Week in Review: Keep Our Neighborhoods Safe

Rampant homelessness is making Arizona’s communities unrecognizable. Government is failing to do its job of enforcing the law. And law-abiding taxpayers are paying the price.

Thankfully, the Goldwater Institute put a solution on the 2024 general election ballot: Prop 312, which allows property owners suffering from government’s inaction on homelessness to claim a refund for mitigation expenses like installing fences and hiring security. “We’re looking to hold our government accountable. We want them to do their jobs,” Goldwater Director of Government Affairs Jenna Bentley told Axios this week. 

Keep Arizona’s neighborhoods safe. Vote YES on Prop 312.

Read more here, and find out where Goldwater stands on additional Arizona ballot measures here.

Off the Hook

Score one for hardworking taxpayers, as an Arizona town government’s fake “emergency” just disintegrated into dust.

Taxpayers in Payson, Ariz., are no longer on the hook for a massive debt after the Goldwater Institute took the town to task for abusing its emergency powers to prevent citizens from challenging the sale of $70 million in bonds. The “emergency”? Town officials’ apparent belief that interest rates might rise in coming months. After the Goldwater Institute filed suit challenging the sham “emergency,” the town council voted to cancel the bond sale.

The fight is not over—local governments throughout the state routinely bypass democratic accountability using “emergency” clauses. But we’re fighting back to ensure government can’t steamroll its own citizens.

Read more here.

ICYMI: The Senselessness of Identity Politics

It’s perverting our legal system, turning the very concept of justice on its head. It’s perverting our schools, teaching children to judge each other on skin color, not character. It’s perverting our hospitals, where doctors boast of discriminating against certain races of patients.

It’s called identity politics, and during a special Goldwater Institute live webinar last week, lawyer and philosopher Dr. Ronald Lindsay, author of the new book Against the New Politics of Identity, joined Goldwater Institute Vice President for Legal Affairs Timothy Sandefur to discuss the origins of the “new politics of identity,” the harm it’s causing to our nation, and what can be done to return to the principle that “all men are created equal.”

Watch the webinar here.