Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, who is wrapping up an eight-month investigation into the Fiesta Bowl scandal, will ask lawmakers to overhaul the state’s lobbying laws, saying financial reporting requirements are confusing and out of touch with what he believes the public demands of its elected officials.

“If it’s too much of a burden for an elected official to keep the public informed … they shouldn’t be in office,” the county’s top prosecutor told the Arizona Capitol Times. “If you don’t want to do this, then go do something else.”

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery today joined the chorus of Republicans questioning the political motives of the U.S. Department of Justice and its release of findings that the Sheriff’s Office has followed a practice of racial profiling.

Montgomery also said he’s also going to ask the federal government to reinstate a program it stripped from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Thursday that allows detention officers to check the immigration status of people who are getting processed into jail.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio lashed out at the federal government late Thursday after getting hit with allegations that his agency has a system-wide problem of racial profiling.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has always been fond of saying he’s accountable only to the voters.

But the U.S. Department of Justice took the first steps Dec. 15 toward making Arpaio answer to the federal government after unveiling the results of a civil rights probe that one investigator described as “the most egregious racial profiling in the United States.”

The partisan legislative maneuvering over Arizona’s redistricting process may be over for now, but the arguments lived on as Republican and Democratic leaders spent more than two hours on Wednesday making their cases to the remapping commission.

A major overhaul of the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission’s congressional map would eliminate Maricopa County’s centerpiece district and drastically shift the lines in rural Arizona.

In 2010, U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva narrowly staved off a challenge from a Republican upstart.

Next year, Grijalva’s fight may begin in the primary, as a former Democratic state senator says she is mulling a run against the five-term incumbent.

The embattled Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission will hire attorneys for three members in response to Gov. Jan Brewer’s demands for information about allegations of serious misconduct.

Gov. Jan Brewer used her first State of the State speech to flash her conservative credentials and head off political opponents who have attempted to outflank her from the right.

Arizona politics had been uprooted and turned upside down in the past year. New governor. New issues. New campaign season.

So, who’s got the “juice” – the influence – this year?