Goldwater Institute

The Goldwater Institute's Center for Market-Based Education (CMBE) started this second component of a larger charter school impact project in December 1999. It provides an in-depth look at Arizona's most mature charter schools and how they have evolved during their first five years of operation. Since charter schools are a creation of public policy and exist through a contract with a public sponsor, we believe it is important to examine the evolution of charter schools within the context of the Arizona charter school law and the charter contracting process. For this reason we have included an evolution of the first five years of both the charter law and the charter contracting process.

Residents and public officials in urban areas around the world are concerned about traffic congestion and air pollution. Of the two problems, traffic congestion is the more intractable, because improved vehicle technologies are already having a dramatic effect on improving air quality.

This report examines the effects of eliminating the state's corporate and personal income tax on Arizona's economy. It finds that by the year 2016 eliminating the income tax would lead to a 42 percent increase in personal income above what may be expected under the present system. By that same year, 606,400 more jobs would be created. More importantly, more jobs would be created in sectors with annual wages that are higher than the statewide average. By increasing this proportion of high-paying jobs, Arizona's economy would be liberated from the stranglehold that low-paying service and retail jobs currently possess.

In 1998 the attorneys general of 46 states, the District of Columbia and various territories signed an unprecedented settlement agreement with the five major tobacco companies. The terms of the settlement put curbs on the companies' ability to market, advertise, sponsor, lobby and engage in trade association activities. It also forces cigarette makers to pay a record financial recovery, including paying an estimated $196 billion to the states over the first 25 years of the settlement. Arizona's share is an estimate $100 million per year.

Arizona's school finance system is arguably one of the most complex in the United States. Over the years, both the Arizona Tax Research Association (ATRA) and the Goldwater Institute have made efforts to keep taxpayers and policy makers up to date or to introduce them to the major moving parts of this rather involved topic.