The state is losing an icon and one of the last remaining cowboy legislators. Although Jack Brown's legacy in Arizona history has been cemented by his 36 years as a legislator, his departure will be bittersweet, as his effort to keep all state parks open fell by the wayside this year.

“If he doesn’t have the courage to vote his conscience, that’s Konopnicki’s problem, not mine.” — Sen. Russell Pearce, on Rep. Bill Konopnicki’s comments that he had problems with S1070, but felt obligated to vote for it nonetheless.

Two weeks after a House panel killed an effort to gut the state's public campaign finance system, a revised version of the measure to end Clean Elections was approved by the same committee.

With a few strokes of her pen, Gov. Jan Brewer approved massive cuts to health care funding and money the state gives to hospitals that treat large numbers of the poor and uninsured. While the move will be felt statewide, its most acute effect could be in the rural reaches of the state.

Arizona's elections chief says the state needs to overhaul a portion of its campaign finance laws to maintain an informed electorate after the nation's top court gave corporations the ability to pay for political advertisements.

Members of legislative budget committees on Feb. 18 saw how a secretive budget proposal that has been circulated around the Capitol in recent weeks stacks up to the budget plan offered by Gov. Jan Brewer, but much of the discussion focused on who drafted the authorless spending plan.

An effort to finance a new Spring Training stadium in Mesa for the Chicago Cubs through surcharges on rental cars and baseball tickets cleared its first hurdle today and won approval from a House panel, despite opposition from every other baseball team in the Cactus League and Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig.

An effort to give rural areas more control over filling vacancies in the Arizona Legislature was stymied by a House panel after lawmakers raised concerns that it would create more problems than it would solve.

The House today narrowly approved a bill that would close about half of the current year's budget deficit through borrowing.

Secret plotting to balance Arizona's wildly out-of-whack budget got started in an east Phoenix restaurant best described as a hole-in-the- wall. What better place than a hole-in-the-wall to work on a budget full of holes?