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

Lawmakers will be facing quite the conundrum in 2010 - how to raise more revenue for the cash-strapped state without raising taxes. The Republican-led Legislature stymied attempts by Gov. Jan Brewer to put a sales tax increase on the ballot, and outright rejected the idea of passing a tax increase itself.

The Arizona Department of Corrections has disciplined, dismissed or accepted resignations from 16 employees in connection with the death of a female inmate left in an outdoor enclosure and a strategy that used such enclosures as an alternative to force with prisoners, the agency's interim director said Sept. 22.

You don't have to work at a resort or sell souvenirs to be hurt by the downturn in Arizona's tourism industry, a group of Valley leaders said Sept. 22. "Do you know a teacher, a police officer, a firefighter, a librarian?" Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon said. "They're all dependent on tourism because of the sales and property tax it provides."

Aggressive, agile, smart. Arizona needs to be all of these to build on international business growth that has defied the economic downturn, Gov. Jan Brewer said Sept. 22. "Exports create jobs, and I encourage and applaud businesses that are ready to enter the global marketplace," Brewer said in her International State of the State Address to the Phoenix Committee on Foreign Relations.

Arizona's unemployment rate remained fairly steady in August, dipping slightly to 9.1 percent as back-to-school jobs offset losses in retail and leisure and hospitality, the state Department of Commerce announced Sept. 17.

Banning texting while driving would make Arizona safer, but such a law would be prohibitively difficult to enforce and would fail to address the wider issue of distracted driving, the director of the Governor's Office of Highway Safety said.

Gov. Jan Brewer on Sept. 18 approved the use of $50 million in federal stimulus money to help pay the salaries of Department of Corrections officers. The $50 million is the first portion awarded by Brewer from a pool of stimulus money called the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund Government Services Fund. The $185 million pool can be used by the governor for essentially any government services she wants.

Vince Morrison was one of the first in line to get a digital book player for the blind. As a veteran of World War II in Europe, he earned it. At 89, Morrison is legally blind. The Mesa resident now listens to books on tape, and soon he'll have access to the digital equivalent. He gets his recordings free from the Arizona State Braille and Talking Books Division. It administers the federally funded talking-books program on behalf of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.

Assistant Attorney General Vince Rabago acknowledged that he is among the ever expanding group of people who are eying the 2010 AG's race. Rabago, an assistant AG in Attorney General Terry Goddard's Tucson office, has not yet filed an exploratory committee or made a decision to run, but said he will decide by the end of the year.

Felecia Rotellini, a former state prosecutor and recently departed superintendent of the Arizona Department of Financial Institutions, filed an exploratory committee to seek the Democratic nomination for attorney general in 2010.