Galaxy Gaming, a Nevada-based table-game company, has been approved to do business in Arizona casinos — despite being banned in California. Dishonesty by Robert Saucier, the CEO of Galaxy Gaming, was cited in a ruling by a California judge last year as the main reason for a gaming-license denial. But…
A bill that would all but destroy the public’s ability to receive public records critical of the government has been approved by a State House committee. The bill, HB 2419, sponsored by Representative David Stevens, a Republican from Sierra Vista, would allow government agencies to charge $20 an hour for…
In yet another embarrassing interview for Arizona, State Senator Steve Pierce defended SB 1062 on Fox News while urging its veto, and he openly worried about “bad publicity” for the state. Pierce, a Republican from Prescott, was interviewed by anchor Martha MacCallum and said the intent of the bill had…
When you live near a city named Surprise, Arizona, local news headlines can be eye-catching for the wrong reasons.
Maricopa County was ordered by a federal jury to pay $638,147 for retaliating against former county lawyer Maria Brandon after she commented to a newspaper. See our previous article today for details on the case. The jury verdict, released minutes ago, rejects all of Brandon’s claims except for two –…
Did top Maricopa County officials fire Maria Brandon, a longtime county lawyer, because she appeared to side with disgraced former sheriff’s official Dave Hendershott in a newspaper article? Or, as the county says, was Brandon fired solely because she instigated a catfight with a paralegal at the office in which…
Governor Jan Brewer has just been handed a gem of an opportunity: The ability to look good in the eyes of liberals by rejecting a bill widely seen as blatantly discriminatory, while retaining her conservative base. Or in the alternative, the chance to win wider support from conservatives. Either way,…
Arizona bureaucrats could earn cash by stalling requests for public records under an amended bill sponsored by a Republican state lawmaker. More ominously, the proposal by Representative David Stevens, a Republican from Sierra Vista, has the potential to destroy Arizona’s stellar open-records law by making the cost of obtaining records…
You’re safe — the asteroid known as 2000 EM26 did not hit Earth Monday night. Scientists predicted it wouldn’t. But by interstellar standards, this block of rock the length of three football fields was on our front porch. As our cover story “Space Invader” explains this week, these so-called near-Earth…
Grand Canyon rangers wrestled an employee of the national park to the ground during an arrest last week after she reportedly refused to cooperate during a stop for speeding. Dina Matlock, a blond woman in her early 20s known to officers as a frequent speeder, appears to have ticked off…
B.J. Pasquel resigned recently as head football coach for Coronado High School in Scottsdale for “personal and family reasons,” says a February 5th Arizona Republic article. New Times has learned that the resignation came just before Pasquel settled an extreme DUI conviction with the city of Scottsdale. It wasn’t the…
Jodi Arias doesn’t want her new jury to know what she thinks of her lawyer, or about a former cellmate who claims Arias wants prosecutor Juan Martinez killed. Two motions filed in Maricopa County Superior Court today ask Judge Sherry Stephens to stop the information from coming out in the…
How cute. The annual International UFO Congress will take place over the next few days at a small conference center at the Radisson Fort McDowell hotel in the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation. Self-described alien abductees and experts on UFOs, aliens, sasquatches, and crop circles are part of the lineup of…
The meteor blast over Chelyabinsk, Russia on February 15, 2013, broke windows, temporarily blinded and injured people, and spread tons of rocky debris over a wide area. It was a heaven-sent marketing coup for asteroid wonks. Dante Lauretta, Tucson father, University of Arizona professor, and principal investigator (a.k.a. “boss”) of…
Maria Brandon’s federal wrongful-firing complaint is a messy leftover of years of infighting among Maricopa County officials. But unlike lawsuits that have resulted in millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded settlement payouts to former county leaders and judges, this one’s gone to trial. The veteran lawyer accuses her former bosses at…
Arizona veterans and people 65 and older would get a big break from the state on the cost of a medical-marijuana card in 2015 under proposed rule changes. Since 2010’s historic vote granting Arizonans the freedom to use medical marijuana legally, the fee for obtaining a registration card has been…
If you want to hide data on your computer, a free open-source program called “True Crypt” apparently is one way to do it. According to the booking sheet of suspected child-porn suspect James DeSilva, forensics detectives from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office were stumped when they tried to see what…
Heather Rene Guffin, the CEO of a timeshare-marketing firm, was arrested at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport last week following an altercation with customs agents. As of Friday, the 35-year-old expatriate was stuck in Phoenix, hoping a federal judge would rule that she can return to her husband and kids…
A rumored flu epidemic centered on the Maricopa County Jail is false, officials say, and a move to prohibit jail visitors from wearing face masks is merely to avoid possible panic. Calls were flooding in all day on Thursday about the rumor, which was apparently spread by some defense lawyers…
The fight for a medical-marijuana dispensary on unincorporated Maricopa County land won a key victory on Wednesday with the Board of Supervisors lifting its ban on the shops. But the five Supervisors — one Democrat and four Republicans — and the county attorney continue to see the case as their…
Trampoline-park operators would have to jump through regulatory hoops in Arizona if a bipartisan group of lawmakers have their way. The new bill follows lobbying efforts by the parents of a Valley man who died in 2012 at SkyPark, a Phoenix indoor trampoline center…
A group of 36 Republican Arizona lawmakers and one Democrat have signed a resolution supporting nullification of all Environmental Protection Agency rules. The move comes just weeks after a chemical spill in Elk River, West Virginia, spoiled the water supply of 300,000 people, in part due to lax oversight of…
