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

From 2003 to 2011, Bill Konopnicki honorably represented the 5th Legislative District of Arizona and was a champion of countless public policy issues, including health care, criminal justice reform, foster care, and education reform.

The Maricopa County Bar Association, a voluntary organization comprised of over 3,000 members of the Maricopa County legal community, urges you to vote ‘no’ on Proposition 115, SCR 1001.

Thank you for the informative article “Other states with top-2 primaries show mixed results” from the Sept. 21 issue of the Arizona Capitol Times. The piece presented a number of pros and cons of the top-two system based on both actual results and expectations from other states.

Our company evaluated the cost/payback to add solar panels to our auto mall building. The Federal Tax Credit helped shorten the time it would take to recoup our investment, but the Arizona tax credit — 10 percent of the purchase price — placed the project into the “let’s do it” category.

It has come to my attention that some members of the Arizona community are “warning” us that all Muslims are a threat to the United States.

I want to challenge Original North Phoenix Tea Party founder Wes Harris’ assertion in the article “Tea Party leader says all Muslims a ‘threat’ to U.S.; seeks recall of McCain” from the July 27 issue of the Arizona Capitol Times that Americans need to be concerned about the loyalty of Muslim Americans. Here is a story from my own experience.

The U.S. Supreme Court drew the line in what is and is not a state’s role in immigration enforcement in both the Legal Arizona Workers Act (Employer Sanctions) and SB1070 opinions.

The Democratic Party has been foolish in its rush to question and attack U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake’s commitment to civil and human rights, all in the name of defending black South Africans. The argument offered up by the party that most black Americans hold membership in today, sadly reminds many of those same blacks of the positions the party had taken in the 1940s and 1960s.

David Martin’s June 8 guest opinion article, “Transportation funding is neither Democrat nor Republican — it’s American,” which supports 2004’s Proposition 400 imposition of a 20-year, half-cent sales tax in Maricopa County to fund regional transit projects, is misguided.

As a lifelong Republican activist, I have consistently tried to get the Republican Party to be a stronger force for individual liberty. I believe that if the Republican Party has a future, that future depends on its adoption of libertarian views — fiscal conservatism is not enough. While there are some limited government positions that both libertarians and conservatives agree on, we need a revolutionary strategy to combat the advancement of socialism under the current administration in Washington.