by admin | Oct 30, 2025 | Arizona, News and Updates
The Green New Scam got its start in Arizona two decades ago when a 5-0 Republican Commission (including then Republican Kris Mayes) adopted the Renewable Energy Standard and Tarriff Rules, or the REST Rules. Among other things, most significantly it ushered in the first “renewable” mandates in our state, forcing utilities to obtain at least 15% of their power from “renewables.” Ratepayers have been paying the costs (over $2 billion) ever since.
The REST Rules had a target date: 2025. Well, it’s now 2025, and the utilities have not only met that mandate, but they have also voluntarily exceeded it. Now our current 5-0 Republican Commission has started the process of repealing them.
Repealing the REST Rules is important, but the targets have already been met, and the price has already been paid. Substantively, the repeal won’t really affect ratepayers all that much. Why? Because mandate or no mandate, our utilities are completely committed to going “Net Zero” by 2050, and so far, they’ve been allowed to do it.
Just look at what solar advocates tell the mainstream media: “[The Corporation Commission] are acknowledging integrated resource plans of the utilities that call for building a lot of renewables. They are not blocking the line [siting] approvals for certificates of environmental compatibility for renewables projects. They’re not disallowing the capital costs for these projects in rate cases.” In other words, they are approving Integrated Resource Plans littered with “renewables” that will cost tens of billions, will result in the closure of all Arizona’s coal generation in the next decade, and build barely enough natural gas to cover those closures. They are not blocking Green New Scam subsidized projects. And they are allowing the utilities to recover the costs of expensive solar and wind from ratepayers. That’s not just our assessment – that’s the solar lobby’s too.
The real cause of rising electricity costs and more double-digit rate hikes is not a 15% mandate; it’s the self-imposed “Net Zero” commitment. If a 15% renewable mandate has already cost ratepayers nearly $3 billion over the last 20 years, how much more will going 100%? The Commission knows it’s at least $6 billion, because that is what their independent cost analysis told them it would cost just a few years ago. In reality, the number is far higher – $42.7 billion just for APS customers. If the high cost alone wasn’t bad enough, Net Zero also means California (or Spain, or Germany, or Hawaii) style blackouts.
Over the last 5 years, these dangerous climate commitments have shaped the utilities’ Integrated Resource Plans, which in turn have shaped their rigged “All Source” Request for Proposals, finally leading to double digit rate hike requests so that ratepayers can foot the bill. In fact, the result of the most recent RFP process for APS resulted in 93% of new generation coming from solar, wind, and battery storage. Only 7% is new natural gas capacity. And when you look at the most recent Resource Plans the four largest utilities in the state (APS, SRP, TEP, and UNS), in the next 15 years we will get a measly net increase of 751 MW of dispatchable power compared to 23,364 MW from “renewables.” That’s 31 times more “renewables” than reliable and dispatchable power, while energy demand is expected to explode. That is an energy crisis.
Though the Arizona Corporation Commission should repeal the REST Rules, we will still face major energy shortfalls unless those rules are replaced with necessary and overdue reforms. Reforms like prohibiting utilities from having climate commitments at all, ensuring Resource Planning prioritizes affordability and reliability and not carbon emission reductions, and that utilities have truly competitive All Source Request for Proposals to get the lowest cost, most reliable energy, not Green New Scam subsidized projects.
The Arizona Free Enterprise Club has filed public comments to the Arizona Corporation Commission in the docket for the REST Rule repeal in support of these reforms. The Commission is accepting public comment until November 15th.
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by admin | Oct 28, 2025 | Arizona, Misc, News and Updates
OFFICIAL RECOMMENDATION FROM THE ARIZONA FREE ENTERPRISE CLUB: The Arizona Free Enterprise Club recommends that Maricopa County voters vote NO on Proposition 409, the $898 million bond proposal from Valleywise Health.
It was just over 10 years ago, in 2014, that Valleywise Health placed a $935 million bond on the ballot. It was approved by voters and will continue to be paid by Maricopa County homeowners through at least 2038. Now, Valleywise Health is proposing to stack another $898 million on top, for another 30 years.
First and foremost, taxpayers deserve accountability, transparency, and results when saddled with nearly a billion dollars in debt, before being burdened with even more. Stacking bonds is terrible tax policy and is indicative of poor financial management on the part of ValleyWise Health. Prop 409 should include substantive reforms in the way of transparency, accountability, and guardrails for how debt can be used as to prevent burdening property owners with more property tax hikes.
Secondly, the last bond proposal was on an even year ballot, which comes with much higher turnout. The Arizona Free Enterprise Club has long opposed off-cycle elections, where school boards, cities, and other local taxing jurisdictions will place their bond and override proposals, leading to higher turnout from those favorable to more taxes, and lower turnout from those opposed. A proposal like Prop 409, which would indebt Maricopa County homeowners to the tune of nearly a billion dollars (in addition to the existing $935 million debt) over the next 30 years, should never be decided in an odd-year election.
Finally, it is a county-wide all mail election, meaning there are no polling locations for voters who prefer to cast their ballot in person. Consistent with the second point, a proposal so large is deserving of an on-cycle election with multiple polling locations where voters can choose to mail in their ballot, drop it off, or show up in-person to fill out their ballot and tabulate it themselves.
For these reasons, Proposition 409 should be rejected by Maricopa County voters.
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by admin | Oct 23, 2025 | Arizona, Elections, News and Updates
In 2022, the Arizona legislature passed—and then-Governor Ducey signed into law—a landmark election integrity bill: HB 2492. Authored by the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, the law bolsters safeguards to our election process by requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, ensuring that only U.S. citizens are voting in our elections.
It’s commonsense legislation that is popular with the public and a blueprint for other states looking to adopt nearly identical bills. And why wouldn’t it be? U.S. citizens cannot go into France, Australia, or any other country throughout the world and vote in their elections, so why should citizens from other countries be allowed to vote in our elections?
Yet immediately after HB 2492 was passed, a consortium of liberal organizations and the Biden Justice department sued to stop the law from going into effect. Now, after multiple trips to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, one of which included a bizarre ruling that required an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to let Arizona enforce our proof of citizenship requirements for the 2024 election (which we won), the entire law will now be going to the nation’s highest court.
We are confident that the Supreme Court will uphold the law in its entirety, but one issue about the litigation has been simmering beneath the surface: Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes.
After taking office in January 2023, Mayes joined the lawsuit (which includes the state legislature) to “defend” HB 2492. But throughout the process, it’s been pretty obvious that her legal team has been doing as little as possible to protect the law from the onslaught of litigation from the left. When you follow the money, that doesn’t come as much of a surprise.
Of the dozen or so liberal groups that filed suit to stop the law, several spent huge sums of money in 2022 to get Kris Mayes elected as Arizona’s Attorney General. Just look at this list of donations to Mayes’ campaign right here. It’s riddled with groups that either give money to Mi Familia Vota (the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit against HB 2492), receive money from the group, are partners with the group, or have positions that stand in opposition to any election integrity measure in general. Chief among them is Arizona Wins, a lobbying organization founded in 2011 to oppose election integrity measures and enforcement of immigration laws in our state. Mi Familia Vota has received tens of thousands of dollars from Arizona Wins. Does that sound like a conflict of interest to you?
The liberal Ninth Circuit ruled against HB 2492 earlier this year, and most recently, it rejected a request for a full review from the court (although an astounding 11 judges dissented). Now, the case should be fast-tracked to the U.S. Supreme Court once again. But surprise, surprise. Mayes’ office appears to be slow walking the appeal. And can you guess why? Mayes knows that if she can hold out long enough, it would prevent the Supreme Court from hearing the case until after the 2026 general election (when Mayes will be up for reelection).
At this point, it’s obvious that Kris Mayes is trying to play both sides. On the one hand, she wants to say that she defended a wildly popular law with citizens across our state. On the other hand, she wants to do everything she can to appease her liberal friends by sandbagging the case.
That leaves just one solution. It’s time for Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes to recuse herself from the defense of HB 2492 and let the legislature finish the job. The legal team representing the House and Senate is more than capable at handling the appeal and defending the law at the U.S. Supreme Court. And organizations like ours are more than happy to provide outside support to their legal efforts.
If she had any integrity, Mayes would be getting out of the way so the nation’s highest court can once again overturn the Ninth Circuit, return common sense to our voter registration process, and restore confidence in Arizona’s elections. Of course, given her history of politicizing the office with ridiculous lawfare that have resulted in embarrassing legal defeats, we suspect she will do everything she can to drive this lawsuit into a ditch.
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by admin | Oct 21, 2025 | Arizona, News and Updates
This November, Tucson voters will decide whether they would like to continue doubling down on Tucson’s failed policies that have invited rampant crime, made it impossible to navigate the city without extreme frustration, and drain its wealth and livability to pursue virtue-signaling but poverty-inducing policies. Or if they would rather get off the merry-go-round of insanity.
Prop 417 is the city’s updated 10-year general plan, and a ‘Yes’ vote continues the madness. A ‘No’ vote on Prop 417 is the only reasonable choice for anyone who wants to save Tucson from itself.
A Blueprint for Failure
“Plan Tucson” is essentially a bundle of every bad idea the city has produced over the past decade including the Housing Affordability Strategy for Tucson (HAST), People, Communities, and Homes Investment Plan (P-CHIP), Move Tucson the transportation masterplan, and the Tucson Resilient Together climate plan. Each of these plans has helped create the mess Tucson is in today. Codifying them into 14 goals and 190 policies through Prop 417 would simply lock in these failures in for another decade.
Crazy Climate Commitments
Take for example the city’s climate action plan published in 2023 which set the delusional goal of having 40% of Tucson residents to be walking, biking, taking public transit or “rolling” around the city by 2050. The plan includes a commitment to “net zero” by 2030 for government operations and by 2045 city-wide—including private residents and businesses.
To achieve this fantasy, the city plans to build out a massive transit agency that if they meet their targets of hiring 900 new people every year will eventually eclipse Raytheon as the largest employer in Tucson by more than double (despite collapsing ridership and a 100% taxpayer subsidy since fares were permanently eliminated in 2020.)
The plan requires residents to hold to a “Zero Waste” commitment to empty out the landfills, imposes new road diets, and even pays city employees to not use their cars. This list of insane ideas is also very very expensive, with a price tag of roughly $365 million.
Transportation Tyranny
The “Move Tucson” plan, as the foundation of transportation initiatives in Prop 417, is a shocking $13B cost over 20 years with the express purpose of building out “infrastructure” that serves everyone but drivers. Perhaps the most expensive element of the plan is their Complete Streets initiative which they adopted as an ordinance in 2021 (as an “emergency” order.) “Complete streets” is a cute way of saying narrowing or reducing road lanes to provide “mobility equity,” starving space for drivers to give equal space to all the other types of “transportation” that the vast majority of people don’t use and will never use unless coerced. Every new road must now be “remodeled” to serve the few at the expense of the many, worsening congestion and safety alike. They have even added another layer of intrusive oversight, making an already costly initiative of ripping out decent infrastructure even more cumbersome and bureaucratic.
Unaffordable Housing
And then there’s housing and development – guided by the same anti-driving, wouldn’t it be nice if we all lived in a 15-minute city – vision. Tucson’s Transit Oriented Development Handbook promote designs that “eliminate the need for personal vehicle use.” Its “best practice” for parking? Don’t provide it—or else put it somewhere inconvenient. The plan claims that done “right” mixed-use and transit-oriented development throughout the city will lead to “eliminating the need for personal vehicle use”.
Meanwhile, Tucson’s real housing problem is affordability: in 2023 only 38% of homes in the region were considered affordable to a family earning the area median income. Tucson’s idea of addressing the problem is more socialized housing schemes (paid by other Tucson residents who can barely afford their homes) and forced densification, waiving fees only for developers that commit to the city’s “equitable transit-oriented development” standards that force home buyers to submit to living in these carless communities.
The likely outcome? Artificial housing scarcity, higher prices, and more government control.
It’s All About Equity
Finally, the underpinning of the entire Tucson Plan is the city’s obsession with “equity.” Every initiative answers to the “Equity Index,” a bureaucratic checklist that prioritizes racial and demographic quotas over everything else. But like all communist utopian visions – Tucson’s ideological engineering has only made everyone in the city worse off.
The Bill Always Comes Due
If Prop 417passes, it will cost Tucson voters billions- as every utopian experiment does. But this won’t be new for the city despite voters’ opposition. Tucson has tried this before: Prop 414, a proposed sales tax hike for climate spending—rejected by voters. Prop 412, a “franchise agreement” turned climate slush fund—rejected again.
Just Say No, Tucson
So maybe there is hope that Tucson residents will reject another one of Tucson’s logrolled propositions. Voters should ‘Vote No’ on Prop 417 and send another message to city leadership that Tucson doesn’t want another climate-crusading, anti-driver, equity-obsessed bureaucratic plan to ruin Tucson.
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.
by admin | Oct 16, 2025 | Arizona, News and Updates
Ever since Arizona passed universal school choice, the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program has been the target of the Red for Ed teachers’ union, Democrat lawmakers and their corporate media allies. They demand transparency and accountability for alleged abuse of ESA dollars—all while scandal after scandal continues to pop up in our state’s K-12 public schools.
We saw it at the beginning of the year when the Isaac Elementary School District (IESD) was placed under a state receivership after it was determined that it had a budget shortfall of over $12 million! And this wasn’t a surprise. The Auditor General had been sounding the alarm on IESD’s mismanagement of funds for five years!
But where was the corporate media? Where was the digging? Where was the series of articles and threads on X exposing the corruption?
We got none of it. Instead, we have certain Red For Ed reporters, like Craig Harris, attacking Arizona’s popular ESA program with liberal talking points about unspent funds and alleged waste and abuse.
But if the failures of IESD weren’t enough, now we have the sordid financial tale of Tolleson Union High School District, a story so scandalous that it should make every taxpayer’s blood boil.
Bailouts, Conflicts of Interest and Stonewalling Public Record Requests
About eight months ago, Tolleson Union High School District (TUHSD) popped up in the news when they bailed out the aforementioned Isaac Elementary School District after its money woes were revealed. The transaction appeared legally questionable at the time, and after some digging by the legislature, it turns out that Tolleson is entangled in their own web of fiscal malfeasance and cronyism.
In a July hearing, TUHSD Superintendent Jeremy Calles revealed that he holds two professional roles, one as a consultant and the second as district superintendent. But here’s where it gets particularly fun. Calles not only serves as a consultant for dozens of school districts across the state, but he allegedly had a consulting relationship with Isaac Elementary School District before his district decided to bail them out. And the conflicts of interest don’t end there. At least two TUHSD employees appear to be on the payroll for Calles’ consulting business.
In an attempt to gain transparency, State Rep. Matt Gress followed up on the hearing with a reasonable public records request seeking two years of financial records from TUHSD, including purchase orders, contracts, and payments to vendors. But instead of complying, the school district responded by refusing to release electronic records and instead imposing more than $26,000 in fees for hard copies!
This is outrageous! TUHSD is behaving as if they are not accountable to anyone and that our lawmakers don’t have a right to know how the district is spending the money being appropriated to them by the state legislature. The irony and hypocrisy are ripe, especially considering the endless attacks against ESAs and a new revelation about how much superintendents are making around the state.
It Pays to Be Superintendent of TUHSD
While the state was busy untangling what transpired with the Isaac Elementary bailout, the Goldwater Institute released a report in September revealing the lucrative salary and compensation packages received by district superintendents throughout Arizona. Along with high base salaries, the report uncovered perks including car allowances, performance bonuses, generous personal and vacation leave banks that can be cashed out, and funding for private retirement accounts on top of their state pension benefits.
Guess which school superintendent is the highest paid in Arizona? That would be none other than TUHSD Superintendent Jeremy Calles, who makes nearly $500K per year in salary and perks!
But surely TUHSD must be performing far better than all the others to earn this type of compensation. Nope. Most of the schools in Tolleson are receiving “B” grades from the state, with Math and English proficiency rates below statewide and peer district marks. Also, TUHSD is also only the 16th largest district in the state.
Of course, most of this financial information had been hidden from the public, and the only reason we know about it now is because Goldwater spent months doggedly pursuing these documents. We would have never known about this if we left it up to the districts themselves or our AWOL corporate media that intentionally avoids stories that make their Red for Ed pals look bad.
$80 Million for an Indoor Domed Stadium!?
If the exorbitant administrative salaries, conflicts of interest, reckless bailouts and petty demands for record request reimbursement weren’t bad enough, it was discovered just last week that TUHSD is in the process of building an indoor football stadium that will cost taxpayers at least $80 million dollars! All under the direction of Superintendent Jeremy Calles.
During testimony at the Joint Legislative Audit Committee (JLAC), a former principal that worked at Tolleson UHSD revealed that Superintendent Calles has been lusting after this indoor stadium for years, with him going as far as trying to manipulate enrollment numbers in order to build his domed white elephant.
When questioned on why he thought it was appropriate to spend such a huge sum of money on a completely unnecessary project, he defended it by saying that “If there is any state that should have more domed stadiums…it is definitely this one.”
Contemptible may be the only word to describe this fiasco.
So, Who Really Lacks Transparency – ESAs or District Schools?
Despite all of this obscene waste, corruption, fraud and abuse found in just one of our school districts, the corporate media, Red for Ed and Governor Katie Hobbs remain obsessed with attacking the ESA program, claiming that it is unaccountable and lacks transparency.
The undeniable truth is that Arizona’s ESA program already requires an incredible amount of financial reporting from parents, and audits have turned up only a tiny percentage of actual abuse and fraud that totaled less than $1 million. Plus, when abuse is found, parents are forced to repay the funds and can even be prosecuted.
District schools by comparison to ESAs have a fraction of the financial reporting requirements. And you are dreaming if you think that Superintendent Calles (or any other administrator for that matter) will ever be forced to repay taxpayers for stonewalling record requests or for spending money on boondoggle domed stadium projects that were hidden from the public.
The reality is that ESAs are far more transparent and accountable than any school district in the state. And if the opponents of the program don’t believe that to be true, perhaps it’s time to pass legislation next year that requires every district in our state to adhere to the same reporting rules as ESAs, including repayment of misspent funds by school administrators and possible prosecution. After all, if the requirements for ESAs are as lax as its opponents claim, then meeting this standard should be no problem, right?
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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