Goldwater Institute

In March, the Goldwater Institute released Race and Disability: Racial Bias in Arizona Special Education, which found that predominantly white Arizona school districts labeled significantly higher percentages of minority students as disabled than did minority school districts. Using 2000-2001 data, the study showed that school districts with predominantly white student bodies had Hispanic disability rates that were 47 percent higher than the Hispanic disability rates in predominantly minority districts. The study posited several possible explanations for this pattern, including perverse financial incentives, segregationist impulses, and desire on the part of districts to inflate standardized test results.

Senator Barry Goldwater best articulated his legislative mission when he said, "If I should be attacked for neglecting my constituents 'interests,' I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty."

The object of tax reform must be to decrease the tax burden on Arizonans and to end a system that punishes savings and investment. The Governor's Citizens Finance Review Commission has been tasked with examining the state's tax system and proposing changes. Although some of the commission's principles are laudable, others are based on the notion that the current system collects too little revenue. Policymakers should focus on reforms that make Arizona's tax code simple, fair, neutral, and regionally competitive. Three comprehensive reform options fulfill those criteria:

At a time when every dollar counts, appropriation decisions must be based on fact, not fiction-no matter how noble the fiction. Arizona's taxpayers subsidize the estimated 6.8 percent of residents enrolled in the state's two-year and four-year colleges and universities. Taxpayers also subsidize the one-third of enrollees who are nonresidents. What is the return on this investment?

Excess spending, not a revenue shortage, has created Arizona's mounting budget shortfall. During the 1990s, the legislature spent two of every three dollars in new revenue, and sent only one dollar in new revenue back to taxpayers. In fact, general fund spending doubled between 1990 and 2000.