by admin | Sep 30, 2025 | Misc, News and Updates
Freedom-loving, car-driving residents of Arizona have long been fighting the constricting “road diets” local government officials, city planners, and corrupt bureaucrats have pushed for years. Proponents of these diets claim that by tearing out perfectly good vehicle lanes, everyone will somehow be safer, healthier, and probably save the planet too.
For those of us who live under the blazing Arizona sun, we recognize this as foolishness. Road diets have not been successful accomplishing any of the goals their proponents claim they will. Instead, the result is that the streets become more congested, you’re spending more time on the road, emergency vehicles have a harder time getting around, and everyone is mad.
Luckily the U.S. Department of Transportation under the leadership of President Trump has promised to stop funding this nonsense. After all, if local city councils are dumb enough to waste money ripping up perfectly good roads, they shouldn’t be able to use everyone else’s tax money to do it.
Of course, unsurprisingly, the residents of those very cities often don’t want their own tax money to go to ripping up the roads they rely upon. One such city is the tiny town of Page, Arizona, where in 2022, the city council approved the “Page Downtown Streetscape Master Plan” which calls for removing vehicle lanes along a 1.4 mile stretch of Lake Powell Boulevard in the heart of the downtown area. In the small northern town, residents stood up against these restrictive, dumb transportation ideas. Page is a community known for its tourism, with visitors bringing boats and heavy gear to explore Lake Powell. For locals, these roads are lifelines for tourism, commerce, and daily living, and Page residents aren’t willing to surrender any more of their precious infrastructure.
The council claims removing two of the four lanes will magically create MORE foot traffic, which in turn will generate more revenue for businesses in that area. Councilmember David Auge has even written in his list of priorities a goal to reduce lane widths stating that Lake Powell Boulevard can only be improved if it is narrowed.
But residents haven’t accepted that. A strong voice against the Page road diet, founder of the Page Action Committee and current Page Councilmember, Debra Roundtree, said:
“The proposal to reduce Lake Powell Boulevard from five lanes to three narrow lanes with back-out parking threatened numerous established businesses. Some owners considered relocating off the mesa to the Navajo reservation. Despite being vital to the community for decades, many businesses felt overlooked by city council members and the Chamber of Commerce, who suggested they move their businesses because they did not belong on Main Street. Concerns voiced by business owners about the negative effects of these changes were ignored, risking further economic decline as tourists would have avoided Page’s downtown sector, choosing to patronize businesses located off the mesa.”
This battle has been brewing for years, with residents scoring a meaningful win when the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that the initiative to vote on the proposed road diet was legislative in nature, affirming that voters, not just the council, have the final say. This ensures that the people of Page will decide whether their main road is stripped of lanes, a change that would make commuting and traffic flow more frustrating. The measure is set for the November 2026 ballot, giving residents the chance to save the road the city wants to demolish.
And now with their backs against the wall, the entrenched municipal political class has started saying the quiet part out loud: they don’t like it when voters have a say. Nancy Davidson of the AZ League of Cities and Towns went on record expressing how concerning it is that voters actually have a say in city projects. She warned that letting residents “second guess” city planning decisions will “wreak havoc” on all their perfect plans. How dare you citizens have opinions about your own streets? You are supposed to sit quietly, obey your council overlords, and let them destroy your infrastructure in peace!
Of course, Page is not alone in the road diet fight. Some cities aren’t as forthcoming as Page has been about removing vehicle lanes. Many have attempted to sneak these road diets into hefty general and transportation plans that often go unnoticed by most citizens. Also known as “Complete Streets” (ironic), municipalities such as Tucson, Scottsdale, Mesa, Gilbert, and most likely the city you live in, have already introduced or implemented measures to accommodate bicycles and public transit over cars.
Road diets are often repackaged with buzzwords like “traffic calming,” “lane narrowing,” or “Vision Zero,” but no matter how city planners and bureaucrats dress them up, they’re still the same failed experiment. In 2022, even in the extremely blue city of Philadelphia, residents expressed concerns of losing 2 of 5 traffic lanes on Washington Avenue. Their concerns regarded how that would affect emergency vehicles and add to congestion. This ultimately led to the plan being abandoned altogether. San Antonio, TX, Culver City, CA, and others have similarly had road diet plans introduced and then rejected or reversed due to the problematic nature of these plans. Arizona’s very own Scottsdale residents have fought city council in attempts to eliminate lanes along Thomas Road.
Arizona residents can learn from our northern tourist city of Page. Citizens do indeed have a say in their local road projects despite councils and bureaucrats trying to gaslight them otherwise. So, when these anti-car, virtue-signaling, road-diet-loving activists and city councils inevitably propose plans to remove vehicle lanes, and it is inevitable, take a page out of Page’s book. And let them know you like your car, you need your car, and you don’t want to bike or take a bus to get around.
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by admin | Sep 23, 2025 | Misc, News and Updates
Taxpayer-funded resources should not be used to tilt the scales of any election. This isn’t a difficult concept to understand. So, when Arizona State University (ASU) and PBS were exposed for colluding to help Katie Hobbs in the 2022 governor’s race against Kari Lake, we demanded accountability. We called on Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes and Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell to launch a full investigation. After all, Arizona law is clear that universities must remain impartial and neutral in election-related activities.
In a ridiculous decision, both Mayes and Mitchell refused to take action on our complaint. But this battle is far from over.
The Illegal Use of Public Funds
This all began back in 2022 when Katie Hobbs was ducking just about everyone during her campaign for governor, most especially Kari Lake. It culminated in Hobbs’ refusal to debate Lake on Arizona PBS. From there, the process should’ve been simple. According to long-standing Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission (AZCCEC) rules, Kari Lake should have been provided with airtime, and the AZCCEC planned to do just that. But hours before Lake’s interview was scheduled to take place, the AZCCEC learned that Arizona PBS went behind their back to schedule an exclusive interview with Katie Hobbs—moving them to postpone Lake’s interview.
Then, last month, a series of emails came to light revealing that ASU leaders including President Michael Crow, former Arizona Republic publisher Mi-Ai Parrish, and Arizona PBS leaders allegedly colluded to jettison the debate rules to help Hobbs. This was a blatant and illegal use of taxpayer funds, and that’s why we filed a Hatch Act complaint with Mayes and Mitchell against ASU. But in a shocking and shameful decision, both decided against taking action.
Mayes and Mitchell Abdicate Their Responsibility to Taxpayers
In her response to our complaint Arizona AG Kris Mayes claimed to have a conflict of interest because she supposedly represents ASU. But that’s laughable. Mayes has never seemed to have a problem attacking the Department of Water Resources or going after the Department of Education over Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA). Did you notice that? She only seems to claim a conflict of interest when it suits her political appetite. Additionally, Mayes was employed by ASU as a professor. Could it be that she has a financial interest in protecting the guy who signed the front of her checks? Hmmm…
Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell was also a big disappointment, stating that her office simply “isn’t interested” in our complaint.
Isn’t interested? We have evidence of taxpayer-funded organizations allegedly colluding to help one gubernatorial candidate over another. And her office won’t even bother to look at it? This is outrageous! Either Mitchell’s office is afraid of ASU, or she is ok with the illegal use of taxpayer resources because it targeted a politician that her office didn’t like. In both scenarios, she appears to be giving the green light for any political subdivision to break the law and engage in electioneering since apparently her office has no interest in investigating these cases.
So while both have decided not to investigate, we believed a response to their failure to act was appropriate, so we sent a letter to both offices outlining why their decision to roll over for ASU was wrong on both the facts and the law.
We’re Not Giving up The Fight
While Kris Mayes and Rachel Mitchell may be content to abandon their responsibilities to Arizona taxpayers, we won’t give up the fight. That’s why we have referred our complaint to Mohave, Yuma, and Pinal County. We believe all three counties retain jurisdiction over this matter and we are hopeful their offices will take the issue much more seriously.
The people of Arizona deserve to know that our public universities and media will be prohibited from any more collusion in future elections. That begins with accountability for both ASU and PBS. And we are hopeful that these county attorneys will be much more interested in upholding the law than Mayes and Mitchell have shown.
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Arizona needs to have a unified voice promoting economic freedom and prosperity, and the Free Enterprise Club is committed to making that happen. But we can’t do it alone. We need YOU!
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by admin | Sep 9, 2025 | News and Updates
It was Biden’s biggest “accomplishment.” The so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which he later admitted had nothing to do with inflation (it actually did, just not in the direction the name suggested) but was really about dumping billions (really trillions) into subsidizing the green new scam. It was the biggest acceleration towards the “Net Zero” climate scam resulting in utilities across the country, especially here in Arizona, spamming the grid with unreliable energy generation such as solar, wind, and battery storage, driving up rates for utility customers while shattering reliability.
And President Trump promised on the campaign trail that he would terminate it on day one, instead committing to unleash American energy dominance, “drill, baby, drill”, and slash harmful regulations standing in the way of building affordable baseload generation. The recently passed “One Big Beautiful Bill” was the avenue to do the first.
What finally made it through Congress and was signed into law on July 4th terminated tax credits for electric vehicles, “energy efficient” home improvements, and residential solar this year. As for the much larger credits, those subsidizing grid scale solar and wind farms, it’s much more complicated.
The initial version coming out of the House came the closest to accomplishing what President Trump wanted. But in the Senate, things began to change. A critical element of the rollback in the House was a requirement that a project would have to “commence construction” within 60 days and be placed in service by 2028 to be eligible, when President Trump would still be in office. But this requirement was removed in initial Senate drafts, allowing, as energy expert Alex Epstein noted, for subsidies to continue until Trump’s 94th birthday.
What ended up passing was neither as bad as the initial Senate drafts, nor as strong as the House version. Instead of a “commence construction” and “placed in service” requirement to obtain the credits, the projects would either have to be placed into service by 2027 or “commence construction” within the next year. But that left a big question: what does “commence construction” mean?
Under the Obama administration, the Treasury Department had a definition that captured any project that spent at least 5% of their total costs. As Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling of Always On Energy point out, that would be like having a $2,500 bathroom remodeling project, purchasing a $125 vanity online, and considering yourself to have “commenced construction.” And, in the context of green new scam credits, that would mean projects could run to the trough and gulp up massive subsidies in the next few months that last for 10 years, simply by spending some money and not even touching the dirt once.
Thankfully, following passage, President Trump issued an executive order titled, “ENDING MARKET DISTORTING SUBSIDIES FOR UNRELIABLE, FOREIGN CONTROLLED ENERGY SOURCES” to prevent this language from being gamed to spam the grid with costly and unreliable “renewables.” Last month, the Treasury published that guidance, removing the 5% safe harbor, instead requiring construction of a “significant nature” before qualifying for credits. Meaning they would have to do things that actually resemble beginning construction – pouring concrete footings, building support structures for solar panels, etc… And they excluded all of the expenses these projects were likely counting on – environmental studies, grading, planning, etc…
If strictly enforced, this guidance could protect billions in tax dollars from being wasted on worthless projects around the country. Here in Arizona, dozens of projects are in the queue seeking to cover BLM lands to build massive solar, battery, and solar plus battery projects. Now to qualify for the credit, they will have to begin substantial work by June of next year, while also facing scrutiny from Secretary Burgum, who now must personally review and approve every proposed project. Already, the left is crying about projects in Arizona that will no longer be qualified to gobble up subsidies.
This is a huge step in the right direction. The Green New Scam has already cost taxpayers and ratepayers hundreds of billions and devasted grids across the country with alarming reliability concerns. Now it’s imperative that the Trump administration continue to hold a strict interpretation of the new guidance, that Secretary Burgum hit the brakes on approving any new projects, and that here in Arizona, our elected officials at the Corporation Commission take up the mantle to prevent utilities from raking up subsidies so they can later burden ratepayers with more rate hikes and blackouts.
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by admin | Sep 2, 2025 | News and Updates
If Katie Hobbs is thinking about what to do after her time as Governor is up, one option would be to test her skills in the Hide and Seek World Championships. After all, she proved during the 2022 gubernatorial election campaign that it’s what she’s best at.
After dodging any request to debate her opponent Kari Lake during her campaign, Hobbs also ducked reporters who dared to question her about it. She even hid in a restaurant bathroom after another reporter asked her why she didn’t like discussing politics.
All this hiding should have resulted in a simple decision. According to long-standing Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission (AZCCEC) rules, an opponent (in this case Kari Lake) should have been provided with airtime when a candidate (in this case Katie Hobbs) refused to debate. And the AZCCEC planned to do just that. But hours before Kari Lake’s interview was scheduled to take place, the AZCCEC learned that Arizona PBS went behind their back to schedule an exclusive interview with Katie Hobbs—moving them to postpone Lake’s interview.
If you think all this reeks of collusion, you’re right. And now, a public records request has made it clear. Katie Hobbs wasn’t playing hide and seek alone. She was purposefully aided by leadership at Arizona State University (ASU) and at PBS.
Earlier this month, a series of emails came to light revealing that ASU leaders including President Michael Crow, former Arizona Republic publisher Mi-Ai Parrish, and Arizona PBS leaders allegedly favored Hobbs over Lake during the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election. Crow even went as far to say in one of his emails that jettisoning the debate rules to help Katie Hobbs was necessary because of “the fact that it is our venue and brand. We need structure…and format…….and….people who believe in elections as participants.”
How do you like that? The President of ASU thinks that he has the right to abuse his authority if it means stopping his political opponents. Hubris and arrogance appear to be endless at our ivory institutions.
All this represents a perfect storm of how our major educational institutions and the media are blinded by ideology, self-righteousness, and a sense of moral superiority. In their arrogance, they are willing to cross lines and break the very laws they accuse their opponents of violating. It’s outrageous. And we don’t have to stand for it.
Thankfully, Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen has called on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to investigate Arizona PBS for its role in this collusion and its blatant viewpoint discrimination and have their FCC license revoked. And just last week, we here at the Arizona Free Enterprise Club filed a Hatch Act complaint against ASU for using public resources to influence the 2022 gubernatorial election.
This was a blatant misuse of taxpayer-funded university resources to tilt the scales of a gubernatorial election. And Arizona law is clear that universities must remain impartial and neutral in election-related activities.
That’s why we’re calling on Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes and Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell to launch a full investigation and pursue all appropriate remedies, including civil penalties. ASU leaders can certainly enjoy their First Amendment right to express their opinions in their personal capacities during their free time. But they cannot be allowed to get away with using university resources—including compensated personnel time, university email systems, and other university assets—to subsidize their favored political candidates.
It’s time to ensure that the people of Arizona won’t be subjected to any more collusion from universities and the media in future elections. And that begins with accountability for both ASU and PBS.
Help Protect Freedom in Arizona by Joining Our Grassroots Network
Arizona needs to have a unified voice promoting economic freedom and prosperity, and the Free Enterprise Club is committed to making that happen. But we can’t do it alone. We need YOU!
Join our FREE Grassroots Action List to stay up to date on the latest battles against big government and how YOU can help influence crucial bills at the Arizona State Legislature.
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