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

The federal government is considering up to $2 trillion in spending on efforts to boost the economy, including rebuilding aging infrastructure like highways and bridges, and investing in technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It’s critical that Arizona’s entire congressional delegation leverage any potential federal funding to only grow our state’s clean energy economy.

It is often said that if you have not been affected by cancer, you will be. We all have lost too many loved ones and now is the time that we can fight back. I hope our elected leaders will work together to get these multi-cancer early detection programs covered under Medicare so that we can start playing offense in our fight against Cancer.

We must do everything in our power to shut down Arizona’s machinery of death once more. By attempting to restart it, Attorney General Brnovich is acting against Arizona’s interests, and ignoring what years of research have made startlingly clear: the death penalty fails to deliver justice by every conceivable measure.

It’s time to do better for all of Arizona’s students, just like I did for my son, so they can truly be empowered as learners, workers and citizens.

The last commission meeting was a troubling example of failed leadership. Márquez Peterson now has a choice. She can double down on her mistake at the expense of Arizona’s future, or she show real leadership by putting the original Rules up for reconsideration in the next few weeks—and take the do over.

The Arizona Department of Health Services executed a swift and sane rollout of recreational marijuana just months after it was approved by voters. Now our attorney general has helped foster a way for these legal dispensaries to solve what was a highly problematic financial services challenge for the industry and a safety concern for the state.

The next time lawmakers want to know how certain bills would impact students and families, I suggest they reach out to real parents and not their union allies.

When our senators, Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly, contemplate D.C. statehood this year, criminal justice reform may not be top of mind. But D.C.’s disenfranchisement continues a standard of democracy only for some. The Americans who live in D.C. deserve statehood, and their voices and experience would benefit all of us.

All the more admirable is that Sinema is taking a stand on behalf of the basic tenants of our democracy: compromise, input from both parties, regardless of who is in power, and open debate.

Commissioner Márquez Peterson’s energy-smart leadership has the Arizona Corporation Commission going in the right direction, making sure that Arizonans realize the full benefits of current energy market trends. Beyond being good for our wallets, it represents the most prudent, market-oriented, and conservative path forward for Arizona.