Blogging For Arizona's Future-- Imagine What Arizona CAN Be!!

Increase Business Investment in Arizona By Making Business Regulations Fair and Clear

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 18:32:00 GMT

One of the major impediments to economic growth in Arizona is our archaic and business-killing regulatory system. Regulations are written by the regulators in order to give them maximum room for exercising power. Regulations are therefore purposefully vague, allowing for broad interpretations which maximize regulators' power and correspondingly increase risk and costs to business investors being regulated. Unfortunately, the more vague regulations are, the more they are subject to "interpretation" by regulators, and the more difficult they are for businesses to satisfy. Businesses simply don't know what the rules are until the regulations are "interpreted" by the regulators. These kinds of vague regulations kill investment and jobs.
The way to solve this problem is to require regulators to write clear and unambiguous regulations which make the "rules" clear to all concerned. The way to do that is simple---just adopt a law in Arizona that says that all "interpretations" of regulations must be determined in favor of the business applicant. In other words, force regulators to write clear regulations, making it evident on the face of the regulations what it is they want to regulate and how. Clearly written regulations should not require "interpretations," and since the regulators are the people who write such regulations they should be the ones who carry the burden to write clearly. If they don't do so, and insist that their own regulations must be "interpreted" in the context of a business transaction, it should be them and not the business who carries the risk. The way to put the risk on them is to require that if any "interpretations" of their regulations are required, because they have written the regulations vaguely, then the rule WILL be interpreted in favor of the business applicant.
Businesses are willing to comply with regulations. They just want to know what the rules are. Regulators should be obligated to write the rules embodied in their regulations in a manner which is easily understandable, clear, and does not require "interpretations." Once Arizona's regulatory processes are made simple, clear, and fair to businesses trying to comply with them, more investment can and will occur. Jobs will be created, and Arizona's economy will begin to thrive again.

A Key To K-12 Reform---Uniform Accounting Standards For Educational Spending

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 02:07:00 GMT

It is quite clear that, overall, Arizona spends an incredible amount of its K-12 education resources OUTSIDE the classroom and on things other than paying teachers. The Arizona Auditor General has found that only $.57 of Arizona's education dollar gets into the classroom. In some districts, like Tucson Unified School District, that number is only $.53. Overall, Arizona spends around $7,000 per student every year on K-12 education (apart from capital costs such as buildings), but teachers receive only about $2,000 of that per student taught. Where is the other $5,000 per student going?
Yet it is very difficult to determine exactly where education money is spent because schools and school districts use a wide variety of accounting systems, most of which are not transparent or understandable to outsiders. They are required to use a uniform standard for reporting only monies received directly from the State, but do NOT use uniform standards in accounting for monies received from a wide variety of other sources. Thus, it is often virtually impossible to determine the TOTAL amounts being spent, either by category, program, individual.
As a result, when the education lobby claims it does not have enough money, the public has no way to determine if those allegations are true. That defect makes it difficult if not impossible to determine whether the education system is efficient and/or properly funded. It makes it difficult to determine whether and where new funds are needed in the educational system as continuously alleged by the education lobby.
While I commend the legislature for the major educational reforms it adopted in the 2010 legislative session ( understandable grading systems for schools, no social promotions, limited consideration of seniority for hiring and firing, etc), I urge the legislature to adopt: a) a requirement that ALL educational funds, of all natures, be accounted for using a single, and UNIFORM, accounting system, so that spending at all schools and districts can be compared easily and understandable; AND b) that all such accounting systems be reported on the internet and thus made transparent to the public on an ongoing basis at all times.
Such a Uniform System could be adopted the State Department of Education, working in conjunction with appointees from the education committees of both legislative houses, the private sector and the educational sector.
Until a Uniform and Transparent Public School Accounting System is adopted for all schools, and to report spending from all sources, Arizona will continue to be unable to determine where monies are actually spent, and for what purposes, and how efficiently. Until such a system is adopted, Arizona will not be able to reach any final conclusions or judgements about how best to improve its educational system in general.

We Must Set a Higher Standard For Arizona Leadership

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 15:35:00 GMT

For too many years Arizona has focused on the SYMPTOMS of our maladies, and not the maladies themselves. A good example is the State economic woes. Everyone talks about the State budget deficit as if that were the real problem---the real disease---but it is not. The REAL problem is that we do not have enough private sector jobs---our economy is weak. Fix the REAL problem by rebuilding jobs and the economy and the budget deficit will fix itself. Not only will we create more jobs, but at the same time we will create taxpayers, remove people from the public assistance roles (thus reducing state expenses), and refill our State Treasury. Yet too many of our "leaders" spend all their time talking about how to balance the State "checkbook" and NO time talikng about how to rebuild the economy and jobs! Too many of our "leaders," then, focus on managing the Crisis rather than envisioning and planning for a long term future.

We must demand more depth and more vision in our leaders. We need long term, strategic, visionary planning, not merely Crisis Management. We need to be talking about CUTTING BUSINESS TAXES, REFORMING BUSINESS REGULATIONS TO MAKE OUR REGULATORY SYSTEM FAIR, EFFICIENT, AND USER FRIENDLY TO THOSE WHO ARE TRYING TO CREATE INVESTMENT AND JOBS IN ARIZONA. AND WE NEED TO LAY PLANS FOR THE IMMEDIATE INFUSION OF HUGE AMOUNTS OF PRIVATE INVESTMENT TO IMMEDIATELY STIMULATE OUR ECONOMIC GROWTH, by starting NOW to rebuild out much needed State infrastructure, like Highways, fast-rail, water desal plants, nuclear power plants, and many other projects with PRIVATE CAPITAL. We could start creating thousands of jobs TODAY by setting the private sector free to build out our infrastructure, rather than waiting 20 years for the State to finally have money to do it. We could have BOTH the jobs AND the infrastructure IMMEDIATELY. We need leaders who will carry these big visions to reality NOW.

And we need leaders who will finally force fundamental reform in our education system, to make Arizona's K-12 education system the best in the country.

We must DEMAND REAL LEADERSHIP for once, and refuse to settle for less. I ask Arizonans to start demanding ANSWERS, SOLUTIONS AND REAL LEADERSHIP from all State leaders. Imagine what Arizona CAN be with REAL LEADERSHIP!

Welcome!

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 15:25:00 GMT

Welcome to our new blog for ImagineArizona! We invite you to present your ideas and solutions to make Arizona the BEST OF AMERICA'S FUTURE, with the best economy, the most jobs per capita, the highest GDP per capita, the best education system, with the best quality of life in the world. Please keep your comments positive, and refrain from personal remarks or smears. Here Arizonans will finally have a place to discuss IDEAS and ARIZONA'S FUTURE.

(We reserve the right to remove any comments which do not meet our standards in that regard; although the failure to remove same will not indicate our agreement with them and may be the result simply of inadequate time to edit. We are not responsible in any manner for entries, comments, or remarks by others and will hold all parties responsible for any problems arising from their entries, comments or remarks.)