Business & Job Creation

Businesses need a friendly and fair business environment so they can compete, innovate, and create jobs. We’re keeping politicians from playing favorites by offering special deals and tax breaks to the favored few.

<p>Businesses need a friendly and fair business environment so they can compete, innovate, and create jobs. We’re keeping politicians from playing favorites by offering special deals and tax breaks to the favored few.</p>

A Tempe development agreement that includes a $218,000 incentive for the developers of Sea Life Aquarium will remain in place while a judge sets a hearing to decide whether the subsidy is illegal.

Meanwhile, City Attorney Andrew Ching said as a precautionary measure, Tempe is drafting a new agreement that spells out more specifically how it complies with state law.

A court hearing Wednesday between Tempe and the Goldwater Institute explored the leeway cities have to woo developers of high-profile projects with public money.

Lawyers for the Goldwater Institute, a conservative Phoenix think tank, and Tempe will appear before a judge next week to present preliminary information on the lawsuit the institute filed last week, which claims the city offered the developer of Sea Life Aquarium an illegal incentive.

A Gilbert salon owner whose flesh-eating fish once nibbled the dead skin from her customers' feet is biting back after the Arizona Board of Cosmetology ordered a halt to the service.

A June opening for the 26,000-square-foot aquarium at Arizona Mills Mall could be in jeopardy after a conservative think tank filed a lawsuit claiming that the incentive Tempe offered the developer is illegal.

 

Phoenix--Today the Goldwater Institute asked a court to strike down an agreement between the City of Tempe and the developer of Sea Life Aquarium, a children's theme park at Arizona Mills Mall.

The City of Tempe made a deal with the developer of Sea Life Aquarium, an aquarium at a local shopping mall, to provide Sea Life with tax subsidies and concessions. The subsidies and concessions violated the Arizona Constitution and state law, which prohibit “gifts” of public money to private interests.

Arizona's consumption of electrical power has been growing at about three times the rate of the United States as a whole. Even though demand recently has slowed as a result of the economy, experts agree eventually things will pick up. When it does, existing supplies of electricity won't be enough to keep up.

The Goldwater Institute is appealing the Maricopa County Superior Court decision on its lawsuit looking to have Arizona’s renewable energy standards thrown out.