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The Arizona Budget Coalition, representing organizations against a budget solution that relies heavily on spending cuts, proposed alternative means of raising revenue while lawmakers attended Day 2 of the special session.

The Arizona Geological Survey received part of a $338 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy on Oct. 29 to push geothermal energy production closer to reality.

More than 100 Arizona leaders will meet in Grand Canyon Village on Nov. 1-4, as part of the 95th Arizona Town Hall meeting, focusing on the fiscal problems of the state. The meeting, entitled "Riding the Fiscal Roller Coaster: Government Revenue in Arizona," is hosted by the Arizona Town Hall nonprofit organization, which organizes the event biannually.

Shirley McAllister stood outside Republican Sen. Jon Kyl's office, holding a blue folder and waiting to tell Kyl about her daughter-in-law, Linnea, who she said is suffering from a disease that went untreated because of a lack of health insurance.

GovDelivery, a leading provider of citizen-to-government information, has acquired the social networking site GovLoop, the government equivalent of Facebook.

The Hopi and Navajo nations have become central figures in a spat between two quarrelling political groups, the Sierra Club and Arizona Republican Party. Conflicting reports from the political organizations painted the picture in different ways. A Republican news release claimed that the Sierra Club was asked to leave the tribal nations, while the Sierra Club maintained that they are continuing to work with both tribes.

Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor will be hearing cases once more, sitting in for two days on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. One case involves a right-to-life group that operates at Arizona State University, and two others concerning voting rights.

Oct. 1 marked the centennial of the first day that electricity was permanently run to the Valley from Theodore Roosevelt Dam. The dam was still incomplete 100 years ago, and electricity wasn't even the main focus of the project. Hydro-electric power just happened to be a byproduct of water-delivery efforts.

The State Parks Board, with the approval of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, released about $7 million to finish nearly completed projects that were put on hold in February. About $50 million of the parks budget was swept as part of state budget cuts and about a third of the agency was laid off, said Ellen Bilbrey, a public information officer for the Parks Board. In the process, Heritage Fund grants were suspended.

Rep. Kyrsten Sinema has announced three tele-town hall meetings in to take place in October to hear residents' stories, concerns or ideas about health care reform. Sinema, a Phoenix Democrat, is the only Arizonan of the 32 state legislators on President Obama's White House Health Reform Task Force.