Arizona Capitol Times Your Inside Source for Arizona Government, Politics and Business

The Arizona Supreme Court has refused to block the state from implementing budget cuts in services for thousands of developmentally disabled people.

Officials with one of Arizona's largest utilities predict the company will earn about $25 million less this fiscal year than forecast a few months ago. That could possibly result in rate increases, outsourcing of jobs and other options to manage the budget.

Arizona's prisons director has suspended the use of all outdoor holding cells while crews retrofit them to provide shade and water in the wake of an inmate's heat-related death.

TUCSON - A project that will use federal stimulus money to replace aging signs along Interstate 19 with ones marked with miles instead of kilometers has drawn so much criticism that it has been temporarily shelved by Gov. Jan Brewer.

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a religious discrimination lawsuit against the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office on behalf of a Muslim man who claims he lost his job as a jail detention officer over a fight to wear a beard.

Although Arizona's university system got approval to use state Lottery money to pay for $1 billion in construction projects, shovels have yet to hit the dirt and uncertainty about the state budget has caused many delays.

A news release touting the largest sale in the history of Arizona's land department made it sound like the boom would never end. The lone bid for the 269 acres in north Phoenix was $149.5 million, topping the previous record sale of state trust land of $135 million two years before.

MESA - Metro Phoenix's new light rail system has reached a milestone: April marked the first month in which it drew more than 1 million boardings.

The headline on the final print edition of Saturday's Tucson Citizen newspaper said it all: Our epitaph. The 48-page commemorative edition of Arizona's oldest daily newspaper was filled with individual columns from editors and staffers and highlights of the Citizen's 138 years of publication. It had a photo montage of the changing face of Tucson and a look at how the paper affected readers' lives.

The drug war in Mexico shouldn't be used as an excuse to try to restrict American gun rights, Sen. John McCain said May 15 at the National Rifle Association's convention.