We wouldn’t call ourselves sports fans by any stretch of the imagination, but we’ve paid attention to the Major League Baseball lockout because it’s a huge labor story and an underappreciated government story.
If you’re as aware of sports as we are, some backstory: MLB owners locked out their players about three months ago after the collective bargaining agreement between the players and league expired. They’ve continued to negotiate since, but the league announced this week that Opening Day would be pushed back.
It's unknown when negotiations will resume, but the two sides are leaving Florida tomorrow with no meetings scheduled. Spring training games are canceled until further notice, with games likely wiped out for most of March.
— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) March 1, 2022
That’s left Spring Training basically up in the air. It was supposed to start in late February. While our grasp on the calendar is typically loose, we do know that it is now March.
The following travel restrictions and road closures will be in place at 6 a.m. Saturday because of the annual El Tour de Tucson bike race.
Downtown – Sixth Avenue, north of 22nd Street and south of Broadway, will be closed to motorists from 3 a.m. to 5 p.m., after the last rider. Expect additional downtown side street closures.
East side – Houghton Road will be closed to motorists from Mary Ann Cleveland Way/Old Vail Road to Sahuarita Road from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m.
West side:
Additional closures include:
Further information about El Tour de Tucson, including a route map, can be found at eltourdetucson.org/el-tour-de-tucson/route/.
Motorists may experience lengthy traffic delays associated with this event, so please plan accordingly. The traveling public should use caution when driving, bicycling or walking in these areas. Please watch for event participants, obey all traffic control, and watch for detour signs and personnel providing traffic control.
Bans on face mask mandates and critical race theory in schools were the highest-profile laws that were thrown out when the Arizona Supreme Court tossed numerous provisions of the state budget for violating the Arizona Constitution, but the list of new laws that are now off the books is far more extensive than that.
Many of the other rejected laws besides the prohibition on face mask mandates in K-12 schools pertain to the COVID-19 pandemic. Those laws included prohibitions on colleges and universities requiring students to wear masks, get vaccines or submit to regular testing; barring K-12 schools from requiring students to take vaccines that have received emergency approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; and barring cities and counties from requiring “vaccine passports” or otherwise imposing pandemic-related restrictions on private businesses, schools and churches.
Another of the now-defunct laws would have severely curtailed future governors’ ability to use emergency powers to manage health emergencies such as the coronavirus outbreak. Starting in 2023, when Gov. Doug Ducey will leave office, governors would have been limited to 30-day emergency proclamations for public health emergencies, with the option to extend it for no more than 120 days — though it could be extended for longer with legislative approval.
Various election laws were also scrapped by the Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling. One provision would have required counties that wanted to include anti-fraud countermeasures in their ballots to use specific kinds of types of paper and specific technologies, such as holographic foil, special inks and watermarks. A $12 million “election integrity fund” that the state treasurer would have administered to fund election security measures at the county level is also now gone.
Also gone is the creation of a “major events fund” that would have helped the state shoulder the cost of hosting the 2023 Super Bowl, as well as attract sporting and other events in the future.
Thanks to University of Arizona golf star David Laskin, every UA student, faculty member and staffer will be able to access the Wall Street Journal for free.
When Laskin was named the Pac-12 Scholar Athlete of the Year, two UA alumni donated $200,000 in his honor to be used for the men's golf team and the Eller College of Management’s Department of Finance.
“I remembered that I’d had to buy the Wall Street Journal for some of my classes, so, in talking with my dad, he suggested figuring out a way to give access to it. That made a lot of sense to make it accessible for students.”
Through their memberships, students, faculty and staff will have unlimited access to WSJ.com, WSJ apps, podcasts, curated newsletters and more. Those that currently have memberships may be eligible for partial refunds when they switch to their school-sponsored subscription.
Students, faculty and staff can visit WSJ.com/UArizona to access their free subscription. For more, visit eller.arizona.edu.