http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/southwest-valley/2015/05/06/s…

After years of absorbing funding cuts from the state, teachers and parents at one West Valley elementary school are taking an extraordinary step to save their librarian's job — a crowdsourcing campaign.

Over the past five years, Summit Fire District has slashed its employees from 48 to 37, temporarily closed one of its stations and bought decades-old fire engines rather than new ones, all in an effort to adapt to property tax declines still rippling out from the Great Recession.

A hospital district has spent $570,000 on an ad campaign launched two weeks after its board called for a nearly $1 billion bond election.

The taxpayer-funded advertising campaign is running at the same time a separate, political group pushing for passage of the bond proposal launches a nearly $800,000 television ad campaign.

http://tucson.com/news/local/education/bill-slashing-desegregation-fund…

February 04, 2015 7:36 pm • By Alexis Huicochea
A state lawmaker’s bid to reduce desegregation spending may cost TUSD as much as $8 million next year and far more in the ensuing years — funds that are earmarked to help bring racial balance to district campuses.

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/politics/2015/01/31/arizona…
From Derrick Hall of the Arizona Diamondbacks emceeing Gov. Doug Ducey's inauguration to U.S. Sen. John McCain lounging with Arizona Cardinals President Michael Bidwill at a game, politics and sports are mixing in Arizona more than ever.

Steller: Arizona could raise revenue, cut less
http://tucson.com/steller-arizona-could-raise-revenue-cut-less/article_…

January 31, 2015 7:11 pm • By Tim Steller
In his first week on the job, Gov. Doug Ducey projected a sense of crisis wrapped in a can-do attitude for solving it.

http://www.kpho.com/story/27928621/educators-question-prison-funding-ov…

PHOENIX (CBS 5) -
It's no secret Arizona schools rank near the bottom nationwide when it comes to money spent on students.

Its one of the reasons Gov. Doug Ducey is proposing a $134 million boost to classroom funding in his latest budget proposal.

GLENDALE, Ariz. — Jerry Weiers lives less than two miles from University of Phoenix Stadium, where the New England Patriots will play the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl on Sunday. Weiers also happens to be the mayor of Glendale.

Yet as politicians, chief executives and tens of thousands of well-heeled fans rub shoulders that day in the stadium in Glendale, a western suburb of Phoenix, he plans to watch the game on television in his living room, because he has not been offered a ticket.

When the Legislature wrapped up its work last summer, members knew when they returned in 2015 they would face some difficult budget issues.
At the time, the projected deficit for the 2015 budget year was in the hundreds of millions of dollars. That projection has grown, with the red ink an expected $1 billion in the budget year starting in July.
Arizona’s Constitution requires that the budget to be balanced each year, and the first go at it will come from Gov. Doug Ducey.

Laurie Roberts' Dec. 23 column highlighting public schools that do not receive funding through school tax-credit programs captures a major equity issue. Some school districts have the ability to make use of the program in a far greater capacity than others, which potentially runs afoul of the Arizona constitutional requirement that our schools be "general and uniform."

However, the disparity created by the tax-credit program pales in comparison to the inequity driven by other loopholes in Arizona's school finance system.