Arizona Politics News

by David Safier

This is about Maricopa and it's about community colleges -- a bit out of my usual physical and educational geography -- but really, it's about a rogue members of a Board trying to use the colleges for personal and political ends, educational mission be damned. And that kind of abuse of education is always in my blogging neighborhood.

A 55 page report (h/t to Dawn Teo for bring it to my attention) that came out recently raked the board over the coals. Among the charges, taken verbatim from the report:

• Attempting to control and censor student newspaper content.
• Asserting the right to control content in courses based on appropriateness according to the standards of individual board members.

by David Safier

You know that special session called by the Accidental Guv to do some budget cutting? It didn't quite work out that way.

A fragile budget deal collapsed in the Senate Thursday when Sen. Thayer Verschoor skipped the floor session and tied his support to a last-minute amendment to prevent cash-strapped agencies from hiking fees.

The House and Senate adjourned the special budget-balancing session until Monday in hopes that another deal can be worked out on the bills.

If at first at second at third at fourth you don't succeed . . . If you don't know what the hell you're doing, try, try, try again. It's bound to work out one of these times.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

When one of the Neocon Washington Post's deans of conservative apologists, George Will, sings someone's praises you know something dark and evil is afoot. It merits a closer examination of the object of his praise. (Will's columns should come with a disclosure statement).

Both of Arizona's two major newspapers The Arizona Republic and the Arizona Daily Star published the Washington Post opinion from George Will today. George F. Will - Unlawful Heath Reform?

In 2006, long before there was an Obama administration determined to impose a command-and-control federal health-care system, a young orthopedic surgeon walked into the Goldwater Institute here with an idea.

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office is asking for "personnel records and any and all hiring" records of seven county employees, including the personnel file of Internal Auditor Ross Tate.
The Nov. 12 information request came shortly after media reports that Tate’s office had determined that the Sheriff’s Office violated procurement procedures when sheriff's administrators earlier this year bought a $465,000 bus to transport inmates.
The request also comes as the auditor’s office is performing a review of a contract between a software company and the Sheriff’s Office; Tate declined to detail how that contract was selected for review, other than to say ...

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