Recently I spoke out in support of a critical effort underway in Arizona: keeping the state’s rooftop solar industry alive. Like school choice and healthcare choice, solar choice should be a core part of the Arizona agenda, and my party’s message.

The Gilbert Unified School District expects more savings and revenues next year than anticipated, which could help the district with its expected $6 million shortfall, Superintendent Dave Allison told the governing board April 9.

The Salt River Project board approved a price decrease Monday that will result in lowering customer bills by an average of 1.1 percent beginning in May.

I’d like to respond to the discussion of SRP purchasing Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s (LADWP) share of the Navajo Generating Station.

When Alexis Bristor graduates from Arizona State University in December with a degree in film and media production, she plans to pack her bags and head straight to Hollywood.

Amidst a gloomy batch of nominees – addressing themes such as lost love, sacrifice and coping with death – “Curfew” springs forth as a welcome jolt of energy to the live action shorts. The premise is fairly simple: a dejected young man gets a call from his estranged sister, asking that he look after his 9-year-old niece for a couple hours. What transpires is a droll, heartfelt and often tender story that explores forgiveness and discovering a renewed sense of purpose in one’s life.

WASHINGTON — Uncompromising and politically emboldened, President Barack Obama urged a deeply divided Congress Tuesday night to embrace his plans to use government money to create jobs and strengthen the nation's middle class. He declared Republican ideas for reducing the deficit "even worse" than the unpalatable deals Washington had to stomach during his first term.

WASHINGTON — Seeking to focus on nation-building at home, President Barack Obama will use his State of the Union address to call for more spending on infrastructure and manufacturing, while also announcing the withdrawal of 34,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan within a year.

More than 192,000 acres of land in Arizona is being dedicated to utility-scale renewable energy projects.

Solar panel maker First Solar has purchased Chilean solar development company Solar Chile as energy demand continues to rise in the region.

The new chairman of the Arizona Corporation Commission signaled Monday that the days of pushing solar and renewable energy over other sources are over.

The new season of PBS's "Downton Abbey" on PBS's "Masterpiece" (9 p.m. EST Sunday and continuing Sunday nights through Feb. 17; check local listings) introduces several new characters, but the highest-profile actor joining the cast, if only for the first two hours, is undoubtedly Shirley MacLaine.

In an effort to reduce air pollution and sewage waste, Gilbert will work with REV Biodiesel to collect used cooking grease at fire stations now through Jan. 5.

With temperatures finally falling and the holidays near, it’s easy to forget we live in the desert. Reliable water and electricity supplies are the foundations for our thriving metropolitan area.

The state may be getting an all-Republican Corporation Commission because of a last-minute move by the Arizona Association of Realtors to get a panel they think will be friendlier to their issues.

As the U.S. economy emerged from a deep recession more than two years ago, Faye Taylor found herself living in Chandler without a job, riding her bike to Matthew’s Crossing Food Bank on Arizona Avenue each month to pick up two large bags of groceries.

The heralded holiday movie season is marked by big-budget extravaganzas, Oscar hopefuls and family films suitable for post-Thanksgiving or early Christmas viewing and for filling that luxuriously open week (for some lucky workers and students) before New Year’s Day.

Let Willard’s loss — and the primary debacles of Bachmann, Cain, Perry, Trump, Gingrich, Santorum, et al. — be a death knell to the far-too-large wing of the party that is anti-women’s rights, anti-homosexual, anti-minorities, anti-science, anti-evolution, anti-math, anti-education, anti-environment, anti-renewable energy, anti-non-Christians and climate change-denying. A wing that includes those who loudly and vehemently boast about balancing the books by killing PBS, NPR and Planned Parenthood (a combined microscopic fraction of the federal budget) and whose job proudly fails to include worrying about 47 percent of the American population (a group that is mostly the elderly, low-income and/or unemployed).

Along a portion of State Route 87 — better known as Old Hunt Highway in the heart of the Gila River Indian reservation between Alma School and Dobson roads near Sacaton, Olberg Bridge reaches across desert that used to be a river.

EDITOR'S NOTE _ An occasional look at political claims that take shortcuts with the facts or don't tell the full story

SAN FRANCISCO — Federal officials on Friday approved a plan that sets aside 445 square miles of public land for the development of large-scale solar power plants, cementing a new government approach to renewable energy development in the West after years of delays and false starts.

Ending their set with the 2001 No. 1 hit “The Middle,” rock band Jimmy Eat World – a group that got its own start nearby in Mesa – was charged with opening a political rally late Wednesday night in the open air of Arizona State University’s Tempe campus.

Salt River Project went live on a 19 megawatt solar plant in Queen Creek last week, raising the company’s retail electrical needs from renewable sources to 10 percent.

Students and faculty at Arizona State University are hoping to invent not only the technology of the future, but also the narrative that accompanies those advances.