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Legislators drop plans to give child welfare investigators police powers
Lawmakers have tabled language granting investigators with the Office of Child Welfare Investigations police powers in a limited scope.
2 child welfare investigators were fired over resumes
Two investigators fired from state Office of Child Welfare Investigations worked for months on child abuse cases after providing false or incomplete information to get hired.
Optimistic Biggs expects Brewer to accept Senate’s budget package
The Arizona Senate approved a $9.18 billion fiscal 2015 budget Thursday evening, a proposal supported exclusively by Republican lawmakers.
Budget amendment may portend agreement on state spending
Senate Republican leaders have agreed to give Gov. Jan Brewer much of what she wants in a spending plan to avoid a gridlock on the new budget.
Brewer attempts prudent approach to the new budget
Gov. Jan Brewer speaks proudly of her role in lifting the state out of the massive deficit she inherited in 2009. And with her final budget proposal, she seems intent on making sure her successor doesn’t have to say the same thing.
Quotes of the week
The most outstanding quips, gibes and utterances from Arizona's political scene this week.
Advocates say Brewer CPS plan is only first step to reform
Gov. Jan Brewer’s plan to turn Child Protective Services into a standalone division that reports directly to her office received broad support following her State of the State address. But advocates, experts and lawmakers warned it is only a first step in reforming the troubled agency.
Legislature needs to make assisting the unemployed a top priority
While we rightly have concern over the welfare of children in the more than 6,000 cases that Child Protective Services failed to investigate, imagine what the reaction would be if 150,000 people in Arizona went missing and there was no investigation.
Judge rules that senator’s hearings must be closed to public
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Cari A. Harrison denied the Arizona Capitol Times’ request that hearings regarding allegations of child abuse against Sen. Rick Murphy be opened to the public.
Team poring over uninvestigated CPS cases finds most are routine
The team assigned to check on the safety of children associated with abuse calls that went without investigation has found no “significant’’ cases after seeing more than 2,000 children in the first month of work.
Lawmaker targets early childhood education money to fund CPS
A senior Republican legislator wants to use tobacco-tax dollars to help fund the embattled Child Protective Services, which was recently rocked by revelations that it ignored more than 6,000 cases of abuse and neglect over several years.
CPS crisis keeps troubled agency in spotlight
Money was beginning to flow again to Child Protective Services after the economic downturn of the last decade. But the public disclosure on Nov. 21 that more than 6,000 calls into the Child Abuse Hotline were set aside without an investigation evaporated any illusion that CPS was changing for the better.
