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Municipal Malfeasance

July 11, 2024

From imposing burdensome business mandates to pouring hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into a homelessness crisis that’s only gotten worse, you don’t have to look far for examples of local governments’ dereliction of duty in Arizona.

Here are three recent examples (and read the last article in this series here):

Burdensome Business Mandate Goes Down

Will they ever learn? Right on the heels of its previous failed attempt to ram an illegal “prevailing wage” mandate down businesses’ throats, the city of Phoenix tried again—and Tucson soon followed. But their new mandates wouldn’t last for long.

After the Goldwater Institute filed suit on behalf of dozens of businesses, a state court ruledin June that Phoenix and Tucson violated state law by adopting “prevailing wage” ordinances that force businesses competing for taxpayer-funded public-works projects to pay employees above-market wages. These mandates would have resulted in taxpayers paying more and waiting longer for projects to get done, in employees having a harder time finding work, and in businesses suffering from higher costs and fewer opportunities.

Read the rest of the op-ed at the Arizona Daily Independent.

Austin VanDerHeyden is the Director of Municipal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute.

 

 

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