AZ District 1 News & Reviews: AZ News & Blogs 5/13/2010

Cities will no longer be able to give lucrative property tax breaks lasting a half century or more to hand-picked developers because of a new law signed Tuesday by Gov. Jan Brewer....The reforms will roughly double the payments that designated builders provide instead of property taxes and will cut in half the normal length of leases with cities, which have already taken developments valued at more than $2 billion throughout Arizona off the property tax rolls.
Critics have pushed since 2008 to scale back or scrap the law, arguing a better approach than doling out tax breaks to a few large developers is to lower everyone’s property taxes. However, opposition from cities and developers with GPLET properties had stalled reform talks.

In Arizona, police can seize your property, sell it, and keep the money to fund their own budgets without so much as charging you with a crime. Under civil forfeiture laws, police and prosecutors can even seize your property after you've been found not guilty of a crime.

“Plata o plomo” (which literally means “silver or lead” and refers to how officials are either corrupted or killed by drug lords) has long been a common feature of the drug war in Latin America. It is not surprising that multi-billion dollar cartels corrupt the officials who are supposed to fight them. What is surprising is some people in Washington still believe that this is a winnable war.

Federal authorities say they have rescued three Salvadoran children who were being held hostage by suspected human smugglers in the Phoenix metropolitan area.

“I’ve been on the record saying that there is no way that we’re going to ask the people of the state of Arizona to vote for a temporary tax, and then come back and do business tax cuts,” Brewer said.

AZ District 1 News & Reviews