Arizona Lottery

Wickenburg-Boetto House receives award

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Before and after shot of the Wickenburg-Boetto House.

[Source: The Wickenburg Sun, 3-23-2010] — The Wickenburg-Boetto House was recently selected to receive the Heritage Fund Historic Preservation Project of the year award.  The selection was based on many aspects, such as outstanding project performance and end use.  The Arizona State Parks board and the Arizona Lottery made the Project of the Year program possible.

The Historic Preservation Advisory Committee has chosen Wednesday, March 31 as the day to recognize the project and to award a bronze plaque to be placed at the Wickenburg-Boetto House.  Other projects being recognized include Old Adobe Mission in Scottsdale, New State Motor Building in Jerome, Children’s Museum at Monroe School in Phoenix, and Peeples Valley Schoolhouse.

The awards presentation is scheduled to take place in Phoenix and is set to begin at 1 p.m.  For more information, contact Cindy Thrasher at 684-5129.

Viewpoint: Attack on Voter Protection Act threatens our valuable initiative process

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[Source: William C. Thornton, Special to the Arizona Daily Star, 3-8-2010] — Voters Beware!  Once again our right to legislate by initiative is under attack in the Arizona Legislature.  Inspired by the progressive movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, framers of the Arizona Constitution provided citizens with the initiative and recall as remedies for an unresponsive Legislature and direct means of removing corrupt or incompetent public officials from office.

It’s no secret that many legislators don’t like initiatives.  Many voter-approved measures provide evidence of a gap between an electorate with a progressive streak and the conservative legislative leadership.  Examples include the Arizona Heritage Fund, which passed by a 2-1 ratio in 1990.  With Heritage Funds, the citizens of Arizona have invested more than $400 million of lottery revenue in Arizona State Parks and Game and Fish, and earned many additional millions of dollars in matching grants.  If you hunt, fish, hike, camp, boat or picnic, you have benefited from the Heritage Fund at no cost to taxpayers.

By initiative we have also banned the barbaric blood sport of cockfighting, the hideously cruel use of leg-hold animal traps and mandated more humane conditions for factory-farmed hogs.  These measures all passed with overwhelming public support when the Legislature couldn’t or wouldn’t act.

Through the mid 1990s legislators engaged in a series of fund transfers and other actions designed to undermine the initiative process.  Matters came to a head when, in a particularly outrageous display of contempt for voters, legislators took it upon themselves to “fix” an initiative that legalized the limited use of medical marijuana.  The backlash produced the “Voter Protection Act” of 1998 that rendered voter-approved initiatives immune from legislative tampering.  [Note: To read the full opinion, click here.]