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Naloxone 101

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  Written By: Nikki Lewis , MPP, MSW Arizona’s Opioid Epidemic Opioid addiction and overdose is a nationwide epidemic, hitting the state of Arizona hardest over the last decade. This issue is not isolated to those experiencing homelessness or abusing illegal substances such as heroin, but spans the state’s population. Overdoses can happen to those experiencing chronic pain who take increasing doses of pain medication, veterans and others coping with the effects of trauma, and young people experimenting with substances.  The AZ Department of Health Services (AZDHS) estimates that there have been over 47,000 suspected opioid overdoses in Arizona from June 2017 to July 2020, resulting in approximately 6,500 deaths .  In 2017, Governor Doug Ducey declared a public health emergency in response to increasing numbers of fatal overdoses. The emergency declaration urged first responders to learn how to administer and carry naloxone and set in motion a state-wide response to the epidemic. While
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Arizona, take the lead in educational equity

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Written By: Alexis Polokoff The allure of charter schools has hoodwinked many to think they increase equity by giving marginalized groups better school choices while increasing efficiency in fitting the right school to the right student. Theory does not translate to reality when it comes to charter schools. Data that reveal the racial disparities among student groups in different schools are not what is “naturally efficient.” These statistics are the result of information asymmetry, inaccessibility due to resource barriers (such as transportation and language), and charter cherry-pickers. Read Bergman and McFarlin’s “Education For All? A Nationwide Audit Study of School Choice” (2020) for more on these actions.  The reality is that many of the best charter schools engage in manipulative enrollment actions, from who and how they promote enrollment, to telling parents of costlier students, “I just don’t think our school is the right fit for your child.” Due to charter schools sharing the
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Coronavirus and the Need for Broad-Based Solutions

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  In the last week or so, the growing threat of the coronavirus pandemic has touched the lives of everyone in Arizona and across the country in some way. From shortages at the grocery store to school cancellations to uncertainty about Arizona’s Presidential Preference Election, virtually no aspect of American life has gone untouched. This is a scary and uncertain time, and none of us knows the answer to what lies ahead of us, but one thing is clear: this national and worldwide crisis has underscored the need for progressive, broad-based solutions to the various problems facing our state, our country, and the world because there is no such thing as a single-issue problem. We are deeply interconnected and so are our problems. So our solutions need to be as well. When White Hat Research and Policy Group was founded, we identified six key areas which would be the focus of our research and policy solutions: Civic Engagement Criminal Justice Economic Development Education Human Resources Tec
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Save Our Schools Act

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Education has been the dominant issue in Arizona politics for the past several years and it looks to be so again this November. Supporters of the #RedForEd movement are currently collecting signatures for a new version of the  Invest in Ed ballot initiative  which failed to make the ballot in 2018 and which would raise taxes on high-income earners to fund public education. And then last week,  Save Our Schools Arizona (SOSAZ) , the group behind 2018’s successful defeat of Proposition 305, announced a new ballot initiative they are calling the  Save Our Schools Act . Save Our Schools Arizona, if you will remember, is the grassroots group that was formed in 2017 to fight the Arizona legislature’s expansion of the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) school voucher program. The group got the 2017 voucher expansion referred to the ballot in 2018, where it was resoundingly defeated by nearly two-thirds of Arizona voters. But this defeat has not deterred Republican legislators, many with ti
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Copy Cat Legislation

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If you follow state-level politics, you are probably familiar with the idea of “model legislation.” This is when someone, usually a lobbying group or think tank, creates a bill that can be copied and pasted among legislators in varying states with little or no changes. The practice is most closely associated with the notorious conservative group the  American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) , which is known for writing bills and sending them home with legislators from their lavish retreats. The practice of model legislation and its association with ALEC first gained mainstream attention in 2012 after the shooting of Trayvon Martin. When Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, was initially not charged due to a law in Florida few people had heard of called “Stand Your Ground,” reporters and activists did some digging and discovered  Stand Your Ground laws had originated with ALEC and been passed in 24 states . ALEC’s model bills often serve two purposes. In the first case, these bills ar
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Preemption Laws and the War on Arizona Cities

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Guns. The Border Wall. Sanctuary cities. Solid waste collection. Industrial hemp production. AirBnBs.   What does this seemingly random grab bag of issues have in common? Well so far into this young legislative session, they have all been at the center of the Republican-controlled state legislature’s ongoing war on Democratic-led cities such as Phoenix, Tucson, Tempe, and Flagstaff. And the Republican legislators’ weapon of choice is an obscure tool known as preemption law.  As explained by  Henry Graber in Slate in 2016 , preemption laws, like so much state-level Republican legislation, is a brainchild of the notorious  American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) , the corporate-backed think tank which provides Republican legislators with model legislation which serves the interests of its corporate and billionaire clients. And preemption laws are a particularly pernicious tool that can be applied to almost any conservative hobbyhorse and harm the ability of cities to make their own
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All Roads Lead Back to Home

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  Recently the kickoff of the Arizona Legislative Session happened, a session that will undoubtedly be a party to vigorous debates surrounding matters of policy and legislation regarding education, voting rights and healthcare among others, the outcomes of which are of great importance with the ability to impact the lives of Arizonans for generations. There is no doubt that there is a need to keep an eye on the legislature and its policy outcomes in this 2020 session. While the eyes on the back of your head should be on the members and decisions of the various local Boards and Commissions.   As I imagine most readers are aware,  Boards and Commissions can be found at the city, county and state levels with a wide range of purposes and goals. Boards and Commissions make decisions and policies which also impact the lives and futures of Arizonans. One such Board is the  Phoenix Residential Investment Development Effort  which was created in 1989 with the purpose of assisting in community e
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