Paul Davenport of the AP brings us the news that the Joint Legislative Budget Committee staff has finally analyzed the impact of the Adams' tax-cut package that passed the House: It adds nearly a billion dollars to the state's structural deficit:

A new report says a legislative proposal for phased-in general tax cuts and business tax breaks for creating jobs would cost the state $942 million in lost revenue once fully implemented seven years from now.

That amount is about 11 percent of the current state budget.

UPDATE: Read the fiscal note yourself. It's little wonder that Republicans in the House wanted to get this passed before anyone actually analyzed it. The cost is absurd, especially when the structural deficit is more than $3 billion next year.

But Republicans in the Arizona Legislature aren't real fiscal conservatives; they just worship at the Church of Tax Cuts.

Linda Valdez and I review the week with Arizona Illustrated anchor Bill Buckmaster, after the jump.

Rep. Vic Williams explains why it's a good idea to take away health-care coverage from hundreds of thousands of people while we raise their property taxes on their homes and cut taxes for Arizona's wealthiest residents: It will spur economic activity! Rep. Nancy Young Wright counters that it's a corporate bailout at the expense of average Arizonans. Watch it all on Arizona Illustrated's Friday Roundtable after the jump.

The last time we brought you a little news on the continuing Saguaro Ranch saga, the Marana development's neighbors had filed an amendment to a lawsuit against the town based on a deposition from the development's former general manager.

In his deposition, Denis Boaro alleges that Saguaro Ranch owner Stephen Phinny basically bought off the Marana Town Council and officials to abandon a disputed public easement that meanders through the development.

Town officials fervently denied the charges and went so far as to accuse Boaro of lying. Town Attorney Frank Cassidy said the town was working with the Pima County Attorney's Office to charge Boaro with perjury.

Well, folks, it now looks like we have a dance-off on our hands.

After receiving an e-mail from Boaro, the neighbors' attorney, Stephen Weeks, filed a motion of sanctions, accusing town officials of tampering with their witness. You can check on the latest legal filing right here.

The sanctions filing notes that Boaro e-mailed Weeks on Jan. 26, to let him know that Marana Town Councilwoman Roxanne Ziegler called his home and told his wife she wanted to

Starting on Valentine's Day, the Center for Biological Diversity will launch an educational Web site (www.endangeredspeciescondoms.com) and will distribute 100,000 free Endangered Species Condoms throughout the country.

The condoms feature six threatened or endangered species, orginal artwork and slogans such as, "Wrap with care, save the polar bear." They report the human population is expected to be at least 9 billion by 2050. Over population is a direct threat to wildlife.

Read the official press release below. (Full disclosure: Weeklycolumnist Randy Serraglio has been one of the key people behind the effort):

Group Gives Out 100,000 Endangered Species Condoms for Valentine's Day Educational Project Highlights Impact of Human Overpopulation on Wildlife Five People to Win Lifetime Condom Supply

TUCSON, Ariz.— With 3,000 volunteers operating in all 50 states, the Center for Biological Diversity will distribute 100,000 free Endangered Species Condoms beginning on Valentine’s Day and has launched an educational Web site — www.EndangeredSpeciesCondoms.com — chronicling the devastating impact of human overpopulation on endangered species. Additional free condoms will be distributed through the site, and five people will win a lifetime condom supply.

Six different packages with original artwork and edgy slogans feature the polar bear (“Wrap with care, save the polar bear”), jaguar (“Wear a jimmy hat, save the big cat”), American burying beetle (“Cover your tweedle, save the burying beetle”), snail darter (“Hump smarter, save the snail darter”), coquí guajón rock frog (“Use a stopper, save the hopper”), and spotted owl (“Wear a condom now, save the spotted owl”). All six species are listed as threatened or endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“Human overpopulation is destroying wildlife

The last time Bill Risner went to court for a public-records lawsuit he filed on behalf of the Pima County Democratic Party, not only did he and his fellow Democrats win; the attorney also won almost $300,000 from Pima County in legal fees.

Well, it looks like it could happen all over again with a different public records lawsuit Risner filed last year. And if Risner wins, according to state law, Pima County will legally be forced to reimburse him thousands of dollars in legal fees—and that's beyond the money the county has paid for the lawyers they've retained to represent the Board of Supervisors and Pima County Treasurer Beth Ford.

While this lawsuit is a little different, it still goes back to what brought Risner, the Democrats, and the Democrat-led Board of Supervisors to battle in the first place several years ago—the 2006 Regional Transportation Authority election. Risner’s first public records-lawsuit win happened in 2008, when he continued his legal battle with the supes over the election. The result of his and the Democratic Party’s efforts was some much-needed attention to the many problems with the county’s voting procedures.

It was also an attempt, however, to get a closer look at the RTA ballots — Risner and other election-integrity activists felt that based on how the ballots were counted, and other blips that came up in their review, the election could very well have been fixed. Crazy things surfaced — one of which was the fact that an elections department employee admitted he had purchased a crop scanner, which is an effective tool in changing election computer counts. The employee said he never used it during the election and just wanted to see if what he heard was true, and it was never proven he used it during the RTA. The Democrats started putting a lot of public pressure

"#1256," a gelatin silver print by Masao Yamamoto, is among the images now on display at Etherton Gallery, 135 N. Sixth Ave., through Feb. 27.

A galactic mystery solved by UA astronomers?

Daniel Stolte of University Communications tells us:

• Viewed through the Hubble Space Telescope at visible light (left), a galaxy does not reveal its full secret underlying star formation. Only when observed using a combination of radio emission and infrared wavelengths, the galaxy reveals a massive, rotating disc measuring about 60,000 light years across (right). This disc consists of cold molecular gas and dust, the raw materials from which stars are born. UA astronomers help explain why fewer stars are born today than in the early universe.

University of Arizona astronomers have helped solve a mystery surrounding the birth of stars in galaxies that has long puzzled scientists. Their results are published in the Feb. 11 issue of Nature.

"We have known for more than a decade that in the early universe — three to five billion years after the Big Bang or nine to eleven billion years before today — galaxies churned out new stars at a much faster rate than they do now," said Michael Cooper, a postdoctoral Spitzer fellow at the UA's Steward Observatory.

"What we haven't known is whether this was because they somehow formed stars more efficiently or because more raw material — molecular gas and dust — was available," said his colleague Benjamin Weiner, an assistant astronomer at Steward Observatory and one of the co-authors on the paper.

Compared to the average galaxy today, which produces stars at ratesequaling about 10 times the mass of our sun per year, the rate of star formation in those same galaxies appears to have been up to 10 times higher when they were younger.

In its efforts to find an answer, the scientific community has tended to turn telescopes toward few, rare, very bright objects, mostly because the instruments available did not allow for the study of less extreme, more typical galaxies. By focusing on the rare, bright objects, the results

The latest from Sierra Club legislative lobbyist Sandy Bahr:

“Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light?” ~Maurice Freehill

February 12, 2010

Hi everyone! It was another ugly week at the Capitol as they voted out bill after bill that should be part of some comedy sketch and not our statutes. My favorite was the light bulb bill—it says we can manufacture and sell incandescent light bulbs in Arizona and they will not be subject to any federal standards. This one bill spurred a discussion about secession and also the difficulties of applying makeup with light from a compact fluorescent bulb. Representative Cajero Bedford professed that she was standing up for women and indicated that if it comes to aesthetics or the environment, aesthetics is her choice. Yes indeed, what we need is both enlightenment and some new bulbs.

This week, contact your representatives in the Arizona House and ask them to oppose