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The Phoenix Convention Center began supplementing its power with solar energy on this week.

On Tuesday, city officials "turned on" 732 peel-and-stick solar panels that were installed in April on the roof of the West Building, said convention center spokeswoman Lexie Van Haren.

The $850,000 solar power project is expected to produce 150,000 kilowatt hours of electricity annually and will cut the center's carbon-dioxide pollution by 95 metric tons each year, city officials say.

The panels, however, will only provide a small fraction of the power consumed by the convention center complex. The purpose of the project, city officials have said, is to show leadership in solar power efforts.

In September, the city plans to install a kiosk in the lobby of the convention center that will tell visitors how much juice comes from the panels. The center also plans to install a "green wall" to publicize the convention center's sustainability efforts, she added. 

The West Building was completed in 2006 and is bound by Second, Third, Adams and Monroe streets.  

An eatery owned by a Valley politician will open a new location on the first floor of ASU's $71 million journalism building.

More than a half dozen other businesses -- mostly restaurants -- are being considered for the three remaining spaces on the ground floor of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, said Patrick Panetta, assistant director of real estate development at ASU.

Food "has become more important now that we will have more students on campus," Panetta said. 

The journalism building, which sits near Taylor Street and Central Avenue, is expected to open in August. It's part of Arizona State University's growing downtown Phoenix campus, which welcomed its first students in 2006.

Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox owns El Portal, a Mexican food restaurant at 701 S. Second Avenue that's also a political hangout. El Portal officials signed a lease to occupy 1,400 square feet in the journalism building, Panetta said.

Wilcox could not be reached for comment on Monday.

Panetta declined to disclose the terms of the El Portal lease because university officials are still negotiating with other tenants. The school plans to disclose lease terms for the chosen businesses after the negotiations are complete, he said.    

The university hopes to fill the other retail spots in the journalism building in the coming weeks, Panetta said. 

The university tapped retail broker RBI, to vet prospective businesses that were interested in the spaces and special attention was given to local businesses, he said. 

Nearly one in four Phoenix-area residents lack health insurance, well above the national average of 17.9 percent.

Those figures, from the Employee Benefit Research Institute, portray a picture of relatively poor coverage in many Southern and Southwestern cities.

Along with24.2 percent of Valley residents without health coverage, 22.6 percent of Tucson residents don't have it either. Other figures from the region: Las Vegas, 22.3 percent, Los Angeles, 23 percent, Dallas, 27.3 percent and Houston, 28.5 percent.

It's even worse in Miami (30.5 percent lack coverage) and El Paso (42.9 percent).

Cities with relatively widespread coverage include Columbus, Ohio; Honolulu; Providence, R.I.; St. Louis; Pittsburgh; Rochester, N.Y. and Toledo, Ohio - all below 13 percent.

Where Phoenix really gets hurt is in employer-provided coverage. Only 57.7 percent of residents here obtain health insurance through work, compared to 62.2 percent of Americans generally.

Arizona and other states that offer a tax break for investors who buy their bonds will be able  to continue that practice  following a Supreme Court ruling this week.

At issue was the two-tiered means of taxing or exempting interest on bonds issued by states, cities, counties and other municipalities. Basically, states can tax interest on bonds issued out of state while exempting their own bond interest from taxation, thereby encouraging demand for the in-state investments.

An Arizona resident, for example, who buys an Arizona muni gets completely tax-free interest - exempt from both state and federal taxes. An Arizonan who buys a bond issued in California or elsewhere would still get the federal exemption but not an Arizona tax break.

That two-tiered system came before the U.S. Supreme Court Monday, in a challenge to Kentucky's tax laws. The high court upheld the right of states to tax interest on out-of-state bonds while exempting their own bonds from taxation.

The ruling "allows the states to continue to exempt their own bonds from taxation," said Diana Herrmann, chief executive officer of Aquila Investment Management, which runs the Tax-Free Trust of Arizona, one of the largest Arizona muni-bond funds. "It also represents a victory to local shareholders, who can continue to invest in their own backyard and community."

At most schools checking out a child is as easy as signing a check. If the child goes willingly, that seems to be all the proof they need. I know. I just did it Friday at my second-grader’s Chandler school.

Something similar happened Tuesday when Daniel Bara, 36, checked his kindergarten-age son, Zion, out of Frye Elementary. Bara lives out of state, does not have custody and hadn’t seen his son in three years, police said.

The boy likely went willingly.

According to a letter to parents from Frye principal Paul Ritz, district policy is that a child’s emergency cards are checked to makes sure the person is who they say they are. That may be the policy, but it’s not always followed.

Last Friday, on the way out of town for a Cub Scout camping trip, all I needed was a smile and a quick signature to check out my son — despite the fact this is the first time I’ve checked him out early all year, and no one at the front office knows me.

They simply called him up from class and away we went. No one asked for ID. I was, frankly, a bit unsettled at how easy it was.

Last month two Chandler schools, Hancock Elementary and Willis Jr. High, started testing a system requiring positive identification for access to the school, even cross-checking the ID against national sex offender databases.

Something tells me this pilot program just got a big boost.

Real estate market watchers continue to look for the right indicator to indicate when metro Phoenix's housing market has hit bottom. 

The median income for a licensed Realtor was $42,600 last year, down almost 11 percent from 2006, according to a new survey done by the National Association of Realtors.

But new Realtors' income is a fourth of that. The survey found real estate agents  who have spent two or less years in the business had a median income of $10,500 in 2007. 

Realtors' median income took a hit during the boom in 2005 because of the many new agents to join the business. The survey found median income fell 3.2 percent in 2006 compared to 2004.

Membership is down at the Realtors Association with the housing downturn, after hitting a record 1.36 million in 2006. As of April 30, 2008, the trade group's membership was 1.24 million.

The typical National Association of Realtors member is 52 years old, female, works 40 hours per week and specializes in residential brokerage.

Despite the housing slowdown, more than 75 percent of all Realtors say they plan to stay in the business.

Every parent and every taxpayer in the Scottsdale school district should be watching the school board.

I know, I know. It's a painful thought. The folks running Guantanamo would do well to pipe in meetings from Scottsdale's school board. Talk about your cruel and unusual punishment. This month, I've watched the board in action (so to speak) for eight hours and that's time I'll never get back.

Here's the upshot of all those empty hours: Nothing.

At this rate, unless something changes, Scottsdale's leaders won't be closing any schools in 2009.

And it's the kids who will suffer.

The push to consolidate schools began earlier this year when Superintendent John Baracy, bowing to sliding enrollment, disappearing dollars and half-empty schools, came up with a proposal to close two elementary schools – Pima and Aztec. Savings to the district: $1.7 million.

Naturally, parents at the two schools and Cheyenne, which would have moved from its dilapidated digs to the Aztec campus, mobilized. (Aztec parents seem to hold out hope that if they stay where they are rather than moving into a nearby school, taxpayers will pony up the $16 million to build them a new school.)

Thus far, the school board has handily rejected Baracy's plan, asked the community for other ideas, rejected most of the community's ideas, developed a short list of options and this week, expanded that list after the district's facilities expert did some calculating and discovered every school in the district can hold several hundred additional students.

Which means, as board member Eric Meyer pointed out, that plenty of other as-yet unmentioned schools could also be targets for closure.

In other words, it's back to the drawing board.

Meanwhile, Zuni parents showed up in force Tuesday to talk about the need to keep Zuni open and Aztec parents trotted out an attorney to talk about the need to keep Aztec open and parents from various schools in the south talked about the need to keep all of their schools open.

And Baracy promised to develop a new set of recommendations -- by Sept. 16. That is two weeks before he retires and seven weeks before the majority of the school board is up for re-election.

Sure, they'll be ready to close schools then.

If you're a parent with a kid in a Scottsdale school, this has disaster written all over it.

Jeff Winkler, outgoing president of the Scottsdale Parent Council told me he's still hopeful that the board will not put off making a decision until fall.

“My message to them and I think a lot of parents' message to them – the 80 percent who won't have a kid affected by these proposals – we are saying move forward,” Winkler said. “Don't let June and July go to waste. I'd hate to see us get into election season and not have any decision because if that is the case, then a new board is going to be seated and what's the first thing new boards like to do? They're going to say, ‘Well, let's start over'.”

Winkler is worried about program cuts that would have to be made in order to keep half-empty schools open. He's also concerned about what voters would think in November 2007, when the school district plans to seek a K-3 override and another bond.

Can you picture the campaign that asks taxpayers to raise their taxes to rebuild old schools while perfectly good ones sit there half empty?

Winkler can, too, and it's not a pretty picture.

“Having helped run the last two override efforts, including the loss in ‘06, if we don't have at least two schools closed going into the fall of ‘09, we have no business going on the ballot for the bond,” he said.

If they don't go for a bond in 2009, don't look for them to try until November 2011. Assuming they're successful, all those old schools would then be rebuilt right around the time today's grade schoolers are trying on caps and gowns.

There are some signs the board could proceed this summer with a vote on closing at least a northern school. Meyer and Jennifer Petersen seemed to grasp the urgency at Tuesday's meeting. Molly Holzer will never go along with the obvious solution: closing either Aztec or Desert Canyon Middle School and moving Cheyenne onto the open campus, thus allowing the district to close the 40-year-old portables that now house the school.

That leaves it in the hands of board President Karen Beckvar and Dieter Schaefer – the only two not up for re-election this year.

Will they bow to the political realities and risk the parental wrath of a few in order to do what's right for students across the district?

It pains me to say this, but … stay tuned.

(Column published in Scottsdale Republic, May 22, 2008.)

In the next few days, 50,000 Arizona teens will don caps and gowns and take the triumphant march to adulthood. But along with all the pomp comes a rather sad circumstance.

As many as 4,000 of those newly minted high school graduates couldn't meet the minimum requirements as set out by Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards.

Put another way, they couldn't muster a 59 percent. (57 percent on math)

On a 10th grade test.

After five tries.

It took no less than intervention by the Arizona Legislature and Gov. Janet Napolitano to get them their diplomas. And so, as we celebrate their achievement, let us also pause for a moment of silence, in remembrance of standards.

For those of you who weren't here for the birth of AIMS, know that it was a long, painful labor that began when the Class of 2008 was in kindergarten.

For years, people had screamed about public education in Arizona, where the only skill needed to pass to the next grade was an ability to tie your shoes. That began to change in 1996, when the state raised academic standards and decided to require an exit test to ensure that those standards were being met.

Beginning with the Class of 2001, our leaders decreed, students would actually have to show that they learned something to get a diploma.

Naturally, it didn't take long for panic to set in and rightfully so. It didn't seem fair to suddenly raise the bar on kids who were already two-thirds of the way through school. So the test was pushed back to the Class of 2002 and then to the Class of 2006.

Then it was dumbed down. And the passing grade was lowered. And bonus points were added for good grades or even average ones.

But starting with the Class of 2008, the state was adamant. No pass, no pomp.

Cue the phone calls from angry parents and anguished students to a rather soft species, one known to have the collective spine of an invertebrate: the Arizonium Legislatius.

The result: last week, our leaders approved and Gov. Janet Napolitano signed a new law for the Class of 2008 -- appropriately dubbed HB 2008. Henceforth and for all time, students who passed their classes, were tutored and failed AIMS five times will get bonus points to boost their scores. (Said bonus points are supposed to decline over time. I'll believe that when I see it.)

As a result, a senior with a C average can miss fully half the questions on the 10th grade math test and still graduate.

Superintendent Tom Horne says he was surprised that the Legislature caved – again.

“Some girl comes in and says I have a B average and can't pass the math test and they react to that,” he said. “What they should say is, study harder.”

What they should do is start sooner with this concept of enforcing standards. If a kid can't pass the third-grade AIMS test, don't send him to fourth grade to struggle. Give him the extra time – and the extra resources – to help him master the work before sending him to the next level. If a kid can't do eighth-grade work don't send him to high school and expect a miracle.

Horne says he'd support such a plan. “It'll be a tough fight,” he said, “but I think it will be doable once they accept the high school test.”

Which will be …when exactly?

As for the Class of 2008, I wish you congratulations and the best of luck, especially those of you being sent into the world without the ability to do 10th grade work.

I'm not sure we're doing you any favors.

(Column published May 21, 2008.)

You might want to tune into C-span this week to see what happens with the National Defense Authorization Act. Arizona Rep. Harry Mitchell has offered up an amendment seeking to extend the National Guard's tour of operations at the border.

Since Operation Jump Start began in June 2006, the Guard has assisted in catching nearly 170,000 illegal immigrants and seizing 300,000 pounds of incoming marijuana and 5,000 pounds of cocaine. That doesn't count the people they've rescued or the fences and roads they've built.

In other words, the program is working. So naturally, it's due to end on July 15.

Mitchell’s amendment, which should be considered by the House this week, calls for the troops to remain until they can be replaced by Border Patrol agents.

Operation Jump Start called for stationing 6,000 soldiers at the border for two years, until the Border Patrol could hire and train 6,000 new agents and the 28-mile virtual fence in southern Arizona – a cornerstone of our border security plan – was working. But today, the Border Patrol is still 2,000 agents shy of its goal and the virtual fence didn't work. And the Guard – already cut in half last summer -- will be gone July 15.

“Removing the National Guard prematurely will only make matters worse,” Mitchell said in a prepared release.  “My colleagues on both sides of the aisle have urged President Bush and Secretary Chertoff to extend Operation Jump Start, but those requests have fallen on deaf ears.  We have no choice but to pursue other action.”

Thus far, Mitchell along with Reps. Trent Franks, Gabrielle Giffords, Jeff Flake, John Shadegg and Rick Renzi have asked President Bush to extend Operation Jump Start. So has Gov. Janet Napolitano along with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

So far, however, the silence out of the White House has been deafening. And in just 55 days, what's left of the troops will be gone.

Tragic story out of north Phoenix this afternoon. A 3 -year-old apparently got ahold of a gun and now the child is dead. No details are available as yet. No one yet knows how the child got ahold of the gun but police are investigating to see whether charges are warranted.

It's always puzzling to me that the prospect of criminal charges immediately arises when somebody leaves a loaded gun lying around and a child dies.

Leave a loaded pool lying around and you get the same result. But no charges.

What's the difference?

For liberals, who believe in elastic, "living" laws, reacting to a court decision is a simple matter: They either like the result or they do not.

Our betters are constantly lecturing that the Phoenix area economy is too dependent on real estate growth. However, so far no one has quite explained how an area can experience population growth greater than other areas without having more of its economy devoted to serving that growth.

No Cardinal appears to have made greater strides this off-season than Steve Breaston, a fifth-round pick in 2007.

Breaston made a great impression last year as a returner, but it's clear he wants to be a better receiver, too. He's added some muscle, and coaches say his route running is considerably better.

He made numerous plays in minicamp two weeks ago, and he has continued doing it in voluntary workouts. He had at least two nice catches today. If he can play like this when the pads are on, the questions about the No. 3 receiver's role will have been answered.

Receiver Anquan Boldin and defensive lineman Darnell Dockett didn't attend the opening day of voluntary practices on Tuesday. No surprise there. Both players want new contracts.

"I'm excited about the guys who are, (here)," coach Ken Whisenhunt said. "I would be less than honest if I said if I wasn't disappointed that Anquan and Darnell weren't here. But once again, these are voluntary."

Other news nuggets:

-- Center Al Johnson recently had surgery on his left knee to clean it out, Whisenhunt said. Johnson was experiencing some pain and swelling during workouts. He could have tried to nurse the knee through the season, but it was more prudent to take care of the problem well in advance of the season, the coach said.

-- Outside linebacker Chike Okeafor didn't attend due to a personal matter. He had informed Whisenhunt of the plan.

-- Receiver Ahmad Merritt practiced Tuesday for the first time since suffering a dislocated ankle and bone fracture in preseason last year.

--Other players who sat out practice were receiver Jerheme Urban (right foot), safety Adrian Wilson (heel), linebacker Monte Beisel (back), tight end Leonard Pope (ankle) and cornerback DeMario Minter (sports hernia), DE/OLB Bertrand Berry (triceps).

-- RB Edgerrin James is attending practices this week. He plans to attend the first and third weeks of workouts. The OTAs run for four weeks.

NFL owners voted unanimously to opt out of the collective bargaining agreement, and the rhetoric from both sides is about to reach higher decibel levels.

The owners contend that the CBA is hurting them financially, with the players guaranteed 60 percent of revenues. With a sagging economy and with some owners carrying a heavy debt service, NFL officials want to renegotiate.

Meanwhile, Gene Upshaw, the head of the NFLPA, has clearly stated that the players have no intention of agreeing to a deal that gives them less than 60 percent. If the owners want to opt out of the deal and risk thaving the salary cap going away in 2010, the union is fine with that, Upshaw has said.

Sort through all of the posturing and you'll find some incentive for both sides to bargain.

There should be no disruption in play for three years. The salary cap will be in effect in 2008 and 2009, but goes away in 2010, the last year of the deal. The owners can complain all they want about the cap, but it makes the league financially viable. To some extent, it allows small market teams such as Jacksonville to compete with the large market clubs, such as the Giants.

A season with no cap might sound good to players. Maybe owners such as Dallas' Jerry Jones and Washington's Daniel Snyder will throw money around to sign the very best players available. But other owners might go the cheap route. While there will be no ceiling on salaries, there won't be a floor, either. Plus, in the uncapped year a player must have six years of service to qualify for unrestricted free agency, instead of four. And, the top eight teams in the league will be severely restricted in free agency, and teams will be given an extra transition tag. That means each team can lock up three players (one franchise, two transition).

These are some sticky issues, to be sure. And reaching an agreement won't be easy. Don't expect much progress until 2009, when the realitiies of an uncapped season pressure both sides to cut a deal.

The Cardinals haven't announced the dates of their training camp this summer in Flagstaff, but I think it's going to be more convenient for fans than in recent years.

From what I'm hearing, the Cardinals are looking at opening camp on July 23, a Wednesday, with the first practice coming a day or two later. That means the club will be in Flagstaff for two straight weekends before playing its first preseason game on Aug. 7.

That's a departure from the past several years when the first practice wasn't held until Sunday, which robbed fans of a weekend opportunity. I'm not sure when the Cards will break camp, but I would guess it would be around Aug. 21.