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.

This research study addresses the collection, preparation, and use of traffic data required for pavement design by the Arizona Department of Transportation, focusing on data required as inputs for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials "Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide" design procedures. ADOT’s current traffic data collection and preparation processes are not adequate to meet the needs of the MEPDG procedure, and improvements are needed. These improvements include enhanced volume, classification, and weight data collection for vehicles, processing data and performing quality assurance checks, and the preparation/analysis of the data for use in the MEPDG. Use of the MEPDG in Arizona will require (1) an annual flow of updated key traffic data and (2) the ability to collect on-site (MEPDG Level 1) data in a timely manner for key projects.

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.

In 2006, the Smoke-Free Arizona Act outlawed smoking within most enclosed public spaces and places of employment primarily to reduce the exposure of individuals to harmful secondhand smoke. The purpose of the Maricopa County Smoke-Free Parks Policy Assessment is three-fold: 1) to evaluate the extent and health impact of tobacco usage in public parks; 2) analyze smoke-free parks policies that have been proposed in cities, counties, and states nationwide; and 3) to assess the feasibility of introducing and implementing similar policies in Arizona, and in Maricopa County in particular.

The Maricopa County Department of Public Health and the Southwest Interdisciplinary Research Center at Arizona State University initiated an evaluation of ASU’s Tobacco-Free Campus policy, which went into effect on August 1, 2013. The purpose of this evaluation is to assess the impacts of this policy on the ASU community and environment. This report summarizes tobacco consumption patterns, norms and perceptions surrounding tobacco use, tobacco litter on campus, and overall benefits of a tobacco-free campus both before and after policy implementation.

RTI International is working on behalf of the Arizona Department of Health Services’ Bureau of Tobacco and Chronic Disease to identify existing tobacco-related data and data needs. RTI interviewed ADHS-BTCD’s partnering organizations by telephone and conducted an environmental scan of existing public use datasets. This report describes the results obtained from the environmental scan and the partner telephone interviews, and it discusses recommendations for addressing the identified data gaps.

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.