Arizona State and Local Government Documents Collection

The Arizona Department of Transportation is the primary decision maker for federal-aid transportation plans and investments in non-metropolitan areas with populations below 50,000. However, ADOT understands the importance of consulting with local governments before, during, and after the decision making process to ensure participation results in improved transportation system planning, performance and project development. Therefore, ADOT has developed guidelines that outline the consultation process, and defines how and when outreach will occur with officials from rural areas. It is intended that this document is subject to review and revision every 5 years. In the event that Congress enacts new transportation language, this document will be subject to immediate revision.

The State Management Plan documents the procedures of the State of Arizona in managing and utilizing federal funds to assist public, Tribal, private for-profit, and private non-profit passenger transportation systems in Arizona. This document updates the 2007 plan and includes the State’s objectives, policies, procedures, and administrative requirements, in a form that is readily accessible to ADOT staff, the Federal Transit Administration, potential subrecipients, and the public.

For those interested in one of the most extreme state tax and expenditure limitations, TABOR – Colorado’s initiative that limits the funding of most expenditures to annual revenue growth restrained by the sum of annual population growth and inflation rates – would seem to be exactly the right choice. To some, the initiative simply limits government to spend within its means. However, the analysis in this paper reveals that, true to the language in the 1992 Colorado initiative, TABOR limits government growth, and over time the public sector, as a share of the overall economy, declines sharply – crowding out opportunities for investments in strategic initiatives or opportunities for tax reform that may be popular with large voter constituencies or the business community. Advocates point out that provisions in TABOR do allow for voter overrides, but these are costly in both time and money, and until the overrides take place, government is
hamstrung. A simpler, more efficient alternative would be to elect fiscally conservative legislators and hold them accountable for prudent fiscal decisions that strike the right balance between a tax base conductive to economic growth and strategic investments that provide public sector infrastructure, nurturing the business climate and promoting the health and well-being of the citizenry. The paper first outlines the TABOR amendment in Colorado and examines its fiscal consequences for that state. It then examines the potential impact of a TABOR in Arizona.

The best way to evaluate job quality would be to analyze a dataset that presents both occupational and industrial data, but the only dataset of this nature available by state comes from the decennial census. It is severely limited by small sample size, the latest data are for 1999, and the 1999 data are not consistent with the 1989 data. Thus, the initial work by the Seidman Institute on job quality ("Job Quality in Arizona", March 2005, presented data on Arizona job quality from several sources of either industrial or occupational data. "Job Quality in Arizona Compared to All States" is an extension of the March 2005 report. Arizona’s job quality in the latest year and its change over time is compared to the national average and is ranked among the 51 “states” (including the District of Columbia).