By Phil Riske | Managing Editor
(Editor’s note: Fourth in a series of articles reviewing the 2014 news stories published by Rose Law Group Reporter that were most read and gained momentum during the rest of the year.)
Lead story
Arizona 3rd among states where the most children go hungry
According to a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 49 million people in the United States lived in households struggling to find enough food to eat. Nearly 16 million were children and far more likely to have limited access to sufficient food than the general public
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Politics/Legislature
A federal three-judge panel ruled the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission does not have to redraw any portion of its legislative district map, rejecting the claims from Republican challengers who alleged the map violated the one-person-one-vote principle.
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Though debate lingered on far longer than most lawmakers had hoped, the Arizona Legislature adjourned, ending a sometimes tumultuous 101-day legislative session with work left on the table.
A bill died that could have help Tesla Motors if it lands a $5 billion battery plant in Arizona, and a proposed tax break on equipment for Apple’s Mesa manufacturing plant was blocked in the Legislature.
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The innocuously titled “2014 Tax Corrections” (SB 1031) would have implemented a tax increase on people who finance rooftop solar systems. An amendment struck the implementation of the rooftop solar tax from the bill, which later passed without it. Solar industry and home solar owners can now focus on overturning a Department of Revenue (DOR) ruling that reinterprets the state’s longstanding policy against the tax and unilaterally declared that such a tax must be implemented.
outright, creating a disparity among neighbors with rooftop solar.
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Solar continued
The Los Angeles Times stated in April: “The political attack ad that ran recently in Arizona had some familiar hallmarks of the genre, including a greedy villain who hogged sweets for himself and made children cry. But the bad guy, in this case, wasn’t a fat-cat lobbyist or someone’s political opponent. He was a solar-energy consumer. Solar, once almost universally regarded as a virtuous, if perhaps over-hyped, energy alternative, has now grown big enough to have enemies.
The Koch brothers, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and some of the nation’s largest power companies have backed efforts in recent months to roll back state policies that favor green energy. The conservative luminaries have pushed campaigns in Kansas, North Carolina and Arizona, with the battle rapidly spreading to other states.”
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Salt River Project’s lower solar prices were set to kick in in May, giving customers a inexpensive way to use solar power without having to install panels on their homes or businesses.
Environment
The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Environmental Protection Agency in a case involving the agency’s limits on power plant emissions that travel across state lines. On a 6-2 ruling, the court upheld the agency’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, a regulation that had been struck down by a lower court.
Real estate
The credit freeze was starting to thaw, reported The Wall Street Journal. Mortgage lenders were beginning to ease the restrictive lending standards enacted after the housing boom turned to bust, a sign of their rising confidence in the housing market.
Lending, nevertheless, declined to the lowest level in 14 years in the first quarter as homeowners pulled back sharply from refinancing and house hunters showed little appetite for new loans, the latest sign of how rising interest rates have dented the housing recovery.
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Reports indicated the U.S. economy was being held back by two factors: the real estate and jobs markets.
Meanwhile, The Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service reported both the number of sales and the Phoenix-area’s median sales price climbed in March from February. The median home-sale price climbed 3.9 percent .
A prediction was made that Arizona was looking down the road to more than $11.5B in taxable construction sales for the current fiscal year—the best number since 2008.
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Against a steady volley of criticism over plans to wind down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, top Obama administration officials defended a bipartisan bill to overhaul the mortgage-finance system as the best—and possibly only—chance to settle the firms’ fate.
Supreme Court
The U.S. Supreme Court on denied review of a provision of the controversial Arizona immigration law known as Senate Bill 1070 that was blocked by a federal judge in Phoenix and the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals. Without comment, the high court allowed an injunction to remain in place against a statute that would have made it illegal to transport or harbor illegal immigrants.
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Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens said marijuana should be legalized, saying there’s “not much of a distinction” between the drug and alcohol.
