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

A recent survey found that 71 percent of Arizona small-business owners oppose passage of Proposition 100, the one-cent sales tax on the May 18 special election ballot. Our entrepreneurs and job-creators know instinctively that this tax increase is a bad deal for Arizona and the start, not the end, of further bad public policy decisions.

Regardless of what you may have read elsewhere, no one has a decisive lead in the GOP primary race to replace Congressman John Shadegg, who is retiring at the end of the year. There have been three "polls" released by candidates in the race so far, and none of them are worth a lick.

Obama's Agriculture Secretary Vilsack and Interior Secretary Salazar recently met in Arizona with proponents and opponents of McCain- sponsored copper mine "land swap" legislation. Mine supporters participated in the meetings, as did opponents such as local townspeople, Native Americans and conservationists.

Dear Editor, Hello, my name is Vanessa Espinoza. I am a fifth grader at Napa Valley Language Academy in Napa, California. The reason I am writing to you is that my class is doing state reports and I have chosen your magnificent state, Arizona.

In the March 5 edition of the Arizona Capitol Times, three of the state's chambers of commerce ran a full-page ad on page 2 supporting the "short-term consumer financing industry," or in English, the payday lenders.

The special session continues today as lawmakers try to hammer out a deal on a budget plan that would eliminate the $700 million deficit remaining in the fiscal 2010 budget and another $2.6 billion deficit in the fiscal 2011 budget. Click here for updates.

Here we go again. I've lost track of what round this is over health care, but it doesn't change the fact that the federal government cannot "mandate" American citizens to purchase health care coverage.

I am a local political activist. I brought up the issue of child endangerment to the local press during the school override election for Apache Junction Unified School District. I also raised the issue during city council meetings and in the blogs.

H2244 was appropriately defeated because, by definition, removing print publication of public notices defeats the very purpose of public publication of the notices. The intention is to provide as broad a public notice to the citizens as is economically and reasonably feasible without preferring, by the method of publication, which group should get the information while intentionally not providing notice to other citizens.

If public notices were not published in newspapers, the community would not know about hearings, requests for proposals, companies that are forming and other actions by government.