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

Gov. Jan Brewer is taking a page right out of former Gov. Fife Symington's playbook. And why not? It worked.

Arizonans watched Republican lawmakers and the governor fail multiple times last year to solve one of the biggest budget deficits in history and continue to push our state down the wrong track.

Sen. Russell Pearce has introduced a bill that would make elected county offices totally dysfunctional and far more expensive.

Based on Senator Burn's recent editorial in The Arizona Republic ("Conservative Calls for Sales-Tax Hike") it is apparent that we need to look to other leaders for solutions to our budget challenges. Burns labors mightily to create the impression that everything that could possibly be done to stem the tide of red ink has been done. This is false.

In 1990, a 31-year old man went into a Fry's grocery store. When no one was looking, he picked up a carton of cigarettes and walked quickly to the exit. All of this was captured on the store video, and he was apprehended in the parking lot with the carton of cigarettes and no receipt. This offense could have been prosecuted as a misdemeanor, given the value of the cigarettes ($16.95). A misdemeanor may carry up to six months in jail. However, the prosecutor at the time elected to charge it as a felony

Undeniably, one of the biggest issues of the day is how to reform our nation's health care system. It's a colossal task and one that's long overdue. The same can be said for mental health care in Maricopa County.

It doesn't take a DC insider to know that conservatives are in a battle for the soul for the Republican Party. It is a battle for the future of fiscal responsibility in America. It's a battle between the George W. Bush wing of the Republican Party and the Reagan/Goldwater conservatism that made our nation the strongest, most prosperous and freest in the world.

In 1998 Arizona voters decided that they should hold the power in the political process and enacted Clean Elections. The success of the Clean Elections program has been undeniable, with 70 percent of today's legislative and statewide officeholders participating in the Clean Elections system at least once.

Events of the past year have created a general belief that the traditional large law firm model is broken. The question is how to fix it.

As the Legislature debates proposals to raise taxes and proposals to cut taxes, how many Arizonans realize state taxes have been cut over and over again during the past two decades to the point that now our the state budget loses $1.5 billion a year?