Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting

Without sustained funding or coordination, Arizona’s push to boost postsecondary enrollment falls short

Arizona’s postsecondary enrollment rate has declined despite a decade of initiatives and millions of dollars invested.
AZCIR

Dozens of people died in Arizona sober living homes as state officials fumbled Medicaid fraud response

This story about Arizona’s response to Medicaid fraud was produced by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, an independent nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting, ...
AZCIR

Groundwater regulation weaknesses exploited by industrial-scale agriculture

ELFRIDA, Ariz. — Elaine Bailey stood at the microphone at the Sunsites Community Center in southeastern Arizona, voice shaking as she described the massive scale of new agricultural development next ...
AZCIR

Arizona gave families public money for private schools. Then private schools raised tuition.

Last year, Arizona became the first state in the nation to offer universal school choice for all families. State leaders promised families roughly $7,000 a year to spend on private schools and other ...
AZCIR

Medicaid fraud targeting Indigenous communities continues despite AHCCCS reforms

Nearly three years after Arizona uncovered an unprecedented $2.5 billion Medicaid fraud scandal that targeted Indigenous communities, sober living program operators are still recruiting vulnerable ...
AZCIR

Were nearly half a million registered California voters disqualified from jury duty in one year because they were not citizens?

Though around 450,000 residents have been disqualified from jury duty because of their citizenship status over prior one-year periods, according to California officials, there is no evidence that the ...
AZCIR

Suspending students for absences, tardies compounds learning loss

PHOENIX—Guadalupe Hernandez’s attendance problems started in kindergarten. The boy, who has two attention disorders and oppositional defiant disorder, often refused to sit still for circle time. He ...
AZCIR

Tribal water settlement aims to repair generations of exclusion

Guiding a Toyota pickup along a narrow dirt road south of Second Mesa, rancher Robinson Honani gestures toward a patchwork of farm plots tucked into the dusty terrain of the Hopi Reservation, perched ...
AZCIR

Patients file grievances, experts want reforms at Arizona State Hospital

This project was funded in part by support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. Isaac Contreras lives alone and he says it’s making him sick. He’s got a room and a bathroom to himself, but the ...
AZCIR

Director of Arizona Medicaid agency resigns following fraud scheme response

Carmen Heredia resigned this week as director of the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System ahead of a state Senate confirmation hearing. Republican lawmakers had criticized her response to a ...
AZCIR

Arizona has recovered just 5% of taxpayer dollars lost in $2.5 billion Medicaid fraud scheme

This story about Arizona’s response to Medicaid fraud was produced by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, an independent nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting, ...
AZCIR

Despite broad support for abortion access in their districts, GOP lawmakers push new restrictions

Rebecca Gau has considered herself a Republican all her life. Raised outside Washington, D.C., during the Reagan era, she embraced the party’s traditional positions of lowering taxes, supporting small ...