House Speaker Andy Tobin on Monday announced that he will forgo a run for Arizona’s new 4th Congressional District.

IRC testimony may shed light on unanswered questions, accusations

Win or lose, a pair of lawsuits seeking to overturn maps drawn by the state’s redistricting commission may shed new light on accusations and unanswered questions that have dogged the panel for much of the past year.

The Arizona Commerce Authority set off alarms at the Goldwater Institute this week after the government agency announced it would be awarding thousands of dollars to companies that were eliminated from a competitive grant program.

The Arizona Board of Regents began the legislative session seeing nothing in any budget proposal for two of its prime spending requests:

Money for parity among the three universities and for the Phoenix campus of the University of Arizona medical school.

The Arizona Supreme Court was able to work out a deal allowing the Legislature to take money from a variety of smaller accounts rather than a larger, more critical one that lawmakers were targeting.

A poll released Thursday shows likely Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney soundly defeating President Obama in Arizona. The poll of 909 likely voters was commissioned by a Republican consultant and conducted by a Republican pollster in response to two polls of registered voters released last week that found an Obama-Romney matchup in the state to [...]

Lawmakers wrapped up their work at 8:25 p.m. on May 3 after nearly four months in session, having stashed away money for anticipated rainy days ahead, approved a sweeping measure that allows state workers to be more easily fired and fought on the unending battlefronts of abortion, taxation and border security.

And like the year before, lawmakers with conservative leanings shaped the agenda at the Capitol.

A housing advocacy organization is planning to sue the state over a budget sweep of $50 million intended to help alleviate the effects of the foreclosure crisis.

A last-minute push to create the legal framework to reimburse recalled politicians for their campaign expenses died on the last day of session, after allies of former Sen. Russell Pearce failed to consolidate support behind the legislation.

The proposal could have paved the way for Pearce to get a reimbursement of more than $260,000 — the amount his campaign spent defending him last year, when he was ousted from the Senate in a recall election.

Dozens of local and county officials are asking Gov. Jan Brewer to veto a bill that would force cities to consolidate their elections dates with the state.

They argued that HB2826 would stamp out local control, politicize non-partisan elections and increase election costs.