Goldwater Institute

In a policy report released this week, Goldwater Institute Director of Policy Development Nick Dranias proposes the Compact for America, an interstate compact concept to advance a balanced budget amendment through state legislatures. If approved by 38 states, the Compact would require the federal government to obtain the approval of the majority of legislatures to green light any increase above an initial debt limit. In other words, 26 states would have to cosign for the federal government’s credit card.

A cancer survivor and former hospice nurse’s assistant, Boice founded Angels on Earth Home Beauty, a dispatch-service to connect homebound elderly and ill clients with licensed cosmetologists who can perform haircuts, manicures or massages right in the clients’ own homes. In a classic story of government run amok, the Arizona Board of Cosmetology began threatening to shut down Boice’s business unless she complied with regulations designed for beauty salons, not home visits. The Board even demanded she open a physical salon location even though her homebound clients would never step foot inside. In the legally binding settlement agreement filed with the court, the Board agrees to stop requiring Lauren to comply with these regulations and promises it will not to regulate business people like her in the future.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Katherine Cooper granted a preliminary injunction Tuesday against the practice of “release time” in a Phoenix labor contract with the local police union, the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association (PLEA). Release time is a provision in government labor contracts allowing public employees to collect taxpayer-funded salaries and benefits while being "released" to do union work, including lobbying, electioneering, and other forms of political activism.

If you lost your job today, would you go on a spending spree like there was no tomorrow? Of course you wouldn’t. Yet that’s exactly what state policymakers chose to do with state coffers when the recession hit and they failed to face up to the economic downturn, continuing to accept sunny revenue forecasts that never came to be.

The Goldwater Institute is representing five public university students whose First Amendment rights were violated when the Arizona Students Association used mandatory tuition surcharges to support a 2012 ballot initiative that the students opposed.