• Slug: BC-CNS-Labor Market,610 words.
• File photo available (thumbnail, caption below).

By Lux Butler and Alexandria Cullen
Cronkite News

WASHINGTON – Arizona’s unemployment is at the lowest rate in decades, there are more jobs than workers available to fill them and salaries are inching up, all of which should be good indicators for workers this Labor Day.

Experts say – it depends.

While a tight labor market has put workers in the driver’s seat, lingering inflation is chipping away at any salary gains and Arizona’s political climate makes it hard for unions to gain traction.

But overall, economists say, the outlook is positive. Continue reading “Jobless rate is down, wages up, but not all is worth celebrating this Labor Day”

• Slug: BC-CNS-Desert Deaths,610 words.
• File photo, graphic available (embed code, thumbnail, caption below).

By Adrienne Washington
Cronkite News

WASHINGTON – Migrant deaths in the Arizona desert spiked in July, when the remains of 42 undocumented individuals were found, the most for that month in more than a decade, advocates and medical officials said.

Heat exposure was listed as the primary cause of death for 22 of those victims, who were found during what the National Weather Service said was the hottest single month on record for southern Arizona.

“Most people have no idea how quickly one can succumb to the desert,” said Brad Jones, a spokesperson for Humane Borders, which tracks migrant deaths in Arizona. Continue reading “Migrant deaths climbed with temperatures in July; overall numbers still low”

EDS: An earlier version of this story misstated, in grafs 10 and 11, the focus of the Arizona State Parks Heritage Fund and funding distribution for the Arizona State Parks Board. The story below has been corrected, but clients who used previous versions of the story are asked to run the correction found here.

• Slug: BC-CNS-Sierra Club Report,1080 words.
• File photo, graphic available (embed code, thumbnail, caption below).

By Zachary Bradshaw
Cronkite News

PHOENIX – The Sierra Club Grand Canyon Chapter Wednesday released its fall 2023 Environmental Report Card for the Arizona Legislature and Governor, and though the organization gave a majority of the state’s legislators negative marks for climate inaction, it praised the state budget’s climate initiatives.

The quarterly report examines Arizona legislators’ voting records in environmental protection issues. Most Arizona Republican legislators received low grades for failing to fund initiatives geared toward transportation, groundwater pumping and protecting bodies of water.

Though the Sierra Club was encouraged by some of the initiatives that were successfully passed, the report card said more needed to be done to fully address climate problems facing Arizona. Continue reading “Sierra Club report card lauds environmental funding, laments climate inaction”

• Slug: BC-CNS-Drug Dealing,870 words.
• Photo, graphic available (embed code, thumbnail, caption below).

By Alexandria Cullen
Cronkite News

WASHINGTON – The Biden administration targeted 10 prescription drugs Tuesday as part of the first-ever Medicare price negotiation, a move that it said could benefit 9 million beneficiaries – including 165,000 in Arizona.

The medications, which are used to treat heart failure, blood clots, diabetes, arthritis, Crohn’s disease and more, account for the highest spending for drugs in Medicare Part D, and cost Medicare enrollees an estimated $3.4 billion in out-of-pocket expenses last year.

The move is part of the Inflation Reduction Act, which requires the government to cap out-of-pocket prescription expenses for Medicare enrollees at $2,000 by 2025. The act also requires the Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate prices for drugs with pharmaceutical companies, a move the Congressional Budget Office estimates could save $160 billion for taxpayers. Continue reading “White House plan to negotiate drug prices could affect 165,000 Arizonans”

• Slug: BC-CNS-Home Hurdles,770 words.
• Photo available (thumbnail, caption below).

By Alexandria Cullen
Cronkite News

WASHINGTON – High mortgage rates and tight inventories are hitting home sales nationwide, but agents in Arizona say the continuing influx of new residents to the state has softened the impact in the Valley.

The National Association of Realtors reported this week that existing home sales fell 2.2% from June to July, when 4.07 million homes were sold nationwide. That was down more than 16% from July 2022, the report said.

The reverse was true in Arizona, where a report from the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service said sales fell steeply from June to July, but were only down 3.1% from the same time last year.

The national report attributed the decline in part to rising interest rates, which are making homeowners reluctant to sell and making it difficult for homebuyers to get into the market. That is reducing the number of homes on the market, driving up prices for those who are looking to buy and depressing sales. Continue reading “Arizona fares slightly better as high mortgages, low inventory hit home sales”

EDS: An earlier version of this story misspelled Ta’nia Pierre’s last name in grafs 4 and 5. The story below has been corrected, but clients who used previous versions are asked to run the correction found here.

• Slug: BC-CNS-Abortion Review,720 words.
• 2 file photos available (thumbnails, captions below).

By Lux Butler and Renee Romo
Cronkite News

WASHINGTON – Arizona abortion providers said Thursday they will conduct business as usual while the state Supreme Court considers a challenge to state law that could lead to the restoration of a 19th-century ban on abortion.

The court’s announcement Wednesday was the latest in a year of uncertainty for abortion providers in the state since the U.S. Supreme Court last June overturned Roe v. Wade, its 1973 ruling that recognized a right to abortion.

Arizona’s abortion laws have seesawed back and forth since then, as state courts first reinstated and then put on hold the 1864 law that criminalizes abortion in almost all cases. Currently, abortion is legal in the state as long as it is performed by a licensed physician before 15 weeks of pregnancy, under a law passed by the Legislature in 2022. Continue reading “State Supreme Court to hear abortion case; providers vow business as usual”

EDS: This is a partner story from KUNC. If you choose to use it, please fill out this form to help their tracking.

• Slug: BC-CNS-Recycled Water,1920 words.
• 3 photos, audio story available (thumbnails, captions below).

By Alex Hager
KUNC

It looks like a normal glass of water. It’s clear, cold and tasteless. But just a few hours ago, it was raw sewage.

That water is the end product of a process and technology known as water recycling, or direct potable reuse.

In the Western U.S., there’s more demand for water than there is supply, so cities with finite water supplies are finding creative new ways to stretch out the water they already have. For some, that means cleaning up sewage and putting it right back in the pipes that flow to homes and businesses.

Colorado this year passed a law with regulations for cities that want to take advantage of direct potable reuse, setting standards for water quality and requiring cities to do public outreach about the filtration process. Arizona, Texas, Florida, and California have published guidelines for the technology, but Colorado is the first state to implement a set of mandatory rules. Continue reading “Water-short cities want to use every last drop – even if it used to be sewage”

EDS: This project, In the Sheriff We Trust, was produced by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, in collaboration with the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. The Howard Center is based at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and is an initiative of the Scripps Howard Fund in honor of the late news industry executive and pioneer Roy W. Howard. AZCIR is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide, data-driven investigative reporting.

• Slug: BC-CNS-Constitutional Sheriffs, 3700 words.
• 7 photos, video story, graphic available (thumbnails, captions below).
• EDS: Publishable note on methodology available here.

By TJ L’Heureux, Adrienne Washington, Albert Serna Jr., Anisa Shabir and Isaac Stone Simonelli
The Howard Center for Investigative Journalism and Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Against the background hum of the convention center, Dar Leaf settled into a club chair to explain the sacred mission of America’s sheriffs, his bright blue eyes and warm smile belying the intensity of the cause.

“The sheriff is supposed to be protecting the public from evil,” the chief law enforcement officer for Barry County, Michigan, said during a break in the National Sheriffs’ Association 2023 conference. “When your government is evil or out of line, that’s what the sheriff is there for, protecting them from that.”

Leaf is on the advisory board of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, founded in 2011 by former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack. The group, known as CSPOA, teaches that elected sheriffs must “protect their citizens from the overreach of an out-of-control federal government” by refusing to enforce any law they deem unconstitutional or “unjust.” Continue reading “God-given rights: The nationwide spread of the ‘constitutional sheriff’”

EDS: This project, In the Sheriff We Trust, was produced by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, in collaboration with the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. The Howard Center is based at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and is an initiative of the Scripps Howard Fund in honor of the late news industry executive and pioneer Roy W. Howard. AZCIR is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide, data-driven investigative reporting.

• Slug: BC-CNS-Sheriffs Counties, 1800 words.
• 5 photos available (thumbnails, captions below).
• EDS: Publishable note on methodology available here.

By Isaac Stone Simonelli, Brendon Derr and Anisa Shabir
The Howard Center for Investigative Journalism and Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting

GOLDENDALE, Wash. – A sign urging residents to “Declare Klickitat County a Constitutional County” remains taped inside the window of a gym on the city’s main street, a lingering reminder of the controversial resolution that inflamed community divisions in 2021.

Two years on, debate over the measure — which aimed to prohibit the county from “infringing upon any constitutional rights,” chiefly those involving firearms — continues to reappear in public comment portions of county meetings in the southern Washington community.

Commissioners didn’t move the resolution forward, in part because they thought it was government overreach. But the public rebuke hasn’t stopped Klickitat County Sheriff Bob Songer, who drafted the resolution, from pushing the idea. Continue reading “Controversial sheriffs’ group expands ideology to so-called ‘constitutional counties’”

EDS: This project, In the Sheriff We Trust, was produced by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, in collaboration with the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. The Howard Center is based at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and is an initiative of the Scripps Howard Fund in honor of the late news industry executive and pioneer Roy W. Howard. AZCIR is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide, data-driven investigative reporting.

• Slug: BC-CNS-Sheriffs Gorilla, 1700 words.
• 2 photos available (thumbnails, captions below).
• EDS: Publishable note on methodology available here.

By Albert Serna Jr.
The Howard Center for Investigative Journalism

It’s about finding fun and easy ways for the public to be civically engaged, Sue Frost says in the video describing her nonprofit, the Gorilla Learning Institute. It’s about strength through knowledge so that busy families can “advocate lawfully and professionally and peacefully.” 

Standing in a navy blue blazer and red top against a light backdrop, the Sacramento politician stars in her own YouTube video about the group. Its name, she explains, is a reference to both the gorilla as a peaceful, powerful and highly intelligent animal ready to fight if threatened and “guerrilla” fighters who “use creative tactics” to get the job done.

The Gorilla Learning Institute uses its tax-exempt status to help fund other groups’ activities, including the Friends of CSPOA, a California chapter of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. That national organization trains law enforcement officers on the idea that sheriffs’ constitutional authority supersedes that of the federal government. Continue reading “California nonprofit linked to constitutional sheriff group”

EDS: This is a partner story from KUNC. If you choose to use it, please fill out this form to help their tracking.

• Slug: BC-CNS-River Relaxed,820 words.
• 2 photos available (thumbnails, captions below).

By Alex Hager
KUNC

Federal officials are easing water restrictions after an unusually snowy winter in the mountains helped replenish the beleaguered river and its reservoirs and led to new Colorado River forecasts from the Bureau of Reclamation.

But the river’s users, which include Arizona and six other Western states, 30 Native American tribes and Mexico, are still under pressure to reduce demand.

“We are still on the precipice of a lot of uncertainty,” said Kyle Roerink, director of the nonprofit Great Basin Water Network. “The precarious nature of our modern water cycle should give all water managers pause. We just have to think, how are we going to live in a world where there’s going to be much less?” Continue reading “Feds ease Colorado River cuts after positive forecast, but work remains”

• Slug: BC-CNS-Maternal Mortality,1210 words.
• Photo, graphic available (embed code, thumbnail, caption below).

By Lillie Boudreaux
Cronkite News

WASHINGTON – Maternal death rates more than doubled over the past 20 years in the U.S., with Black and Indigenous women continuing to see mortality rates that far exceeded other groups – a pattern that was repeated in Arizona, according to a recent study.

Health experts said no single factor is to blame, but said that “systemic racism” leads to a convergence of causes that can lead to more deaths during and after pregnancy.

“We have to recognize that there is still very, very real systemic racism that is taking place within our health care systems,” said Dr. Jill Gibson, the medical director of Planned Parenthood Arizona. Continue reading “Maternal mortality soars in U.S., state; Black, Native women hardest hit”

• Slug: BC-CNS-Teen Lifeline,900 words.
• 4 photos available (thumbnails, captions below).

By Sophia Biazus
Cronkite News

PHOENIX — Teen Lifeline, a local nonprofit dedicated to preventing teen suicide, has introduced a local initiative with a goal of reducing repeated suicide attempts.

Modeled after the Caring Contacts program for adults, volunteer teen peer counselors will reach out to teens who have been discharged from the hospital following a suicide attempt with supportive phone calls, texts, handwritten notes and care packages.

Caring Contacts is an intervention program used throughout the U.S. where patients released from the hospital after a suicide attempt are sent brief expressions of care and concern from someone who has interacted with the patient. The support continues for about a year. Continue reading “Teen Lifeline’s new program supports teens who have attempted suicide”

EDS: An earlier version of this story misstated, in graf 29, the number of states that require reports to NamUs and mischaracterized tribal police agencies’ access to the NCIC in graf 30. The story below has been corrected, but clients who used previous versions of the story are asked to run the correction found here.

• Slug: BC-CNS-MMIP Challenge,2280 words.
• 4 file photos available (thumbnails, captions below).
• EDS: Annita in Annita Lucchesi in fifth graf is CQ.

By Alexis Waiss
Special for Cronkite News

WASHINGTON – Jason Chavez acknowledges that members of Gov. Katie Hobbs’ Task Force on Missing and Murdered Indigenous People face a “big ask” – to “reduce and end violence against Indigenous people” in the state.

But Chavez, Hobbs’ director of tribal affairs, said he is “confident” the task force can succeed in the three years it has been given to meet that goal.

If he’s right, Arizona would do what no other task force on the state or federal level has been able to accomplish after years of work.

At least 10 states and various federal agencies have launched efforts to address the problem of missing and murdered Indigenous people. But, charged with solving in a few years an issue that took centuries to develop, those efforts have had to grapple with historical neglect, modern bureaucracy and myriad disparities that would require a transformation of Indian Country’s public services to be resolved. Continue reading “MMIP task forces are given years to solve a problem centuries in the making”

• Slug: BC-CNS-DACA Delays,550 words.
• File photo, video story available (thumbnails, captions below).

By Shelly Garzon
Cronkite News

WASHINGTON – Maria Benitez, who is undocumented, grew up with hopes of one day getting coverage under DACA, the 2012 program that protects migrants from deportation if they were brought here as children.

She says she qualifies. She applied. And then the government shut the door on her and thousands of others as part of the ongoing court challenges to the program.

That has left Benitez, 19, an Arizona State University student, feeling frustrated and worried, in addition to having to cope with added challenges to everyday life that being undocumented brings. Continue reading “Freeze on DACA approvals leaves thousands of Arizona migrants in limbo”

• Slug: BC-CNS-Debt Doubt,1190 words.
• File photo available (thumbnail, caption below).

By Sydney Carruth
Cronkite News

WASHINGTON – When federal student loan payments resume this fall, they are expected to pull as much $71 billion in otherwise disposable income out of the economy every year, $5.3 billion of which will come from Arizona.

The economic pain could be very real for the 43 million borrowers – about 880,000 in Arizona – who will have to start paying back their student loans after a pause of more than three years that began as a pandemic-relief measure.

“We hear from borrowers, some even in Arizona, who are telling us that when payments restart, they’re not going to be able to afford food, they’re not going to be able to afford rent, they’re not going to be able to afford health care,” said Cody Hounanian, executive director of the Student Debt Crisis Center.

While the amount those repayments will pull from the economy appears daunting, a Moody’s Analytics report said it will only account for about 0.4% of the nation’s disposable income, what Moody’s economist Bernard Yaros calls a “modest headwind” to the overall economy. Continue reading “Student loan repayments will hit economy; how hard depends on who’s being hit”

• Slug: BC-CNS-Gender Names,960 words.
• 2 file photos available (thumbnails, captions below).

By Jasmine Kabiri
Cronkite News

WASHINGTON – Daniel Trujillo, 15, said he was “super excited” two years ago when he finally received a birth certificate that accurately represents his gender identity.

“I told them that we needed to get a second copy and then frame it,” said Daniel, a Tucson resident.

But it took a court order for Daniel to get his gender changed on his birth certificate without first providing proof of a sex-change operation as required by state law, a policy that activists have challenged as unconstitutional.

LGBTQ+ activists say changing a birth certificate is just the most glaring example of the long and “arduous” journey that transgender people must undergo in Arizona to receive legal gender affirmation on official documents. Continue reading “What’s in a name change? Too many hurdles, transgender advocates say”

• Slug: BC-CNS-Cities Saving.1550 words.
• 3 photos available (thumbnails, captions below).

By Matt Vasilogambros
Stateline

TUCSON — There are no lush green lawns among the rows of single-family homes that line a quiet boulevard a mile west of the University of Arizona campus. Instead, small lizards scurry across gravel to the shade of cacti, shrubs and trees native to the Southwestern desert, as cicadas drone and backyard chickens cluck in the triple-digit heat now common here in July.

In the middle of the road, the curbs of a roundabout have been cut to allow water from the summer monsoons to flow into the public landscaping in the roundabout’s center circle and soak the soil, replenish native plants and trickle underground.

This city in the Sonoran Desert, which relies heavily on Colorado River water, will depend more and more on robust water reuse — including from stormwater — as climate change worsens. Continue reading “These cities coordinate to save water, a model for parched Western areas”

• Slug: BC-CNS-Borderlands Sugar,2190 words.
• 5 photos available (thumbnails, captions below).

By Keetra Bippus
Cronkite Borderlands Initiative

Multiple workers reported that agents of Central Romana warned residents in the bateyes against speaking to journalists under threat of forced eviction. For this reason, personal identifying information has been removed and names of workers have been changed for protection. They don’t want us to talk, but our life is not good.” – Central Romana employee

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LA ROMANA, Dominican Republic – They call it a batey. The word itself is defined as a settlement around a sugar mill.

For workers who live in the bateyes of Central Romana, the largest sugar cane company in the Dominican Republic, it’s not just a settlement, it’s home, albeit in a company-owned shantytown that’s difficult to leave because for most of them, there’s nowhere to go.

Most workers in Dominican sugar cane fields are Haitian immigrants without documentation or people of Haitian descent whose Dominican citizenship was retroactively stripped by the Dominican government in 2013, making them vulnerable to deportation and dependent on private companies for places to live. Continue reading “Haitian workers endure harsh living, working conditions in company settlement”