Washington state does something similar, though it’s more of a subsidy. Education is still mainly funded locally, but the state kicks in with its own funding for poorer districts, so Seattle property taxes subsidize schools across the state in Spokane.
Arizona legalized medical marijuana quite early, followed by recreational marijuana. Their medicaid program AHCCCS [1] is extremely comprehensive and even pays for Uber/Lyft to the doctor's office and back. Patients are able to see a great selection of GPs and specialists, and the copay is always $0. The accompanying drug plan is comprehensive, also with a copay of $0. AHCCCS will approve expensive modern drugs like Rozeram (supercharged melatonin analog for sleep) if the sufficient documentation of reasonable need is provided.
Cactuses are protected from destruction by law, and must be transplanted when doing clearing for construction. You may find the idea of being able to own a firearm without a license to be unpalatable but the state largely remains very safe crime-wise (perhaps due to that?)
I miss living in Arizona. It's a beautiful state with very caring folk. I saw almost no homeless folks in Phoenix. Folks there seem to really care about their fellow citizens. Southern hospitality is for sure a thing, take it from a daft boy from Brooklyn!
My mom lived in Tucson and decided on a visit that I might want to go shooting with her and her boyfriend at the time. Suffice it to say, it didn't go well. BTW, Arizona does very poorly in crime rate (10th highest for violent crime, 3rd highest for property crime), especially Phoenix and Tucson (but is very urban, so there is that also). I'm not sure why you consider it safe crime wise when the numbers say otherwise. They also do very poorly in education (rank 48th). I was really surprised they could beat New Mexico and Louisiana (https://www.wmicentral.com/news/latest_news/arizona-ranks-48...).
It is beautiful. I would love to live in Tucson someday, but with the bad schools, it would have to be after my kid was done with school and I retired.
> I miss living in Arizona. It's a beautiful state with very caring folk. I saw almost no homeless folks in Phoenix. Folks there seem to really care about their fellow citizens. Southern hospitality is for sure a thing, take it from a daft boy from Brooklyn!
When I was a kid, I took a greyhound bus from Vicksburg MS to Seattle WA via the southwest approach (I later did the northwest route, which wasn't as interesting). People would get on the bus from various prisons in Texas (the bus stopped a lot at prisons), New Mexico and Arizona...and were all going to LA. Why bother being homeless in Phoenix (when summers can kill) if LA isn't that far away? Heck, that applies to Texas as well, not just Arizona.
You know I wonder if anyone has done a study on how much of the homeless in LA are from out of state. Is it even possible? There is like 65k+ homeless just in LA country. I don't know how they are going to fix this.
What about issues like Joe Arpaio and his policies affecting the community. I can't speak for your experience but I wonder are you really seeing the whole picture?
How do you feel Arizona will cope with the coming climate change? At the rate its going Arizona may become unsafe to live in in 10-15 years.
I don't know what the future holds but thinking Arizona will become unsafe in 10-15 due to climate change is a little foolish.
It sounds like that funding decision predates the current crop of state leadership
If anything, today it is the folks in Austin (who are predominantly politically liberal) who decry their property taxes being used to fund rural school districts.
People who are actually from Texas know that we help each other out. That's how we roll.
I'm still surprised that Texas would distribute property taxes equally like that for education. Even if they were run by Democrats, they were never run by the liberal kind.
