Arizona is the state with the third best economic climate, according to a new report from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
“Arizona’s high ranking is a direct result of significant pro-growth income and property tax reform that has supercharged our economy,” President of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club Scot Mussi told AZ Free News. “In the last decade we have slashed our income tax rates in half, cut taxes on capital gains, and significantly reduced the property tax burden on small businesses.”
Utah and Idaho surpassed the Grand Canyon state for best economic climates. New York, Vermont, and Illinois placed in the bottom three.
Arizona has moved up from 13th place in 2021 to third in 2024. Arizona’s population increased by 115,900 from July 1, 2022, to July 1, 2023, estimates from the Arizona Office of Economic Opportunity show. This translated into 1.6% growth, much faster than the U.S. at 0.5%.
Arizona ranks third for tax expenditure limits, first for being a right-to-work state with the option to join or support a union, first for estate/inheritance tax levied, and first for remaining tax burden.
It also ranked second for public employees per 10,000 of population and eighth for average worker compensation cost.
Mussi said Arizona is on track to continue its route of economic growth.
“As long as we keep these reforms in place, Arizona will remain a destination for both families and entrepreneurs,” he said.
Elizabeth Troutman is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send her news tips using this link.
The Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AFEC) is suing Democrat Secretary of State Adrian Fontes due to certain rules in the latest Elections Procedures Manual (EPM) from December 2023, which the group believes are unlawful. The pro-free market nonprofit filed the legal challenge in the Superior Court of the State of Arizona for the County of Maricopa late last week.
AFEC is asking the court to strike down the provisions challenged by the lawsuit which are believed to contradict or exceed statutory authority.
“Secretary Fontes has produced one of the most radical elections procedures manuals in our state’s history,” said Scot Mussi, president of AFEC. “If the illegal provisions of this manual are allowed to stand, the integrity and transparency of state elections would continue to dissipate at the hands of leftwing ideologues.”
The complaint alleges that the 2023 EPM improperly places protected political speech at risk of criminal prosecution and has an unconstitutional chilling effect on protected political speech.
The provisions of the EPM that AFEC contends are unconstitutional include rules that: restrict observation of drop boxes and polling places, ban photography at election sites, and regulate speaking to people at election sites.
“These activities — watching drop boxes, speaking to people at election sites, and photographing activity at election sites — all constitute forms of speech,’’ the lawsuit says.
In addition to these claims, the lawsuit is challenging the 2023 EPM’s rules requiring political parties to open their primaries to federal only voters.
“The 2023 EPM also contradicts statutory requirements and exceeds statutory authority by opening the Presidential Preference Election to federal only voters, in essence, creating a new law out of whole cloth,” AFEC said in a news release.
The Free Enterprise Club details three counts for causes of action regarding the EPM, including speech, free association, and vagueness.
“We hope the court agrees with our arguments and forces the Secretary to adhere to state law,” Mussi said.
This isn’t the first lawsuit that’s been filed over the 2023 EPM. In January, Arizona’s leading legislative Republicans sued Fontes over the EPM. The Arizona Republican Party, Republican National Committee, and Yavapai County GOP filed their own lawsuit late last week.
Elizabeth Troutman is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send her news tips using this link.
Clean and accurate voter rolls are a cornerstone to safe and secure elections. And they are required by both state and federal law. Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) specifically obligates states to conduct a general program that makes a reasonable effort to remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters due to death or change of residence. The U.S. Supreme Court even backed this up in its 2018 decision in the case Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute.
But Arizona’s current Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and its former Secretary of State (now Governor) Katie Hobbs have failed to perform the necessary voter list maintenance. And right now, 14 Arizona counties are in violation of Section 8 of the NVRA…
Arizona has the highest inflation rate in the country — making this state the number one victim of President Joe Biden’s inflation crisis.
The Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale area suffers from 13 percent inflation, according to the latest Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Tuesday. Nationwide inflation rate sits just over 8 percent.
According to recent polling, the inflation and border crises are of equal importance to Arizona voters.
Top issue for Arizona voters? Border security now tied with inflation. Both winning issues for Rs, but also sign that the worst of the economic malaise behind Biden. pic.twitter.com/KfBz0hHI38
Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AZFEC) President Scot Mussi told AZ Free News that the Biden administration has only worsened the economic woes of Arizonans. Mussi warned that consumers would continue to cut back on major purchases, and business owners would freeze expansions and hiring. He also pointed out that any reductions in inflation weren’t due to the Biden administration’s actions, but instead consumers cutting back.
“It’s pretty clear that the decision makers in Washington want to make this situation worse,” said Mussi. “The recession will continue to linger on until policy makers get serious about runaway spending.”
While Arizonans and the rest of America were taking in the federal government’s latest inflation report on Tuesday, President Joe Biden was celebrating the controversial Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
Tune in as I deliver remarks celebrating the Inflation Reduction Act and how it demonstrates government working for the American people. https://t.co/ZDwRFPcDdT
Biden didn’t address how the latest inflation data reflected historic highs. Rather, the president asserted that the effects of inflation were improving, and that the state of the economy should come as good news for Americans.
Today’s data show progress in fighting inflation. This month, prices overall were essentially flat, gas prices were down, and wages were up – that's good news for American families.
My plan is showing we can lower costs, create jobs, and bring manufacturing back to America.
However, not all within Biden’s party agreed that the IRA and other recent actions by the president are wins. In an interview this week, Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) refused to affirm that Biden is doing a good job as president. Congressman Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) assessed that Kelly treaded carefully due to Biden’s unpopularity among voters.
.@RepAndyBiggsAZ: Mark Kelly "knows that Biden is on the ballot this November and Biden is on the ballot and in Arizona, Biden is incredibly unpopular." @RobFinnertyUSA
Mick McGuire, former Arizona National Guard general and failed senate candidate, told “The Conservative Circus” on Tuesday that Kelly was just as guilty as Biden for failing Arizonans with worsening inflation.
Mussi asserted that the IRA wasn’t anything to celebrate, calling it the “Inflation Destruction Act.” He explained that the IRA wouldn’t reduce inflation. Mussi noted that the government hasn’t even distributed all of the stimulus funds from the American Rescue Plan.
“We haven’t even finished rolling out the Biden COVID recovery act: the $1.9 trillion spending palooza. There’s no discipline right now, and there’s really no end in sight,” said Mussi. “Right now, we’ve hit what would be the definition of a recession. Even if you wanted to use the Biden administration’s viewpoint, at best you could say we’re in a bad state of stagflation. There’s absolutely no growth.”
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AFEC) is reveling in Friday’s Arizona Supreme Court ruling affirming that the attempt to get the Arizona Free and Fair Elections Act on the upcoming general election ballot as a voter initiative has failed.
“The ruling today vindicates what we knew all along: the radical Free and Fair election initiative lacked enough lawful signatures to qualify for the ballot,” AFEC President Scot Mussi said after the order was issued under Chief Justice Robert Brutinel’s name. “Arizona voters, the rule of law, and basic math were victorious today.”
What would have been known as Proposition 210 on the 2022 General Election ballot included numerous changes to state law drafted by the Arizona Democracy Resource Center (ADRC Action), such as a ban on legislative election audits and allowing election day voter registration.
AFEC took the lead in opposing the voter initiative, while some elections officials worried making that many hodge-podge changes to election and campaign finance laws at one time would have negative unintended consequences.
AFEC’s legal challenge alleged myriad problems with more than one-half of the 475,290 petition signatures submitted by ADRC Action. It ended with Brutinel’s order affirming Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Joseph Mikitish’s finding that the minimum 237,645 signature threshold was missed by 1,458 signatures.
The outcome is exactly what AFEC’s Mussi predicted. In a series of statements Friday, Mussi called out ADRC Action for the “rigged methodology” the group’s attorneys pushed the courts to use when calculating the number of valid signatures. He said the mathematic gymnastics was intended “to sneak their disqualified measure onto the ballot.”
“Their dubious formula cherry picked data that boosted their numbers, even including signatures that were disqualified by the counties in the random sample,” Mussi said. “None of their formula was rooted in statute or historical precedent and was a Hail-Mary attempt to resuscitate thousands of signatures that simply should not have counted.”
The justices ordered Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs to rescind the prior determination that the initiative had qualified for the ballot.
AZ's Free and Fair Elections initiative would have made elections in AZ neither: it would have wiped away AZ’s important election safeguards and substituted them with radical, #HR1-style policies. 2/5https://t.co/MWNOrt2VFM
