by admin | Feb 24, 2026 | Arizona, News and Updates
It’s not an accident that the top issue talked about by politicians these days is affordability. Over the last 5 years the cost of pretty much everything has gone through the roof, largely caused by the trillions in reckless spending by Joe Biden and the Democrats in Washington.
Taming inflation must remain our top economic priority, and the good news is that Arizona Republicans are taking meaningful steps to bring costs down. After adopting a 2.5% flat income tax under Governor Doug Ducey in 2022, state lawmakers have fought to slash grocery taxes, residential rental taxes and eliminate regulations that are driving up the cost of energy and housing.
Yet while the Republican controlled legislature is doing everything it can to make sure hardworking taxpayers get to keep more of their hard-earned dollars, municipalities throughout Arizona are passing an avalanche of tax and fee increases that are costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
Last July, Phoenix enacted a half cent sales tax increase that will cost taxpayers an additional $250 Million. This came six months after Gilbert passed their own half-cent sales tax increase. Not wanting to be left out of the tax hike fun, both Surprise and the Town of Maricopa passed their own sales tax increases as well.
Though the sales tax increases have been bad, the utility rate increases may have been worse. Countless jurisdictions have passed utility rate hikes in the last two years, including Mesa, Goodyear, and Chandler. Perhaps the biggest offender has been the Town of Gilbert, where residents experienced sticker shock as water bills exploded, with rate hikes of 50% in 2024, 25% in 2025, and an additional 25% that will go into effect in April of 2026.
In defending these endless tax and fee increases, the excuses from the cities remain the same. Unexpected budget “shortfalls” and reckless cuts in shared revenue from the state are forcing cities to raise rates. Or so they say.
These excuses all fall apart upon closer examination.
Take Phoenix for example. Between FY23 and FY26, Phoenix’s budget grew by nearly $4 billion, reflecting significant expansion rather than fiscal contraction. During this same period, the city faced scrutiny over multimillion-dollar expenditures on private organizations such as Phoenix Pride Inc, Phoenix Film Foundation, and Mexican Baseball Fiesta LLC which clearly fall outside of core municipal priorities.
Looking ahead, between FY23 and FY29, Phoenix is expected to collect roughly $780 million more than its historical revenue trendline, while Tucson’s excess approaches $260 million. This largely suggests that spending decisions, not disappearing funds, are driving the pressure.
In Tucson, projects like Downtown Links ballooned from about $76 million to over $110 million, more than $34 million over budget and years behind schedule under the failed RTA plan, leaving taxpayers holding the bag to cover major cost overruns.
In FY2025, Glendale adopted a $1.48 billion budget, a 17% increase from the prior year. Within that growth, the city directed funds toward recreation and fitness amenities while revising hundreds of fees.
And while Gilbert has been raising its sales tax and doubling its water fees, they have prioritized discretionary amenities such as pickleball complexes, splash pads, and massive park expansions.
Across Arizona cities, taxpayer dollars are increasingly funneled into pet projects, beautification, and administrative growth. Over the past five years, municipal budgets statewide have grown by 32%, underscoring concerns about fiscal priorities.
Meanwhile, Urban Revenue Sharing has ballooned in recent years, contrary to the claims made by municipal lobbyists at the Capitol. After lawmakers increased their general fund distribution from 15% to 18%, municipalities are now receiving more than $1.4 billion from the state, which is hundreds of millions more than what they were projected to receive a few years ago. Research from the Common Sense Institute confirms that since 2020 Arizona cities have received over $7 billion in additional shared revenue from the state than originally anticipated, projected to surpass $11 billion by 2028.
It’s obvious that local governments don’t care about affordability or how the endless parade of tax and fee increases are harming Arizona families. The only question now is whether anything can be done to provide taxpayers with some relief.
The Arizona Free Enterprise Club has worked on several bills this session aimed at protecting taxpayers from excessive municipal tax, fee, and rate increases. HB4030 and HCR2052, both introduced by Representative Justin Olson, would impose a temporary four-year moratorium on new local cost hikes, placing a short-term check on escalating government burdens. The referral version (HCR2052) would provide voters the opportunity to decide the issue directly; should the bill face a veto from Governor Katie Hobbs. By halting these increases, the policy would create meaningful breathing room for Arizona families trying to manage rising expenses.
Unsurprisingly, many cities and towns have come out strongly against the moratorium, as it would curb their ability to continue raising taxes, fees, and rates. Numerous municipalities signed in opposition, including Phoenix, Prescott, Tucson, Apache Junction, Gilbert, and more than 20 others. Apparently, the idea of actually restraining spending and holding the line on costs is just too much for some local officials to handle.
Another bill, SB1745, introduced by Senator Jake Hoffman, establishes a structural guardrail on local transaction privilege tax increases, capping hikes at 2.5% per classification. Any proposal to exceed that cap would require voter approval, ensuring oversight. This only applies to municipalities with a population of 550,000 or more. AKA Arizona’s worst offenders, Phoenix and Tucson, that also happen to represent nearly a third of all residents in the state. The bill promotes transparency and accountability, giving taxpayers a clear voice before additional costs are imposed.
Looking at the facts, the answers are clear: state taxes have been cut year after year, and revenues continue to rise, even as cities claim shortfalls. Yet spending is outpacing windfalls, fueled by a growing appetite for nonmandatory projects. Localities aren’t interested in fiscal restraint, only in endless taxation.
That’s why the legislature must put HB4030 and SB1745 on Katie Hobbs’ desk, to protect local affordability for taxpayers. Should she stand in the way of urgently needed relief from relentless municipal increases, HCR2052 will put the decision in the hands of Arizona voters.
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by admin | Feb 17, 2026 | Arizona, News and Updates
It feels like just about everywhere you turn, politicians are inventing new ways to yank more money out of your wallet. There are property taxes, gas taxes, grocery taxes, and more. We’ve even seen cities and towns push their own tax, utility rate, and “fee” increases. (How are those water bills treating you, Gilbert?) And now, some states—like California and Massachusetts—are pursuing a tax that would charge you a fee for every single mile you travel in your vehicle.
So much for affordability.
Earlier this month, California’s legislature advanced AB 1421. If passed and signed by Governor Newsom, this bill would create a “road user charge” pay-per-mile system for our neighbors to the west. It also includes studying how to capture out-of-state vehicles as well in case you thought your trip to Disneyland couldn’t get any more expensive.
If you don’t think such a tax is possible, think again. Tracking, limiting, and taxing our vehicle miles traveled (VMT) has been a dream scenario for those pushing a radical environmental agenda for years. Tucked into the Inflation Reduction Act passed by the Biden administration was a pilot program for a VMT tax.
San Diego also explored something similar, proposing a plan in 2021 that would have charged motorists 4 cents per mile to pay for expanded bus service and rail in the region. Liberal politicians gushed over the proposal and even liked the idea of charging extra to high income households or on large vehicles they deemed to be not “eco-friendly.” But the plan was eventually stopped thanks to resounding opposition from citizens.
Then, last year, Massachusetts pushed for their own VMT tax—all in an effort to “encourage people to drive less” in order to meet net zero emissions by 2050.
Attempts to track, restrict and tax our vehicle miles traveled has become a realistic threat, which is why voters here in Arizona need to block this crazy mileage tax before politicians and bureaucrats try to pass it here.
That’s why in 2025, Arizona lawmakers took a huge first step to protect motorists from a California-style VMT by passing the Freedom to Move Act. This proposed ballot measure will give Arizonans the opportunity to ban any VMT tax/fee and ban any rule to monitor or limit your miles without your consent. If passed in November, our state will be the FIRST in the nation to prohibit the government from taxing, tracking, or limiting our vehicle miles traveled.
VMT taxes are a real threat right now. They hit rural families and long-distance workers the hardest. They create a data and tracking system to bill you for your driving—which is a direct threat to your privacy. They punish you for any form of driving you need or want to do. And they take even more money out of your wallet at a time when affordability is a significant issue throughout our state and country.
It’s time for Arizona voters to ban this outrageous tax on hardworking families in our state. Otherwise, California’s Orwellian tax-per-mile/privacy nightmare will creep in here.
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by admin | Feb 10, 2026 | Arizona, News and Updates, Propositions
On March 10, Pima County residents will decide whether to fund another 20-year, $2+ billion transportation plan after the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) failed to deliver on the last one. Two propositions will appear on their ballot this month related to this plan.
Proposition 418 would approve the new “RTA Next” transportation plan. Proposition 419 would extend the existing ½-cent sales tax to fund it. Both propositions must be passed for the plan to move forward. If approved, the new tax would begin April 1, 2026, just a few months before the original RTA plan officially expires in June.
The RTA is an independent taxing district specifically for Pima County. Its board is comprised of elected officials from local, tribal, and state governments that approve and oversee transportation projects. Back in 2006, voters were promised countywide improvements to roads, transit, and other infrastructure, funded by a 20-year timeline and a dedicated ½-cent sales tax increase. Fast forward to 2026, and several projects are unfinished, or never even started at all. Now, voters are being asked to extend the tax for another 20 years to finish what should have already been completed. That’s not a plan; it’s a bailout.
The project list for the RTA Next consists of multiple road improvements, bicycle infrastructure upgrades, transit improvements, and more. Many of these are the projects left unfinished during the first 20 years. They continue to blame their failures on Covid, the great recession of 2008, population growth not matching projections. The reality is that the actual problem is staring themselves in the mirror. As one longtime Tucsonan put it, the endless delays and mismanagement was caused by “chronic political dysfunction on the RTA board.” Tucson reworked projects midstream, let costs spiral, and is now shifting the financial fallout of those decisions onto taxpayers countywide.
Even if every project in RTA Next was worthwhile (spoiler alert, they are not), the RTA has already shown it cannot be trusted with another 20-year blank check. They had their chance. They failed. Repeating the same process and expecting a different result isn’t planning, it’s literally the definition of insanity. County residents are being asked to pay again, with no guarantee they’ll see meaningful benefits this time either.
Evidence of dysfunction within the RTA board was also clear in the ousting of the longtime RTA executive director. In June 2025, Farhad Moghimi was fired in a narrow 5–4 board vote. Critics claimed he favored unincorporated areas of Pima County over the City of Tucson, while Tucson officials complained that city residents were contributing a disproportionate share of tax revenue without seeing corresponding improvements.
Moghimi, who led the RTA since 2013, became the convenient scapegoat for two decades of delays and mismanagement. His replacement? Former Tucson city manager Mike Ortega, appointed as interim executive director, at a salary of $356,000, significantly higher than his predecessor’s. So much for accountability.
Opposition to RTA Next spans both sides of the aisle, though for very different reasons. Some on the left argue the plan is too car-centric and spends too much on roads rather than buses, bike lanes, and transit expansion in pursuit of climate goals. One critic even claimed it “fuels climate change.” Others complain it doesn’t spend enough on transit. The contradictions would be funny if taxpayers weren’t footing the bill. One headline even stated, “Opponents of the RTA Next proposal say that it spends too much on roadways and not enough on buses.”
But the most overlooked issue is who really gets hurt by this plan, the residents outside the City of Tucson. RTA Next locks in the same flawed funding model that prioritizes urban transit spending while pulling tax dollars from the entire county. Roughly a quarter of the plan’s funding is earmarked for transit, much of it for fare-free systems already heavily subsidized by Tucson’s general fund. The result is a familiar imbalance. Residents in rural communities and unincorporated areas are expected to bankroll transportation priorities that overwhelmingly benefit the urban core, whether they use them or not.
Ballots will be mailed out on February 11th, and Pima County residents can expect to start receiving them that same day if not that week. The last day ballots will be accepted is March 10th. Approving Propositions 418 and 419 would commit county residents to another 20 years of taxes for a plan that has already failed to deliver on its promises.
Voters have already given the RTA 20 years. The results speak for themselves. There is no justification for giving them 20 more, and no reason for taxpayers to gamble on history repeating itself.
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by admin | Feb 7, 2026 | Arizona, News and Updates
Governor Katie Hobbs rolled out her budget last month and, unsurprisingly, it doesn’t add up.
Not only because her “solutions” don’t match the problems she claims to be solving, like suggesting we can make goods and services more affordable by piling on new taxes and fees, but because her budget quite literally just doesn’t add up.
While it’s become common for governors to release budgets built on rosier revenue assumptions than the Legislature’s more conservative Joint Legislative Budget Committee (JLBC), Hobbs’ proposal relies on projections so fanciful it resembles a fairy tale more than a fiscal plan.
Counting Chickens Before They Hatch
Hobbs’ budget is a $17.7B spending plan ($100M more than last year) that leaves a meager $37.8M balance at the end of FY27. That means her revenue projections leave very little room for error. Yet one of the more obvious facts about her budget is just how likely error-prone these projections are, a fact that Republicans during a joint appropriations hearing were sure to point out.
One of the most speculative assumptions Hobbs is making in her budget proposal is relying on $760 million of “reimbursements” from the federal government for expenditures the state has made for border security since 2021. That is a good chunk of change, and her budget is unworkable without it.
The problem is it is actually way more likely than not that even if the state receives something in the way of reimbursement, it will not be the full amount, and who knows on what timeline. Regardless, it is irresponsible to commit money out the front door that may never come in.
This is nothing new for Hobbs. Just last year she continued a COVID-era program that neither had legislative authorization to continue nor the ongoing financial allocations to support it. That wound up blowing a $122M fiscal hole in the previous year’s budget mid-session that Republicans had to mop up.
The Governor’s budget also depends on tapping the State Land trust for another $1.5 Billion. Setting aside whether its a good idea to raid the land trust set up for various beneficiaries (K-12, Universities, deaf and blind, etc), changing the formula for trust land distributions requires a constitutional amendment that would need to be approved by voters in November.
Hobbs’ “Affordability” Plan is Really a Chaotic Tax-And-Spend Plan
Hobbs wants to brand her budget as improving affordability, but it does just the opposite. Every idea in her plan is built around $1B in new taxes and fees and the hope that the bureaucracy can “manage” the cost of living while literally contributing to its inflation.
Even Hobbs faux $220M tax cut plan is really a thinly veiled tax hike. Her announced plan only provides around half of the conformity tax relief provided under Trumps one big beautiful bill, meaning Arizona taxpayers will be paying around $200 Million more than what Republicans are pursuing.
But if the hidden tax hike wasn’t bad enough, Hobbs decided to create chaos for taxpayers by having her own Department of Revenue develop tax forms that don’t even align with her own budget proposal!
Tax officials from the agency had to admit last week that it’s likely 1/3 of all taxpayers will have to file amended returns because of the confusion created by Governor Hobbs. Her solution to this mess? Just pass her plan that conflicts with current tax forms and call your accountant if you have any questions. Just an embarrassing lack of competence.
Cruel to be Kind?
Speaking of political hostages, for Hobbs these include thousands of tax-paying families who choose to send their kids to non-district schools. Another hallmark of Hobbs’ budget balancing gimmicks is the proposal to kick thousands of these students out of their schools by capping the Empowerment Scholarship Account program and limiting a family’s eligibility.
Hobbs has suggested this in every budget since taking office, and every session it has not happened. No one actually believes she can or will accomplish rolling the Republican-led legislature to accomplish it. So, including it as an $89M assumption in her budget is not just a cruel endeavor, but unserious budgeting; mere virtue signaling to the public-school industrial complex.
Arizona Doesn’t Have a Revenue Problem. Hobbs has a Spending Problem.
Federal border aid, massive tax hikes, and kicking kids out of the ESA program would represent about 5.5% of the state’s budget. But this isn’t “cost-savings,” Hobbs’s plan is to spend every dollar of that.
But Arizona’s problem is not the revenue side of the ledger. State revenues have grown dramatically over the last decade. The state has brought in more money year after year despite making strides to reduce the tax burden of its citizens. With the dramatic reductions in income taxes, a boon to everyday Arizonans, the state and local cities have actually enjoyed a windfall. What Democrats are trying to label as a “revenue crisis” is really a spending addiction, evidenced by a state budget that has doubled in a decade.
It’s because Hobbs and her big government allies believe every new dollar should be treated as permission to create a permanent new program, a permanent new entitlement, and a permanent new obligation, with taxpayers stuck funding it forever.
In other words, Hobbs CA-governance mentality is to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Taxpayers.
Republicans will have to bring sanity to the Budget Debate
Arizona families are tightening their belts. They’re cutting back. They’re trying to make groceries, rent, gas, and utility bills work in the real world.
Katie Hobbs’ budget is not grounded in the real world.
It’s grounded in political fantasy: federal money that may never arrive, policy extensions that haven’t happened, and a spending plan that grows government while pretending it’s helping families.
The State’s hope now is that the Republicans in the legislature put forth a responsible budget built around first, the full tax benefits of conforming to the Trump tax cuts, and then resisting the urge to feed the endless appetite of government, all while addressing the critical short term and long-term contributors that hinder affordability in Arizona.
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by admin | Jan 29, 2026 | Arizona, News and Updates
For years, the Left has been working tirelessly to flip Arizona blue. Armed with a secret network of tax-advantaged funds, political nonprofits, and union dollars, their aim has been to turn our beloved, freedom-loving state into the next Colorado or California. In fact, many groups on the Left waged high stakes to flip Republicans’ paper-thin control of the state legislature in 2024.
And how did that turn out? A historic landslide victory for President Trump while the Left actually lost ground in Arizona’s legislature. Apparently funneling millions of dollars to liberal causes doesn’t make up for bad ideas.
Now, with the 2026 midterm election a little over nine months away, the latest voter registration numbers are in, and they show an encouraging trend. Republicans have expanded their registration advantage over Democrats to 7.64%—the largest lead in state history—while Democrats continue their free fall in party registration.
Even more impressive is that these gains are not isolated to a few particular areas of our state. Every single county in Arizona has become MORE Republican since the 2024 election. That’s right. In the counties where Democrats have larger voter registration numbers than Republicans, the gap has closed. And in counties where Republicans have larger voter registration numbers than Democrats, the gap has widened. In fact, the gap between registered Republicans and Democrats in Maricopa County has increased by more than half a percent in just the past year.
Yet perhaps the most surprising trend behind this growing Republican advantage is that while Republicans have been able to register a lot of new voters, the same cannot be said for the Democrats. As of today, Democrats have fewer registered voters in Arizona than they had six years ago! And this occurred at a time when Arizona’s population grew by nearly 500,000 residents. That’s the price you pay when your party continues to push unpopular ideas like the Green New Scam all while featuring a scandal-plagued governor who vetoes $1.1 billion in tax relief.
All of this is good news for Republicans who enjoy a voter registration gap that’s now 3.5% larger than the last midterm election in 2022 when that advantage stood at 4.06%. But here’s the thing. These voter registration numbers are moot if Republicans fail to show up in November.
While there has been a lot of discussion about election malfeasance and fraud in 2022, one of the most overlooked issues has been that Republicans grossly underperformed in turnout. In fact, Republican turnout in 2022 was lower than it was in the 2018 midterms.
That can’t happen this year.
Right now, Arizona has an attorney general in Kris Mayes who has suggested that people can shoot ICE officers because of stand your ground laws. We have a secretary of state in Adrian Fontes who continues to prove that the only thing he’s good at is losing in court. And we have a governor under active criminal investigation for a massive pay-to-play scheme with our tax dollars who wants to end school choice, increase government spending, veto bills that lower taxes, and more. Since she took office, she’s led Arizona from 4th in the nation in job growth all the way down to 47th. She’s vetoed parental rights bills, 2nd Amendment bills, water legislation, and more. And her fiscal mismanagement has turned a $2.5 billion surplus into a $1.4 billion deficit. In the meantime, Republicans continue to fight for educational freedom, address affordability, and put money back into the pockets of the people.
That’s the right side of history, but it won’t be if we don’t show up.
The goal for 2026 should be a presidential election level turnout, which would all but ensure Republican victories up and down the ticket. And if that happens, we can send Mayes, Hobbs, and Fontes packing for good. Maybe they can find a nice, overpriced home in California.
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by admin | Jan 27, 2026 | Arizona, News and Updates
What’s being sold as a harmless planning document is actually a blueprint to fundamentally reshape how West Mesa residents live and move about their city. The MesaCONNECTED Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Plan has been in the works since 2021. Funded by a federal grant from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), the plan covers a five-mile “transit corridor” in West Mesa and is intended to guide future land-use decisions in that area. At first glance, it appears benign, seemingly focused on growth and beautification. City officials repeatedly emphasize that it is not a transit plan and does not initiate any specific projects. However, taken as a whole, MesaCONNECTED lays the groundwork to transform West Mesa into what is effectively a 15-minute city (or even a 5-minute city, by their own standards) without explicitly using that label.
The plan draws inspiration from communities in Oregon and California, as well as Arizona’s own Tempe Cul-De-Sac neighborhood, all of which follow planning models that prioritize density, transit-oriented development, and reduced automobile use. The stated goal is to create fully walkable areas centered around “transit nodes” while making existing transit easier to access. The section of West Mesa encompassed in the plan includes major hubs such as Mesa Riverview, the Asian District, Mesa Community College, Banner Desert Medical Center, Downtown Mesa, and surrounding areas.
A central objective of the plan is to increase density and place housing closer to employment to “reduce vehicle miles traveled” (pg. 5). This is not a neutral goal. It assumes driving is a problem to be corrected rather than a freedom to be preserved. In a city like Mesa where families rely on personal vehicles for work, school, church, medical care, and more, designing communities to deliberately discourage driving punishes the very behavior that allowed the city to grow in the first place. Rather than responding to how residents already live, the plan attempts to reshape daily habits by making driving less practical and alternative modes more “convenient.”
During the plan’s initial phase, the city collected public feedback to help shape its direction. At a Mesa City Council Study Session on December 4, 2025, officials claimed the plan reflects what the public wants. However, Councilmember Taylor acknowledged that survey participation was extremely low relative to the number of residents contacted, so low that the results are inherently skewed. It is misleading and dishonest to claim broad public support. Most Mesa residents likely have no idea this plan exists, let alone that it could influence future development decisions affecting their neighborhood.
Despite repeated assurances that this is not a transit plan by city officials, the vision is inseparable from “future transit investments” and long-term projects (pg. 2). The framework assumes higher-capacity transit will be built eventually, and that land-use decisions today must be shaped to support it tomorrow. This pattern is familiar nationwide: a so-called “non-binding” study plan establishes justification for density, rezoning, and infrastructure changes, to make expensive transit projects appear inevitable rather than optional.
All of these ideas come from the concept of a 15-minute city which aims to keep any daily necessity within a short walk, bike ride or transit ride. While marketed as convenience, this model opens the door to government overreach by centralizing daily life into tightly managed zones. International examples show how easily these concepts can move from theory to enforcement. In parts of England, residents have already faced fines for driving outside designated areas, demonstrating how mobility “suggestions” can evolve into mobility restrictions.
The plan openly seeks to “limit sprawl” (pg. 36), framing the true American dream as a problem. Larger homes, private yards, safer neighborhoods, affordable housing, and the freedom to come and go as they please is painted negatively. Restricting outward growth concentrates density, raises costs, and pushes people into cramped apartments where they will “own nothing and be happy.” The plan embraces this model, aiming for a 5-minute city: homes, jobs, shops, and services all packed into tightly controlled nodes (pg. 38), compressing daily life into a series of crowded, artificial districts. So not even a 15-minute city is sufficient.
Although the Mesa City Council was scheduled to discuss the TOD plan earlier this January, heavy opposition from residents and activists led to its removal from the agenda. That victory should not invite complacency. Study plans signal direction. They show where the city intends to go long before binding votes are taken. Mesa residents should remain vigilant. These plans resurface quietly, often rebranded and reframed. Community engagement is essential to ensuring that centralized, coercive planning models do not take root in Mesa under the guise of “connectivity” or “choice.”
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