conventions were honest we’d call it the Greg Stanton Federal Waste Transfer Station…”
Stone has publicly opposed the controversial move to name the station for Stanton since at least May when he denounced the effort to choose Stanton over the late Rep. Ed Pastor, as a “Blatant Election-year stunt.”
Four days later, Stone urged “civic action” and called upon Phoenicians to attend the City Council meeting to protest. He wrote, “Mayor Kate Gallego is trying to name the new downtown transportation hub after Greg Stanton. This is clearly an election year stunt. It was supposed to be named after Ed Pastor. We need people to go or call into the Phoenix Council meeting tonight to stop this nonsense.”
The initial vote to begin the process passed 7-2 with Councilmembers Betty Guardado and Laura Pastor, daughter of the late- Rep. Pastor, dissenting per KJZZ.
On June 26th, the City Council passed the final measure naming the station in Stanton’s honor. Mayor Kate Gallego told reporters, “I am thrilled that one of our newest additions to the Phoenix skyline—the soon-to-be-completed Central Station Transit Hub—will officially be named after one of Phoenix’s most effective champions for accessible public transportation: former Mayor and Congressman Greg Stanton.” She continued, “Without his leadership, Phoenix would not have achieved the incredible growth of our light rail and bus systems, which move and connect tens of thousands of residents and visitors each and every day. We are building a bright future for Phoenix on the foundations that he worked hard to lay, and he is deserving of this honor.”
Matthew Holloway is a senior reporter for AZ Free News. Follow him on X for his latest stories, or email tips to Matthew@azfreenews.com.
by Matthew Holloway | Oct 6, 2024 | News
By Matthew Holloway |
On Thursday, America First Legal announced that the organization has launched a lawsuit against Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and the Secretary of State’s Office on behalf of Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona, also known as EZAZ.org. The foundation and America First Legal contend that by refusing to release a list of more than 218,000 individuals who illegally registered to vote without providing proof of citizenship, Fontes is violating the law.
The flaw at the center of both cases was revealed to the Arizona voters when Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer realized the flaw’s implication, that tens of thousands of people were on the voter list without proof of citizenship, and brought an Emergency Petition to the Arizona Supreme Court.
As previously reported by AZ Free News, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled on Sep. 20th that almost 98,000 Maricopa County voters whose citizenship documents got caught up in a coding error will be allowed to vote the full ballot.
According to America First Legal, in a matter of hours, AFL filed a public records request on behalf of EZAZ.org calling on Fontes to produce the list of voters he had identified as being unlawfully registered. Fontes denied the request and unleashed a bizarre accusatory response through his attorney.
AFL wrote, “Rather than treating constituents with respect and decorum, their response was a bombastic tirade that invoked a bizarre conspiracy theory accusing EZAZ.org of secretly planning to harass the voters on the list. There is, of course, no evidence to support Secretary Fontes’s conspiracy theory, and EZAZ.org has no intention of harassing anyone. Secretary Fontes also feebly claimed that compiling the list would be too hard for his staff. None of these excuses hold water. Fontes’s staff has already compiled the list–that’s how they know the number of affected voters. And there is no risk that these voters will be harassed–EZAZ.org’s mission is all about protecting voters.”
James Rogers, America First Legal Senior Counsel, explained in a statement, “There have been major failures in the administration of just about every general election in Arizona from 2016 until now. It’s no wonder that Arizonans’ trust in their electoral system is at an all-time low. And every time anyone expresses concern, how does Secretary Fontes react? Victim blaming.”
“His patronizing response is always to attack voters for caring about the integrity of their system and expecting that public officials follow the law. But how can Arizonans trust their elections when the person in charge of administering them is so fervently opposed to basic transparency? That is not what Arizonans expect from their elected leaders. The law requires Secretary Fontes to produce these records, and AFL will work to hold him accountable until he does,” said James Rogers.
In the text of the lawsuit, AFL argues, “By refusing public access to these records, the Defendants frustrate the core purpose of the Public Records Law, to ‘monitor the performance of the government officials.’” The suit continues, “And because these records deal with a pressing issue of immediate public concern, time is of the essence. The Defendants should be ordered to immediately fulfill Plaintiff’s public records request.”
In a letter responding to the request, cited by the New York Post, the Secretary of State’s Office said, “We fear, especially based on SCF’s filings, that its true desire here is not to keep watch on government actions — which our public records laws are designed to facilitate — but instead harass and intimidate voters in the midst of an election and whose rights Secretary Fontes has already vindicated before Arizona’s highest court.”
Stephen Miller, former Senior Advisor to President Donald Trump and America First Legal President said in a statement, “America First Legal continues to lead the fight for election integrity. We are suing the state of Arizona for refusing to provide the list of 218,000 voters who failed or refused to establish citizenship. It is absolutely imperative that we stop the dire threat of illegal alien voting, which is the gravest form of foreign election interference.”
Matthew Holloway is a senior reporter for AZ Free News. Follow him on X for his latest stories, or email tips to Matthew@azfreenews.com.
by Daniel Stefanski | Oct 6, 2024 | News
By Daniel Stefanski |
Before a resolution came about for a major union strike in the United States, one Arizona lawmaker was working on a proposal to provide some relief to his constituents.
Earlier this week, State Representative David Cook sent a letter to Mexico’s Consul General Yescas Mendoza to suggest “collaboration to explore diverting container shipments to Mexican ports, allowing goods to enter the United States through Arizona’s land ports of entry in an effort to minimize the economic impact of the union-led strike.”
The strike of approximately 45,000 American port workers impacted 36 ports. Many within the country were bracing for severe economic consequences due to these actions.
Cook said, “With the current port closures, we need creative solutions to ensure vital goods continue to flow and to minimize economic disruptions. Working with our Mexican partners to use their ports offers a practical solution that benefits both our states’ and national economies. It is crucial that we keep the lines of trade open, and I am confident this proposal can help reduce strain on our supply chains until U.S. ports are operational again.”
In his letter to the Mexican Consul General, Cook wrote, “I believe that by temporarily diverting shipping vessels to Mexican ports, we can alleviate the pressure caused by U.S. port closures and help maintain the flow of goods into Arizona and other affected regions. Mexican ports, such as those in Mazatlán could provide the logistic support necessary to manage this redirection, allowing for a more seamless transition of goods into the U.S. via Arizona’s land ports of entry. This approach could serve as a valuable stopgap measure until the strike is resolved.”
The fears about the lasting effects of this strike proved to be short-lived, as the International Longshoremen’s Association and the United States Maritime Alliance, Ltd. quickly came to a “tentative agreement on wages.” Both entities announced their decision to “extend the Master Contract until January 15, 2025 to return to the bargaining table to negotiate all other outstanding issues.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Staff Reporter | Oct 6, 2024 | News
By Staff Reporter |
It seems that Arizonans are keenly aware of their position as a major swing state for the upcoming election just one month away.
Arizonans ranked the third-highest in Google searches for voter registration following the vice presidential debate on Tuesday between Democratic running mate Governor Tim Walz and Republican running mate Senator JD Vance.
The discovery of these search ratings was made by Final Round AI, which analyzed Google Trends data for the impact the Walz-Vance debate had throughout the country.
The company’s CEO, Michael Guan, said in a press release that the vice presidential debate was less impactful on search spikes than the presidential debate last month.
“With the vice-presidential debate between Governor Walz and Senator Vance on Tuesday, we wanted to see how this affects interest in voter registration topics. We found the debate had caused the third-highest spike in searches so far, behind the spike on September 10 after the presidential debate between Vice President Harris and former President Trump. The largest spike on September 17 came in the wake of the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump,” said Guan. “We also found that Georgia looked up voter registration the most, and Atlanta was the most interested metro area in the wake of the debate.”
The data from Final Round AI doesn’t traditionally align with the company’s purpose: their company provides an AI copilot for interviewees to land their desired jobs. Guan said that they applied their technology to bring awareness to misinformation spread by AI impacting politics.
“Voters must be wary of potential misinformation in this intense period, with the advent of AI making it much easier for people to make fake news,” said Guan. “AI has advanced to such a degree that convincing audio and video recordings can be easily made. We urge voters to take care and check that their information comes from trusted, unbiased sources. If news hasn’t come through official channels yet, it is better to wait rather than risk accidentally spreading misinformation.”
As for metro locations, Tucson ranked the fourth highest and Phoenix tied for ranking the eleventh highest.
The top ten metro areas for searches concerning voter registration were, in order: Atlanta, Georgia; Austin, Texas; Fairbanks, Alaska; Tucson; Columbus, Ohio; San Antonio, Texas; Waco/Temple/Bryan, Texas/Lafayette, Indiana; Wilmington, North Carolina; and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina.
Georgia was ranked first, and Ohio was second. After Arizona, the top ten searches occurred in Washington, D.C., North Carolina, Texas, Arkansas, Indiana, and Nebraska/Pennsylvania tied for ninth.
However, Arizona didn’t rank as a state or by metro areas in terms of searches for “who won the debate.”
In order, those top ten states were Minnesota, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Iowa.
The top ten metro areas who topped search engines for asking who won the debate were, in order: Duluth, Minnesota/Superior, Wisconsin; Alpena Michigan; Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota; Bend, Oregon; Wausau-Rhinelander, Wisconsin; Rochester, Minnesota/Mason City, Iowa/Austin, Minnesota; Juneau, Alaska; Mankato, Minnesota; La Crosse/Eau Claire Wisconsin; and Ottumwa, Iowa/Kirksville, Missouri.
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