A federal judge has ended court oversight of food and sanitary conditions at Maricopa County jails after he concluded that deficiencies there have been corrected sufficiently.

Two advocacy groups are suing Arizona’s Medicaid program over claims of increased and mandatory copayments for low-income adults and childless adults.

Early ballots in the race to represent southeastern Arizona’s 8th Congressional District are coming in at a rapid pace.

Democrat Ron Barber is clarifying his support of President Barack Obama after declining to say who he would vote for in November during a debate.

More than half of the 1.9 million registered voters in Arizona’s most populous county are now signed up to automatically receive ballots for early voting.

Nearly two years after Republicans took advantage of an insurgent mood that swept the nation and secured supermajority control of the Legislature, the GOP in Arizona can boast of enacting state budgets that eschewed accounting gimmicks, assumed cautious revenue estimates and earmarked money for anticipated rainy days ahead.

Gov. Jan Brewer had a big agenda for Arizona’s centennial year.

In her fourth year as governor, Brewer wanted a budget that gave more money to education, public safety and health services. She wanted sweeping changes that would overhaul the way Arizona hired and fired state employees. And she wanted to continue the economic recovery that she has consistently referred as the “Arizona comeback.”

The most challenging task for Democrats at the state Capitol is to stay relevant in a place where you’re greatly outnumbered.


That job fell to Senate Minority Leader David Schapira, whose caucus shrank to only nine members following the 2010 elections.

Extraordinary events put Steve Pierce at the helm of the Arizona Senate — and those same events made the job of leading the chamber, which is already difficult by itself, even more challenging.

The Prescott rancher was elected as Senate president following the ouster of Russell Pearce, who lost a November recall election to a rival Republican. While some of Pearce’s colleagues had no love lost for the former senator, others remained loyal to him.

With his first full session as speaker of the House under his belt, Andy Tobin is feeling pretty pleased with the way things turned out: a balanced budget, money in the “rainy day” fund, and a second economic development package all signed by the governor.