What it means
Charter city and home rule are the two phrases Scottsdale uses when it argues about who is in charge. A charter is a city’s own constitution, written locally and approved by its voters. Home rule is what a charter buys: the right to organize the government and handle local business without asking the Legislature first. Scottsdale has had both since voters approved its charter on October 31, 1961.
You hear the words most when the two levels collide. “That’s a home-rule issue,” says the council member defending a city ordinance. “Not anymore,” says the state bill introduced the next session. The council-manager charter guide explains what the charter sets up, from the seven citywide council seats to the six charter officers. The preemption guide explains where it stops.
Where you’ll meet it
At the Kiva during public comment, in campaign mail promising “local control,” in coverage of the Legislature every January, and on the ballot whenever voters are asked to amend the charter, as they did with Prop 420 in 2018.
Where the words came from
The power comes from Arizona’s 1912 constitution. Article 13, Section 2 says “any city containing, now or hereafter, a population of more than three thousand five hundred may frame a charter for its own government consistent with, and subject to, the Constitution and the laws of the state.” A board of fourteen elected residents drafts it, the voters ratify it, and the governor approves it. Amendments follow the same path: proposed locally, ratified by voters, approved by the governor. The Arizona Constitution guide puts the article in context.
Without a charter, an Arizona municipality is a general-law city or town, able to do what statutes spell out and little else. Scottsdale started that way when it incorporated in 1951. Ten years later it had grown quickly and was competing with Phoenix for land, and it wanted the flexibility to write its own rules. The charter voters approved in 1961, signed by Governor Paul Fannin on November 16, established council-manager government and kept the initiative and referendum close at hand. The council it created went on to write the sign and design codes that still shape the city.
“Home rule” is the older, broader term, used across American states for the same idea: local self-government by charter. In Scottsdale conversation it is shorthand for whatever the charter allows.
What it is not
A charter is not independence. The constitution’s own words, “consistent with, and subject to,” make that plain. And “charter city” is not the same as “city”: Scottsdale’s neighbors Paradise Valley, Fountain Hills, Cave Creek and Carefree are incorporated as towns and govern under general law.
The fine print
The phrase that limits home rule is matter of statewide concern. When the Legislature passes a law on a subject the courts consider statewide, it overrides any conflicting city ordinance, charter or not, and courts have tended to give the Legislature the benefit of the doubt. Since 2016 lawmakers have used that power often. SB 1487 lets any legislator ask the attorney general to investigate a city ordinance, with the city’s state-shared revenue at stake. SB 1350 barred cities from banning short-term rentals. And on April 18, 2025, the governor signed SB 1543, which cleared Axon’s headquarters campus and ended the referendum Scottsdale residents had qualified against it. The preemption guide covers each case.
The charter still matters most where the state has not spoken. It decides that all seven council seats are citywide and nonpartisan, that a city manager runs the departments, and that voters can petition council decisions onto the ballot; the voters guide covers that power. It can be changed only by a public vote, which is why Scottsdale’s strongest protection for the McDowell Sonoran Preserve is a 2018 charter amendment rather than an ordinance.
Scottsdale’s charter runs to 14 articles, from the council and city officers to elections, finance, franchises and succession in government. It is short enough to read in an evening, which few residents do and most arguments assume.