Government Spending
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Gov. Janet Napolitano signed six executive orders on the first day of her second term, toughening air-pollution regulations, creating a plan to improve long-term care facilities and adding a financing scheme for water projects.
Later, she used her State of the State address to call for fundamental change in the way Arizona grows, educates its children and prepares for the new economy.
In doing so, Napolitano answered questions about how she would govern in a second term. Her flurry of executive-order signings caught GOP legislative leaders by surprise. advertisement?
Gov. Janet Napolitano's proposal to expand government-run children's health insurance could bring high financial costs, according to the Goldwater Institute.
Gov. Janet Napolitano's budget plans are getting mixed reviews with support for her focus on highways and children's health care offset by worries about debt and spending levels.
The governor's $10.4 billion budget includes as much as $1 billion in bonding and debt.
Hallmarks of the budget include expanding state health care programs to cover more uninsured children, taking out longer-term bonds to bring in cash for highway construction and taking on debt for school construction instead of paying upfront.
PHOENIX Trains, lanes and automobiles.
Those are the big options on the table as state leaders prepare for millions of new cars expected to clog our roads and freeways over the next two decades, pumping out tons more pollution to cloud the skies.
With rapid growth, lawmakers say transportation seems to be a hotter topic now than it has been in years.
Last week Gov. Janet Napolitano signed an executive order for the Arizona Department of Transportation to look into mass transit options.
Arizona is in its 12th straight year of drought, but at the state Capitol, it's raining - at least when it come to money for roads.
A proposal to drain the state's $650 million "rainy day fund" to pay for highway construction is gaining ground even as opponents argue this is not how the fund was meant to be used.
As Nevada's lawmakers prepare for next February's legislative session newspaper headlines are blaring: "Nevada schools ask for an additional $1 billion." It's not safe to sleep because it's that time again when all the tax consumers come out of the woodwork with their hands outstretched palms up. This request by Nevada school superintendents and school boards, who have termed it "Invest '07", stunned lawmakers at the Legislative Committee on Education in Carson City recently. State Senator Barbara Cegavske (R - Las Vegas) termed the proposal "an enormous Christmas wish list."
Barry Goldwater very well may be turning over in his grave come election day, because Arizona is on the verge of a major expansion in the size and scope of government.
That's the opinion of some conservative business leaders as ballot questions related to tobacco taxes, workplace smoking bans, minimum wage and farm animal pens are poised to pass.
Proposition 203 would increase tobacco taxes by $150 million annually and put that money toward new programs for preschools and children's health.
In early 2003, landowners in Ahwatukee, Foothills offered to sell the Arizona Department of Transportation the piece of their 80 acres that stood in the path of the proposed South Mountain Freeway.
With no cash to spend on the unfunded freeway, the state declined.
Today, ADOT is scrambling to buy that same land, which has been sculpted into individual lots awaiting the construction of multimillion-dollar homes. advertisement
One real estate boom later, desert dirt is a lot more expensive these days.
Welfare reform is one of the great victories in recent times over relentlessly advancing government. But
Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl and Reps. John Shadegg and Jeff Flake - all Arizona Republicans - were among 12 lawmakers who opposed the transportation bill, the Goldwater Institute noted.
The bill disperses $286 billion from the federal gas tax of 18.4 cents per gallon, launched in the 1950s to build the interstate highway system, which has long since been completed.