They may find it inconvenient, but taxpayer-funded institutions simply don’t have the right to withhold public records, even if those records contain information they’d prefer to keep hidden. That’s why the Goldwater Institute is now suing UCLA, which for more than five months has failed to turn over any records related to a radical, taxpayer-funded “activist-in-residence” who’s been invited to campus to “turn the university inside out.”
In October, Goldwater requested records from UCLA about the compensation and teaching materials of Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia, who is part of the school’s “Activists-in-Residence” program. Gray-Garcia has a long history of radical rhetoric—she’s called homelessness a “white man’s scam” and derided Israel as a “kolonizer” and “amerikkklan.” UCLA has repeatedly pushed back production dates for the records, and more than five months after receiving Goldwater’s request has failed to turn over a single document.
UCLA isn’t the first university to slow-walk a records request in the hopes that the requester will give up. But the Goldwater Institute and its American Freedom Network of pro bono attorneys won’t ever give up the fight for transparency and accountability.
Read more here.
There’s a saying that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes. That’s why the Goldwater Institute didn’t waste any time mounting a rapid-fire, point-by-point defense of Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts when the mainstream media launched yet another attack on the best-in-the-nation school choice program.
Over the past several weeks, 12News in Phoenix has falsely claimed that one in five ESA purchases “are considered unallowable.” But as Goldwater Institute Education Policy Director Matt Beienburg explains, the station’s analysis is flawed in several ways: their 20% figure was not based on a representative sample of ESA purchases, but on purchases that had been specifically flagged as higher risk; and they mashed up two different units of measure—they analyzed data on an item level for ESA marketplace purchases and on a transaction level for reimbursements.
The truth is, unallowable ESA spending is nowhere near 20%—a much more reputable study released by the Arizona Department of Education found unallowable spending was only 2% while actual fraud or egregious purchases are a tiny 0.3% of total spending.
Arizona’s ESA program has helped more than 100,000 students receive the education that works best for them, which is why the Goldwater Institute will defend it from teachers union opponents and their friends in the media who play fast and loose with the facts.
Read more here.
Landowners seeking to develop their property don’t just deserve clear and unambiguous permitting criteria—in Arizona, it’s the law. Now, as the City of South Tucson engages in a permitting dispute with a local businessman, the Goldwater Institute is putting local leaders on notice about their responsibilities under the Permit Freedom Act.
In 2023, Arizona adopted Goldwater’s Permit Freedom Act, which was crafted to take aim at the expanding scope of government permitting regimes that stymie projects with inconsistent, unpredictable, and delayed decisions. Now, in a letter to South Tucson—which is in a dispute with a businessman who wants to erect a billboard near Interstate 10—Goldwater is reminding city leaders that the Permit Freedom Act requires them to provide landowners with clear permitting criteria with proper notice and to fully process all applications within 60 days. If they don’t, the permit is considered automatically approved.
Goldwater’s Permit Freedom Act ensures that government permitting isn’t an arbitrary, confusing, or drawn-out process. The Institute will continue to ensure that Arizona officials comply with it and will work to implement this critical reform around the nation.
Read more here.
