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

Isn’t it bad enough to lose your job without losing your employer-based health insurance along with it?

In the COVID-19 era, the most mundane of activities—like going to the grocery store or gas station—can feel perilous. Every surface we touch could host a virus we can’t see but we know can be deadly. But what if that wasn’t the case? What if we could make everyday surfaces into virus killers? We can and we should.

After heaping contempt and suspicion on the families participating in Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program for years, partisan activists should acknowledge that their diagnoses of the program’s ailments have been wrong, and their solutions poorly prescribed.

As the terrible burdens and risks posed by the COVID-19 pandemic have changed everything in our daily lives, we know that our awareness of the importance of lung health is only growing.

Two out-of-state policy advocates from the Martin Center in North Carolina recently wrote in support of the Arizona Attorney General’s bid to expand his authority. These North Carolinians urged that we allow the Attorney General to exercise power beyond Arizona Constitutional authority and gubernatorial and Legislative direction. The limits of Attorney General authority has been settled law in Arizona for decades.

Two and a half weeks after Governor Doug Ducey funded the 211 hotline program in the midst of the coronavirus, a naturopathic medical student called for funding the 211 hotline program in the pages of this paper. Apparently, the hotline - which refers callers to a variety of services, including food banks, shelters and other generally available assistance - only counts if it includes referrals to abortion clinics.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic reminds us all of the essentiality of prescription medications in public health protection. We Americans are counting on our clinical pharmaceutical scientists and medicinal chemists to discover a safe and effective remedy for the pernicious respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.

On March 31, the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal filed an amicus brief urging the Arizona Supreme Court to hear a case on the issue of tuition increases at the state’s public universities. The case, initiated by Attorney General Mark Brnovich, alleges that the Arizona Board of Regents has violated the state’s constitutional mandate that university “instruction…shall be as nearly free as possible.”

A critical component of our economic recovery is wages. Our communities can start this long process through targeted investment in our workers.

If the Arizona Department of Corrections continues to be reactive instead of proactive in its preparations for COVID-19, there will be a killing field in the prisons. Folks sentenced to just a few years will be handed down a death sentence, not from a jury or a judge but from sheer negligence.