In 1986, the Arizona State Legislature created the Crime Victim Compensation and Assistance Fund and directed the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission to administer the fund. The Commission created two programs for distributing the fund monies: 1) the Crime Victim Compensation Program; and 2) the Crime Victim Assistance Program. ACJC staff provides grant monitoring, reporting, and program oversight and conducts financial and program reviews of agencies that receive crime victim funding. This report describes the activity for both these programs.

The Committee selected the following environmental goal: A goal with the purpose of showing continued progress through 2018 by; 1) improving visibility to move days now in the poor/very poor categories up to the fair category, and 2) moving days classified as fair to the good/excellent categories. A progress
assessment will be conducted every 5 years through 2018. The members concluded that this option provides a clear, long term method to track visibility trends in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Additionally, the Committee reached general agreement that the index should not be used to affect short term actions because other programs, such as the High Pollution Advisory Program, are currently in place.

Concerns of Rillito citizens about emissions of dioxins and furans from the Arizona Portland Cement Plant and stack testing at APCC led to an ambient air monitoring program conducted in 2004 - 2005. Ambient concentrations of dioxins and furans proved to be within health-based guidelines. These concentrations were somewhat higher than those measured at background sites but considerably lower than at urban sites. The distribution of the 17 toxic dioxins and furans in the ambient air of Rillito closely resembled the mobile source profile but was quite different from the APCC profile. The dioxin and furan concentrations measured during the one-year study suggested that mobile source emissions had a much greater impact at Rillito than the cement plant emissions.

This paper provides a review of studies that examine the extent to which university research promotes local economic growth and development. The primary focus of the paper is on economic impacts that derive from the innovative outputs of faculty. this paper evaluates Arizona State University and the Phoenix metropolitan area in terms of factors that enhance the local economic impact of university research. The potential for local impacts from ASU’s research and graduate programs is greatly aided by the fact that ASU is located in a major metropolitan area with a climate and other natural amenities that mobile professional workers find attractive.

Growth in the stock of knowledge has been the most important factor behind the dramatic rise in living standards in the United States and other countries over the past 100 years. Systematic efforts made by firms, universities, governments, and other organizations to increase the stock of knowledge are referred to as research and development (R&D). The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the entire system of R&D in the United States—or as it is sometimes called, the national innovation system. Special emphasis will be placed on basic research. This is the component of R&D that is most likely to be underprovided by the private sector and the one that figures most prominently in public policy toward science and technology. The report also emphasizes the role of universities that, in the United States, perform the lion’s share of basic research.

The report provides a variety of basic statistical indicators of R&D effort and identifies recent trends in sources of R&D funding. The report also reviews classic arguments on the appropriate role of government in supporting R&D and the strengths and weaknesses of universities as performers of R&D. The U.S. national innovation system is compared with those in other major industrialized countries.

The attraction of a federal research laboratory to Arizona as a strategic economic development initiative of the Arizona Economic Resource Organization can be justified based on the literature cited below, the relationship of federally funded research and development centers to broader measures of research and development and prosperity, and the implementation of this strategy elsewhere. A primary objective of attracting a federal research facility is to help create a climate that is conducive to private-sector economic development, especially related to research and development. On a purely cost-benefit basis, the pursuit of a federal lab has strong appeal since the benefits largely will accrue within Arizona while a considerable portion of the costs conceivably will be borne by the federal government.

The demand for new workers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) occupations in Arizona is a function of net job growth in these occupations in the state and the number of workers leaving STEM jobs in Arizona. Employees may leave their position for various reasons, including to retire, to move out of the state, or to change their profession. The supply of new workers in STEM occupations in Arizona is a function of the number of new college graduates in related majors, the number of workers moving to the state who are qualified to fill STEM jobs, and the number of Arizonans who are qualified to fill STEM jobs moving from a non-STEM to STEM occupation.

This paper explores whether a knowledge economy explanation for economic growth seems to fit with the growth experience of the Sunbelt during the 1990s. The issue is addressed through analysis of two different datasets. First, the education and income characteristics of the people moving to the Sunbelt region are examined using migration data from the 2000 census. Then we look at the link between the knowledge economy metric of the share of college educated adults and economic growth in the Sunbelt in the 1990s using data for 116 Sunbelt MSAs.

The educational attainment of Arizona’s workforce is less than the national average and has deteriorated over time relative to the U.S. average. Job quality and average earnings in Arizona also are below the national average. These three factors — job quality, earnings, and educational attainment — are interrelated. On average, the higher the educational attainment of a worker, the higher are his or her earnings. The largest increase by far occurs with the completion of a university degree. In Arizona, the average earnings of those with a college degree are approximately $28,140 (73 percent) higher than those with only some college. Thus, working individuals financially benefit from enhancing their educational attainment.