Volume I: Facts
Analyses of Arizona state government finance, using data of the Arizona Joint Legislative Budget Committee, and of the combined finances of all state and local governments within Arizona, using data of the U.S. Census Bureau. A historical perspective is provided for both datasets. For combined state and local government finance, comparisons are made to other states and to the national average. In addition, other measures of the tax burden by state are examined.

Volume II: Concepts and Issues
Addresses the conceptual and empirical relationships between taxes, government revenue, and economic growth. Also discusses current issues specific to Arizona state government finance. This is a revised version of the report "Tax Reductions, the Economy, and the Deficit in the Arizona State Government General Fund," incorporating new and updated material.

Volume III: Options for Managing the Arizona State General Fund
Presents options and offers recommendations for managing the Arizona state government general fund. The near-term budget deficit is addressed as well as ways to prevent budget deficits from recurring every time economic growth slows.

The Renewing Arizona Family Traditions program responds to the needs of Arizona's youth and families by providing intensive, family-oriented services to court referred youth. This report reviews the successes as well as the opportunities for growth within the RAFT program and examines the program through a presentation of the data collected by the Administrative Office of the Courts through its contract providers and other sources. The data is recorded by provider agencies and their respective regions and includes intake and discharge/outcome information.

The data for this report are extracted each year from fourteen juvenile courts’ Juvenile On-Line Tracking Systems. JOLTS is the automated juvenile court information management system. After using JOLTS for more than 25 years, July 1, 2008, Maricopa County upgraded to their new Integrated Court Information System. Each juvenile court actively participates in collecting and maintaining the data to ensure quality and accuracy. This report provides an overview of the juveniles processed at various stages of the juvenile justice system statewide.

The primary purpose of this paper is to examine the educational achievement and attainment of Latinos living in Arizona. In short, the educational performance and attainment of Hispanics lags considerably behind that of the state’s non-Hispanic white residents. Moreover, the growth in the number of Hispanics, especially children, has far outpaced that of the non-Hispanic white population, raising the importance of this educational gap. This issue was highlighted in the 2001 Morrison Institute report Five Shoes Waiting to Drop on Arizona’s Future.

The specific goal of this report is to assess the future of Hispanic educational performance and attainment in Arizona, but this outlook is dependent to a very sizable extent on the characteristics of the Hispanics living in Arizona. In particular, the educational achievement and attainment of Hispanic immigrants has been substantially less than that of Hispanics born in the United States. Forecasting Hispanic immigration specifically and the characteristics of the Hispanic population generally is extremely difficult for two reasons: severe data limitations, and recent legal and policy changes related to immigration.

By February of 1998, the Deloitte Consulting firm was under contract with the State of Arizona and had embarked upon what would become an extensive ten-month evaluation of the primary components of Arizona’s Juvenile Justice System. The main focus of the audit from the beginning was the Administrative Office of the Courts, the Juvenile Justice Services Division, the juvenile courts and their probation departments, and the Department of Juvenile Corrections. As part of the audit, both financial and program audits were conducted related to prevention, diversion (early intervention), probation and treatment. In December of 1998, Deloitte Consulting issued its final report to the Committee. The report, which consisted of hundreds of pages of detailed findings, concluded that “It is our assessment that the Arizona Juvenile Justice System is one of the best in the nation.”

The purpose of the stabilization fund is to reduce the fluctuations in general fund revenue caused by the economic cycle. These fluctuations result in large budget surpluses in some years and large deficits in other years. Without considering the structural deficit, the budget stabilization fund almost certainly will not have the funding necessary to offset the cyclical reduction in revenue that will occur during the next recession.

This is a summary of several reports related to government finance in Arizona that have been produced by the Office of the University Economist since December 2008. Some new information has been added in an attempt to provide a complete picture. The format of this report is a brief summary by issue, sometimes accompanied by a table or chart. References are provided to the report and the page number where additional detail can be found.