Arizona’s 2012 legislative session picked up where the 2011 session left off — aspiring to be the most pro-small business Legislature in Arizona’s history.

It is often said that nothing — or at least nothing good — gets done in an election year. You can’t say that about the Arizona state Capitol in 2012.

Two words come to mind when I think of the centennial legislative session: lost opportunity.

The lack of true leadership demonstrated by the Arizona Legislature under a Republican supermajority and a Republican governor will hurt Arizona for years.

A frightening symptom is caused by a major systematic problem – that’s true in medicine, and it’s true in politics.

As an Arizonan, when you hear about trade agreements, you might not automatically think about jobs in the great Copper State. However, as the most populous landlocked state in the U.S., we should. Trade is a huge driver of our economy, not only as a nation, but also of our state economies.

The two years of the 50th Arizona Legislature will go down in the history books as the years when the Legislature hit reboot on the Arizona economy and turned what was a basket case into a best case.

A handful of elected officials in the Arizona Legislature have repeatedly tried to intimidate and silence Goldwater Institute analysts out of giving testimony in support of or in opposition to legislation this year. In one case, an elected official forced a Goldwater Institute attorney, who asked to speak on behalf of the Institute, to refrain from speaking because she was not a registered lobbyist for the Institute. Although the attorney was later allowed to testify after signing in as representing only herself, the instance demonstrates that certain Arizona legislators want citizens to curtail their First Amendment rights before daring to talk or write about public policy with their representatives.

If Yogi Berra were a political analyst, he might describe the May 3 passage of HB2815 as the second consecutive year that the Legislature passed a once-in-a-generation competitiveness package.

Arizona Legislative Republicans did the state a disservice by pushing through a bait-and-switch budget that lacks vision, leaves kids of working families without health care coverage and fails to create jobs.

Republicans passed a budget this week and, as usual, we did so without the help of Democrats. Despite the fact that we made no cuts in essential services while providing $150 million for statewide K-12 education funding, $21 million for universities and $100 million for health & welfare programs, there never seems to be enough spending to satisfy all their demands.