Bob Christie

Arizona will provide taxpayer money to help private companies develop plans for at least two and possibly three desalination plants in California or Mexico under proposals approved by a state agency’s board on Wednesday.

It's bad to be sitting on a pot of money if you’re a state agency in a tough budget year. That’s a lesson that board members of the obscure entity charged with finding new water supplies for drought-plagued Arizona learned over the past two years.

More than three years after a federal judge found that Arizona's prison healthcare system was "plainly grossly inadequate'' and two years after an injunction required vast improvements, so little progress has been made that lawyers for prisoners now want the judge to essentially take over the system.

Three years after an obscure Arizona agency was charged with finding new water supplies for the state it has received six proposals from groups who hope to tap more than $375 million in state money to develop new water sources.

A small town fight over a plan to overhaul a downtown area that made its way all the way to the Arizona Supreme Court has led to a new ruling making it much easier for residents across the state to block locally approved projects at the ballot box.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Greg Como said he doesn't believe that top Republican lawmakers who are defending the laws challenged by the doctors missed a deadline for filing paperwork. And the judge said that even if they did, it did not harm the challengers.

The Democratic governor formally asked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for the money in a letter sent Thursday.

Just what Centerville, Utah, based Management & Training Corp. has planned for the shuttered 500-bed prison in Marana is still not known, even though the company paid Arizona $15 million for the facility.

Legislation designed to save huge amounts of water by allowing farmers across central Arizona to sell their land and associated groundwater rights to developers who must limit future pumping was signed into law Monday by Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs.

A special fund set up by the Arizona Legislature and former Gov. Doug Ducey in 2022 to provide $1 billion to secure new water supplies in the desert state is once again being raided to help balance the state budget.