The study, conducted by Hennessey Digital, analyzed graduation rates across all colleges in each state, highlighting a troubling trend for Arizona, where only 49.58% of the students in the cohort completed their degrees within 150% of the normal program completion time (4 years).
This places Arizona alongside other struggling states, making it one of the eight states below 50% graduation.
“Regardless of what you’re studying, college can be a challenging time, said CEO of Hennessey Digital, Jason Hennessey. “For many, it’s the first experience of independence, a change from the environment you’ve grown up in and ultimately, incredibly intense. It’s not surprising to see that many drop out of their courses before graduation, but ultimately, every student needs to consider what’s going to make them happy and successful and an academic path is not always going to achieve that.”
The research identifies Alaska as the state with the lowest college graduation rate at 32.93%, a staggering 27.99% below the national average. Only 735 of 2,232 students in Alaska’s cohort completed their degrees.
Following closely are Nevada, with 45.20% completion, with 4,932 out of 10,912 students graduating, and New Mexico, with 47.80% completion and 3,523 out of 7,370 students graduating. Both are struggling with significant gaps in degree completion compared to the national average.
In contrast, Massachusetts leads the nation with a 75.41% graduation rate, 14.49% above the national average, with 40,011 out of 53,060 students completing their degrees.
Rhode Island follows at 73% with 8,835 of 12,103 students graduating and then Connecticut at 70.77% with 14,898 of 21,052 students graduating.
Ethan Faverino is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
Arizona Corporation Commissioner (ACC) Rachel Walden brought an amendment during the commission’s Wednesday meeting to require detailed, extensive oversight over electrical utilities. Gaining unanimous approval in a 5-0 vote, Walden pushed to ensure Arizona’s electrical grid doesn’t become a ratepayer-funded venue for green projects.
At the October 15th open meeting, Walden pushed through an amendment demanding a more granular kind of report than the industry has provided for the past 26 years, exceeding what is required under Arizona Revised Statutes. Utilities like APS and SRP already owe the ACC their ten-year forecasts under state law, but Walden’s call for more detail: business confidential filings on line congestion, load-growth hotspots, and every grid-hardening method from reconductoring to storm-proofing—are a seismic departure from the more hands-off era that preceded.
Commissioners' Corner: The Commission voted unanimously in September 2025 to initiate the official repeal process for the state's mandatory energy efficiency rules, which were adopted 15 years ago. Commissioner Rachel Walden shares how her vote delivers her promise to ratepayers. pic.twitter.com/se9xwiwv4P
“Finding the least cost, most reliable model includes transmission, not just electricity generation. None of the answers from our state utilities today inspired any confidence in me that these issues are a priority,” Commissioner Walden told the meeting. “I am not convinced that additional build out of renewables, while also having to add firm capacity as well as back up generation, is saving Arizonans money. I know that Arizonans are concerned with these issues, especially as we head into accelerated growth in our state. The Commissioners, as elected by the public, are faced with these questions and comments almost daily, and our actions are held accountable to the public.”
The move from Walden and the ACC seems to have been carefully timed. The Thirteenth Biennial Transmission Assessment projects a 3 percent annual growth surge through 2033, significantly faster than previous forecasts, reflecting Arizona’s population boom colliding with a deluge of intermittent ‘renewable’ sources. With solar and wind flooding the system, utilities are rerouting power across state lines, inviting operational headaches from California’s aggressive decarbonization push.
“Arizonans will not bear the costs and impacts of supporting neighboring states’ Green New Deal policies,” Walden said.
Walden’s amendment mandates confidential reports on congestion and bottlenecks, where new solar farms fail to provide a consistent load or data centers increase demand, along with projections to gauge how interconnection requests ripple through the system. Supporting Commissioner Lea Márquez-Peterson’s additions, Walden is requiring complete disclosures on enhancement efforts, ensuring the ACC can vet if utilities are truly fortifying the state’s transmission system.
With major data centers like Microsoft and Google cropping up in Maricopa County, pulling gigawatts from an already strained grid, peak demand strains are a genuine concern. The disastrous 2023 heat wave that had Texas utilities scrambling is fresh in mind. Arizona is hardly immune to such issues. As renewables providers require load balancing and battery installations, the costs are passed on to ratepayers, and Walden is questioning the utilities’ math.
“Ensuring our utilities have sufficient generation capacity to serve our customers during peak demand along with a reliable transmission grid to handle that capacity is paramount,” she said. “The Commission must ensure that any transmission or generation solutions to mitigate grid concerns, such as line congestion created by the interconnections from new generation sources, or offtakes from the grid by large customers such as data centers and hyperscalers, are borne by the creators of those grid concerns, not Arizona ratepayers.”
Walden pledged to scrutinize future Biennial Assessments and Integrated Resource Plans in a distinct pivot from the ACC’s historically more hands-off stance.
“I will be watching the Biennial Transmission Assessments and Integrated Resource Plans closely, and investigating these issues in all future rate cases,” Walden concluded.
The Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) has announced a landmark $132.91 million settlement with Vanguard Marketing Corporation and The Vanguard Group, Inc. to address failures in supervising registered persons and disclosing potential tax consequences to investors.
The settlement follows a change in investment minimums for certain Vanguard target-date retirement funds, which resulted in significant, unanticipated capital gains taxes for investors.
The agreement is the result of a three-year, multi-state investigation led by a task force coordinated through the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA), in conjunction with a parallel investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
In Arizona alone, 3,675 Vanguard account holders were financially impacted, with additional Arizona investors affected through non-Vanguard custodians.
The settlement ensures full restitution for all affected investors nationwide who faced unexpected tax liabilities due to Vanguard’s oversight.
The SEC has established a Fair Fund to manage the distribution of the $132.91 million settlement, which Vanguard has already paid. The Fair Fund administrator will identify eligible investors, including those in Arizona holding Vanguard funds through non-Vanguard custodians.
Officials at Vanguard have yet to admit or deny the findings of the investigations by the ACC or SEC.
The SEC will oversee the distribution process for all states, including Arizona, to ensure fair and efficient restitution.
Ethan Faverino is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
A new national analysis reveals that Arizona’s job market is holding steady, ranking 12th in the nation for job openings with a rate that mirrors the U.S. average.
According to a new report from Podium AI, which analyzed the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Arizona’s job opening rate sits at 4.4%, matching the national average. That equates to roughly 149,000 available positions across the state—placing Arizona in a balanced middle ground between neighboring New Mexico (5.1%) and Utah (4.2%).
West Virginia tops the national rankings with the highest job opening rate in the country—6%, which is 36% above the national average. Despite its smaller population, the state reports around 46,000 open positions, a sign of a particularly tight labor market. Meanwhile, Washington State ranks lowest with a 3.7% job opening rate, 16% below the national average, though it still reports 142,000 job openings in total.
Arizona’s mid-tier ranking suggests a stable labor environment, neither overheated nor stagnant. Economists often view such alignment with national averages as a sign of balance between worker demand and supply.
The data may also reflect Arizona’s ongoing economic diversification. With growth in industries like manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare, employers are competing to fill specialized roles while maintaining steady hiring across service sectors. Nationally, the report identifies roughly 7.4 million job openings, translating to a 4.4% rate. But that average conceals deep regional differences.
Eric Rea, CEO and founder of Podium AI, said the results underscore the complexity of comparing job markets across states. “What really stands out is the contrast between smaller states like West Virginia and Maine, which are posting the highest rates, and much larger economies like California and Texas, which sit near the bottom,” Rea said.
“It’s not that California and Texas don’t have jobs—they have hundreds of thousands—but because their workforces are so large, those openings represent a much smaller share overall.”
Rea added that high job opening rates can reflect both strong demand for workers and challenges for employers struggling to find qualified staff.
“States like West Virginia and Maine may be experiencing tight labor markets where businesses are competing harder to attract workers,” he said. “That can create opportunities for job seekers, but it also puts pressure on employers to raise pay and improve benefits.”
For Arizona job seekers, the state’s alignment with the national average means steady opportunities across sectors but not the intense competition—or leverage—seen in smaller, high-demand states. With roughly 149,000 openings on the books, Arizona’s workforce remains in a healthy equilibrium—a sign of resilience in a national economy still recalibrating after pandemic-era labor shifts.
Jonathan Eberle is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a brief in support of Arizona’s law requiring proof of citizenship to vote. The intervention comes in Mi Familia Vota v. Warren Petersen, a lawsuit filed by leftist groups against two laws passed by the Republican-controlled Arizona Legislature in 2022.
The laws require voters registering via the state form to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to participate in state and local elections. The DOJ’s brief backs Senate President Warren Petersen’s defense of the laws following a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that invalidated key provisions. The brief argues that Arizona’s birthplace attestation requirement “does not violate the Materiality Provision because it is generally important that an election official would consider important to the process of determining an applicant’s eligibility to vote.”
“We are thankful to again have a White House and Department of Justice committed to the rule of law and fair elections,” Petersen said in a statement. “The DOJ’s brief is appreciated in our fight to uphold a commonsense law and the will of the people. Given the clear precedent handed down from the U.S. Supreme Court, we are confident we will ultimately prevail. With the continued absence of our governor and attorney general, thankfully, the Arizona Legislature is again picking up the slack and is returning to our nation’s high court to defend election integrity.”
The case traces back to challenges by Mi Familia Vota and other groups, including some based outside Arizona, against House Bill 2492. The law bars enhances the legal guardrails of the Arizona voter registration process, ensuring that proof of citizenship is required to ensure only U.S. citizens are voting in our elections.
🚨FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: President Trump's DOJ Supports Arizona's Law Requiring Proof of Citizenship to Vote
In August 2024, a three-judge Ninth Circuit panel vacated an emergency stay previously issued by another panel of the court. That decision permitted Arizona residents to register using the state form without proof of citizenship for federal races, such as U.S. president and Congress.
Petersen then sought emergency relief from the U.S. Supreme Court, which affirmed Arizona’s authority to reject incomplete registrations, marking the last binding order in the dispute until the Ninth Circuit’s latest deviation.
Eleven judges dissented from the Ninth Circuit’s most-recent majority opinion, saying, “Republican government serves as the keystone of the Constitution. In such a government, a majority of citizens who lawfully vote determines who represents us in the White House, Congress, and state legislatures. Courts must therefore defend the franchise—both by protecting the right of all citizens to vote, and by ensuring non-citizens do not vote. Arizona passed laws to protect the franchise… Sadly, the panel majority opinion undermines republican government, shreds federalism and the separation of powers, and imperils free and fair elections.”
The case now heads back to the U.S. Supreme Court for potential review, where Arizona will seek to enforce its citizenship verification requirements.
Glendale City Council hired Gilbert’s town manager, Patrick Banger, who created the town’s censorship department.
Banger will receive base compensation of $400,000, subject to adjustments based on factors including performance, the market, and cost of living. This makes Banger one of the highest-paid administrators in the Valley, not including the other perks that come with the position.
The city’s human resources and risk management director, Jim Brown, said they settled on Banger after undertaking a “nationwide search.” The current city manager, Kevin Phelps, intends to retire.
Council member and Alhambra Elementary School District member Jose “Lupe” Conchas Jr. said Banger aligned with their values of commitment to growth and serving residents with distinction. Councilmember Bart Turner, who has been accused of walking in lockstep with Conchas, was reportedly advocating “hard” for Banger.
“This vote isn’t just about selecting a new city manager, it’s about the future of Glendale for the next decades to come,” said Conchas. “I’m confident that Mr. Banger’s leadership will help us continue the path forward.”
Banger will assume the city manager position on January 12 of next year. Banger will depart Gilbert after 15 years with the town.
Banger beat out one other top candidate, Vicki Rios, Glendale’s assistant city manager and a longtime resident. Rios is credited with the city’s “dramatic financial turnaround” after she saved the city from bankruptcy upon entering the administration in 2013 by refinancing debt and building up cash reserves.
Behind the scene, conservative council members and city residents have vowed to keep Banger in line when it comes to aligning with Glendale values — and not importing those of New York.
AZ Free Newsreported last year that Banger credited former Democratic New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg as his inspiration for town management, and caused his creation of the Office of Digital Government (ODG).
“One of the things that I’d been doing for quite some time is following what Mayor Bloomberg was doing in New York,” said Banger.
ODG was a department within Gilbert that monitored the online speech of employees and elected officials to ensure alignment with progressive ideologies. Department salaries cost the town over $1.1 million annually.
The former lead of ODG hired by Banger, Dana Berchman, resigned following reporting on ODG activity. Berchman now runs a communications firm, Oh, hi! Communications.
While managing Gilbert, Banger oversaw a $2.2 billion annual budget and nearly 2,000 employees. Banger is credited with generating nearly $400 million in investments and over 700,000 square feet in new construction in Gilbert.
While all those benefits to Gilbert were felt, residents may be more quick to recall Banger’s leadership during the “Gilbert Goons,” a group of mostly wealthy teens who committed a series of crimes and terrorized the community from 2022 onward that ultimately resulted in the murder of a boy in 2023.
The Gilbert Goons and their Halloween murder quickly became a national story, with much scrutiny over the city’s handling of the teens’ crimes leading up to the murder.
ODG control over city communications led to what former employees and residents believed to be the cause of delays and scarcity in communications on the Gilbert Goons.
Banger is also president-elect of the Arizona City/County Management Association. He was formerly chairman of the Maricopa Association of Governments Management Board and an Honorary Base Commander at Luke Air Force Base.
Before taking over as town manager for Gilbert in 2011, Banger’s roots were in Missouri, where he was a consultant, home builder, city administrator, and city financial analyst.
Watch Glendale City Council discuss and vote on Banger’s hiring here:
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