Miscellaneous

Hoping to lure more movies, TV shows and commercials, state lawmakers are moving to once again provide income tax credits for those who produce them in Arizona.

The legislation unanimous adopted Wednesday by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Energy and Military would provide up to $70 million a year to companies that spend at least $250,000 on productions. They could get credits equal to at least 20 percent of what they spend, with bonuses for using state-certified production facilities and for wages paid to Arizona residents.

This is Arizona’s centennial year. It’s both a grand accomplishment to celebrate and an occasion that we should mark by making our state government more effective and efficient.

One of the biggest steps we can take toward modernizing state government is with a revamp of the outdated rules and regulations that govern its workforce. Our personnel system is practically as old as the state itself.

Patchwork fixes and incremental improvements won’t do. Now is the time for fundamental reform.

Basic city services will be shuttered for residents in two West Valley cities for more than a week over the holidays, to the chagrin of some taxpayers and the delight of city workers.


Employees in Surprise and El Mirage are getting extended paid holidays that will be added to their regular vacation days.

Steve Pierce has spent 2 ½ years sitting in the back of the state Senate chambers, quietly surveying the proceedings and rising rarely to weigh in with a floor speech.


Now, as president-elect of the Senate, he'll be at the front of the room and pressed daily for comment on everything from the budget to the hot-button bill of the moment.

"I have lots of new friends," the Prescott rancher told the crowd attending the Arizona Tax Research Association's annual conference Friday. "They all want to come in and see me. I don't know most of them."

“It’s not fair,” said Gayle Shanks.


As the owner of Changing Hands bookstore in Tempe, Shanks is upset that her company cannot compete with Amazon. Not because the giant online retailer is able to price their products lower, she said, but because the Internet giant’s business model gives it a 10 percent advantage over her at checkout.

Kirk Adams ran for House speaker on a platform of transparency and reform of the legislative process. The pitch worked: He ousted a veteran lawmaker last fall in a closed-door Republican caucus meeting.


But Adams' ability to enact his agenda has not worked as effectively - or as quickly. Living up to the promises in Adams' "Rebuilding Our Republican Majority" strategy handbook has proved difficult.

The Senate was the emblem of dysfunctional state government during the Legislature's drawn-out and unsuccessful struggle to pass a balanced budget. In the end, after more than 200 days in session, the chamber couldn't pass a plan that Gov. Jan Brewer would accept. And Bob Burns, as Senate president, bore the brunt of the blame.


The House delivered, giving Brewer the sales-tax referral that she wanted, but only after the budget debate dragged into a special session and by sugar-coating the tax hike with $400 million in income-tax cuts.

From the political notebook:


• Within the spending lobby, there is no more firmly held belief than that Arizona is an inexcusably low-tax state.


The basis for this belief is a report on state and local tax collections from the Census Bureau. For 2006, the most recent year for which figures are available, Arizona ranked 39th among the states in tax collections per capita. Hence the conclusion that, compared with other states, Arizona is among the bottom dwellers.

State programs that receive revenue from the sale of tobacco are expected to see collections dwindle after a federal tobacco tax takes hold on April 1.

Sales of cigarettes in Arizona have fallen by millions of packs since voters approved a big tobacco tax increase and a ban on smoking in bars a year ago


Tobacco tax revenue increased $57 million in the fiscal year that ended June 30, to $345.6 million.

But all of that increase, and more, went into a new fund for early childhood education. The fund received $74 million, nearly all the revenue from an 82-cent per pack increase approved by voters.