A historic reduction in the availability of Colorado River water while more people covet it has brought together an unusual coalition interested in the river. Traditionally competitive and sometimes directly opposed to each other, they met this month to discuss the threat of loss of water to…

School calendars in Pinal County continue to evolve, with more districts extending breaks and making summer shorter. Other Pinal districts have had short summer breaks for years. Some districts started classes recently, and others will start next week. That means COVID-19 is an important top…

Casa Grande and Pinal County residents have put much focus for years on widening of Interstate 10 south of Chandler. Anyone driving on the two lanes in each direction knows why. Progress is being made, and construction on widening is expected to start within two years. Meanwhile, slow progre…

In recent months some governmental entities have borrowed money through favorably priced bonds to pay off their debt to the Arizona Public Safety Personnel Retirement System. Not surprisingly, a recent report shows that the system is now on firmer ground.

Rain has been welcome this week in Pinal County, but apparently well coordinated with that was the groundbreaking ceremony for the first phase of a long-planned motor sports park just outside Casa Grande. Attesa was announced back in 2017 but, like many things, it was delayed for various reasons.

The Arizona Department of Water Resources recently announced it would not approve any new applications for groundwater use in the Pinal Active Management Area. However, there is no panic, because earlier approvals already will allow considerable growth, including doubling the size of Casa Gr…

The Boys & Girls Clubs of the Sun Corridor organization has been a major player in guiding area youths as they grow into responsible adults. That has come with support from many donors and partnerships with schools and government. It became even more important when kids needed a place to…

Much of the interest in the Arizona Legislature’s long session was on the budget and income tax (editorial June 26). However, legislators did much more than that, and there will be some strong benefits for Arizonans.

The U.S. Supreme Court this week upheld Arizona’s ban on ballot harvesting and voting in the wrong precinct, and with it likely protected similar laws in other states. While there is much criticism claiming infringement of voting rights, the actual effect is protecting the power of legitimat…

As the Legislature was negotiating the annual budget consensus and deciding on changes to the income tax structure, it also moved some bills dealing with the citizens’ right to make their own laws. As we’ve said before, while the initiative, referendum and recall have been points of pride fo…

Arizona’s legislators, near the end of an unusual session, have nearly finished the budget, just days before the end of the fiscal year. As usual, the process wasn’t pretty, but there is much to like in the budget.

Pinal County needs to find a new elections director, after Michele Forney resigned effective in November to take a state-level job in Nevada. She had run 13 elections successfully since 2015. The goal should be to continue having elections in the county absent of unusual circumstances and co…

Wildfires have been raging in Arizona, ahead of last year’s schedule, and Pinal County is having a rougher year than normal due to the Telegraph Fire near Superior. The Legislature has been in session longer than average, and Gov. Doug Ducey decided to add a concurrent special session to dea…

Arizona’s Independent Redistricting Commission is working on redrawing congressional and legislative districts as it does every 10 years, this time slowed by a pandemic-caused delay in census numbers. The current system began in 2000 after voters created it and is an attempt to make the proc…

State prisoners in Oklahoma have begun receiving special computer tablets to receive not only information that inmates need to have but also some other material for reading and entertainment. That is a good use of technology that was implemented at the Pinal County jail in Florence two years…

The Casa Grande City Council this week discussed borrowing to pay off its unfunded public safety retirement debt, as other Arizona cities and counties are doing. This has been a problem that never seems to go away, but the plan the city is discussing would put it to rest.

With today’s polarized politics, when concern often is expressed about the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court, it is comforting to see that the court still can have a unanimous ruling. That was true this week in a case that has much relevance in Arizona, when the court said tribal police depar…

Arizona’s utility regulators have bounced the ball around on mandated carbon-free electricity over a period of years. Last week they reached a compromise to put rules back in place. The final deadline for no emissions would be nearly 50 years from now, an eternity in politics. Nevertheless, …

Monday is the day we once again recognize those who have sacrificed their lives in America’s armed forces throughout our nation’s history, dating back to our fight for independence in the 1700s. Communities across the nation will — and should — pause for that reason. This year is more normal…

The world was turned upside down more than a year ago but is quickly getting back closer to normal. Events of all kinds were affected severely, meaning cancellations in many cases. That included the sports world, although seasons resumed last year, and this year they have been mostly normal,…

Gov. Doug Ducey has had a longtime stance in favor of reducing taxes, years ago pledging to reduce the income tax to “as close to zero as possible.” While many residents of Pinal County and Arizona appreciate keeping more of their own money, Ducey’s attempt to put a flat-tax switch into this…

Thousands of Americans have been killed in wrong-way crashes in recent years, a phenomenon that has been rising. In Arizona alone, according to AAA, there were 72 wrong-way crashes recorded from 2010 to 2018. That may not sound like many, but they killed 107 people. These are very deadly and…

The issue of whether “Dreamers,” those who were brought to the United States illegally as children, can pay in-state tuition will be decided by Arizona voters in 2022. The matter was referred to the ballot by a narrow vote of the Legislature. That is appropriate because the Dreamers have bee…

In a very polarized time, Arizona legislators found something most could agree on: reining in the use of asset forfeiture by law enforcement agencies. The House bill passed the Senate 28-1 to send it to Gov. Doug Ducey, who has since signed it. Arizonans will be better off for it, although s…

The Florence Town Council this week ended a years-long battle with Florence Copper that has cost millions of dollars. Meanwhile, the company has continued toward full-scale mining of a valuable copper deposit and has been contributing to the community financially and otherwise as a solid cor…

Arizona’s sunny skies have contributed to decades-long arrangements to train military pilots here. But that has led to a long-term problem with water pollution from multiple chemicals, which is now getting more attention.

Some numbers are out from the U.S. Census Bureau’s massive project that happens every 10 years, and Arizonans are shocked. Despite the fact that the state added three-quarters of a million people, or 11.6%, to reach more than 7 million, we will not be adding a 10th member of the U.S. House o…

Casa Grande voters have received mailed ballots with a single question on whether they approve of the city’s new General Plan. The issue is fairly routine in Arizona, as plan updates are required each 10 years. However, that does not minimize the importance.

Tens of thousands of people are flooding over the southern border of the United States, many of them into Arizona. Much effort is made to spin the numbers in one way or the other, including seasonal averages and effects of the pandemic. But it is obvious that words and actions of President J…

America’s form of government is based on fair elections, but there is too much scary rhetoric about what that means. Some Arizona legislators are pushing bills that would help to protect the integrity of votes cast in Pinal County and around the state, but such actions these days always brin…

A major expansion of gambling is coming to Arizona, following approval by the Legislature this week and a signature from Gov. Doug Ducey Thursday. Negotiations had been going on for a while with the big players involved, mainly Native American tribes and professional sports owners. Everyone …

Pinal County’s cities are surrounded with miles of open desert, although growth is changing that somewhat. The increased population is raising the likelihood that some residents will dump their trash out in those beautiful desert areas, although this is by no means a new problem. And being l…

Arizona is again preparing to execute some criminals in Florence. The two men, as usual, long ago were convicted of heinous crimes. One of the murder victims was an 8-year-old child in Tucson and the other an Arizona State University student. As always, the length of time that has elapsed ha…

“It is not only a bad idea, it upsets the constitutional design and it disservices the country” — 2005 speech by then-Sen. Joe Biden about ending the Senate filibuster rule.

A long trend of diversifying and growing Pinal County’s economy has been boosted by electric vehicle plants built or announced in recent years. But a new level of achievement is signified by the opening of the Drive48 regional workforce training center Wednesday at Central Arizona College’s …

The COVID-19 pandemic may be on the decline, but the aftermath will live on for a long time. Part of that is an attempt to find liability and place blame. Arizona’s Republican legislative majority has attempted to keep that from doing too much damage. Meanwhile, trial lawyers aren’t happy.

Arizona, a growing state with only three state universities, relies heavily on its network of community colleges in the various counties. Students there have an affordable way to get a good start on a bachelor’s degree, and the Legislature has considered allowing the colleges to offer four-y…

Arizona is a leader in the school choice movement, and that generally is a good thing, especially in seeing the record of traditional schools in some states while dealing with the pandemic. But Arizona’s charter schools could use more regulation, although most are well run and popular in att…

Wildfires have been an annual problem in the West, and hotter and drier weather lately has contributed. Other factors are a lack of logging and clearing the forests, with government regulations contributing to that, along with the fact that more people live closer to forests now and natural …

Prison reform has been an important topic in recent years, including in Arizona, where many people in government and out want to find alternatives to some of the time served. However, in some parts of the country, authorities have gone way too far against incarceration in general, letting ma…

Many people doing time behind bars claim they are innocent or shouldn’t be where they are. History has proven that in a very small number of cases, they are right. Since the 1980s, DNA evidence has been used in court, and some inmates have been able to use it to prove their innocence, in som…

Images of Texans shivering without heat, electricity and sometimes water and food last month were heartbreaking. The weather event was very unusual, but such things happen occasionally around the country. Arizona’s weather is pretty predictable, even if that is unfortunate during the summer …

Pinal County, Arizona and America are carefully edging closer to normal. COVID-19 vaccinations still are hard to come by for many, but many others have had them now. Infection rates have been falling for a while.

With a hotly contested election conducted during a pandemic, some states changed the rules to make voting easier and safer. Many critics say that also introduced opportunity for fraud. After 2020, reasonable people want fewer questions about voting, and that includes not only on the opportun…

A rollback on immigration rules set by the Trump administration is coming quickly under President Joe Biden, who has been in office little more than a month. This should not be a surprise to Americans, and many are happy about it. There are some valid questions, however, and some of those ar…

The good idea of allowing Arizona’s community colleges to offer four-year degrees is making some progress in the Legislature, which is encouraging. As we said last year when a similar bill died, it should happen.

The right to peacefully assemble and protest is fundamental to being an American. However, there has been a trend toward the other type of protest. Those have dragged on for months in cities like Seattle and Portland, and unfortunately, there seems to be a tolerance among authorities in thos…

State law places limits on use of water in Arizona, which is important to the state’s future. At times, however, the complexity of individual situations causes problems. However, some good work by elected officials and water leaders has resulted in a helpful bill already passed by the Legisl…

2020’s election was painful to Americans, and the aftermath is playing out still with the Senate impeachment trial of the former president. The trauma is related to the closeness of the presidential vote and the refusal of many to accept the outcome. Now, calls have been made from both sides…

The Arizona Corporation Commission performs an important role in state government. Keeping control of it in the hands of the voters sounds democratic. However, when a majority of the five-member panel can change in one election, there is potential for some bad outcomes. That said, on the who…