Arizona State and Local Government Documents Collection

The state government general fund shortfall in the current fiscal year is projected to be between about $550 million and $1 billion. This shortfall will need to be eliminated through spending cuts and/or revenue enhancements. The Legislature has demonstrated a preference for spending cuts. However demand does not decline during a recession for most public-sector services, including university services. Any reduction in funding for universities will have a negative and direct effect. A reduction in state government spending for universities of around $200 million would cause direct and indirect job losses of approximately 4,000. A substantial decrease in state government funding for universities will have negative consequences beyond these short-term effects.

Realizing the need for drought preparedness in Arizona, a Governor’s Drought Task Force was created in 2003 and the Arizona Drought Preparedness Plan developed. The plan was adopted in 2004 and its continued implementation ordered in 2007. It established a framework to monitor drought, improve understanding of drought impacts, and determine mechanisms for limiting future vulnerability. The Arizona Department of Water Resources coordinates these activities and prepares the Arizona Drought Preparedness Annual Report each year.

The Arizona Department of Water Resources manages the state’s water supply. Water management includes a wide variety of activities that are intended to protect and preserve the water supply. Examples of these activities include licensing well drillers, assuring the safety of dams, and developing mandatory conservation requirements for all water use sectors in Active Management Areas, protecting the state’s Colorado River allocation and facilitating Indian water rights negotiations among tribal representatives, local interests, federal and state officials and members of Congress.

Economic convergence was only a matter of time for Ireland. That it happened when it did and in such a short period of time was the result of both thoughtful decision-making on the part of many stakeholders and a favorable set of external economic developments. To continue to achieve rapid economic growth, however, Ireland will not be able to rely on increased labor utilization but must succeed in raising output per worker. This, in turn, will require more entrepreneurial activity and participation higher value-added activities. Ireland will need to participate more in the creation of knowledge and not simply be operational in the application of knowledge-based technologies. Arizona, like Ireland in the 1980s, has an opportunity to change its growth trajectory. Arizona can follow Ireland’s lead today and pursue the returns that can accrue from strategic investments or continue on its current path.

Education decisions are among the most important choices people ever make. So we were surprised and disappointed to see an article so loosely reasoned and reckless in its conclusions as “Five Reasons to Skip College” published in Blank Slate at Forbes.com on April 18, 2006. The article never provides a numerical assessment of the costs and benefits of going to college, uses statistics inappropriately and in a way that biases the conclusions against college, contains conceptual errors on how to evaluate the return on a college education, and greatly exaggerates the only substantive criticism of typical evaluations of the financial worth of a college degree.

High quality early childhood programs have proven effective in raising educational attainment and improving earnings and labor market performance. These results are all the more appealing in light of the general ineffectiveness of adult retraining programs. In the area of crime prevention, sociologists and criminologists have also turned their attention to early childhood intervention programs. In contrast to juvenile treatment programs, early interventions hold special promise in that they are preventative rather than crisis-oriented and take place before anti-social behavioral patterns become entrenched. The purpose of this report is to provide a comprehensive look at the economic issues surrounding early care and education in Arizona.

On March 20, 2003, Governor Janet Napolitano established the Governor’s Drought Task Force to address the drought issues facing all Arizonans. The Task Force made several recommendations, documented in the "Arizona Drought Preparedness Plan", including that the Governor seek legislative authority for the Arizona Department of Water Resources to require water systems to develop a drought plan. The plan would include mitigation strategies, including a water conservation plan to reduce vulnerability to drought and plan for drought response actions. In addition, the Governor’s Drought Task Force recommended legislative authorization for ADWR to require all water systems to provide consistent and coordinated water supply information to ADWR. The Arizona Legislature passed House Bill 2277 during the 2005 legislative session, creating a requirement for community water systems to develop and submit a System Water Plan to ADWR. The development of these plans is an important step toward improving water resource management planning at both the state and local levels. They will enable the state to identify data gaps and gather much needed information.

In 2001, ADWR undertook a review of the Upper San Pedro Basin to determine if it met the statutory requirements for designation as an AMA. This report reviews the water supply and demand of the USP Basin in the context of the statutory criteria and includes a discussion of whether any of the criteria have been met. Previously, ADWR conducted a study of the USP Basin and issued a report in 1988 in which ADWR determined that the Basin did not meet the statutory criteria for AMA designation. ADWR indicated in the report that it would reassess conditions in the Basin in ten to fifteen years. The study described in this report is an evaluation of whether the conditions of the USP Basin satisfy the statutory criteria. This report contains a description of the current and projected water resources and water demand in the Basin, incorporating new information since the previous review. The report examines historic water use trends, evaluates the groundwater resources of the Basin, and projects impacts of future water use on Basin groundwater supplies. The report includes an evaluation of the incidence of subsidence or fissuring, and of the potential for groundwater quality degradation due to groundwater use. The report further describes and evaluates the impact that AMA practices would have on water use, and includes a summary of findings, the director’s determination of whether the Basin should be designated and recommendations.

The analysis of the value of higher education contained in this report represents an important dimension of the P3 research agenda since measuring the value of educated workers can provide empirical context for understanding the importance of an educated and skilled workforce in a modern economy. In this report, the increases in individual earnings realized from enhanced educational attainment are measured and the benefits to the economy and society in general that are provided by a highly educated workforce are examined.