More vaccines, less gunfighting

Mulling measles ... Border walls incoming? ... And we know it's frustrating.

Pima County Supervisor Matt Heinz wants to boost measles vaccination rates at local schools after outbreaks in Texas and New Mexico.

And his proposal seems to have some legs.

Nearly half of schools in Pima County are lagging behind the 95% vaccination rate that experts say is needed to establish herd immunity.

Heinz wants to launch a program with the Pima County Health Department to set up mobile vaccination clinics at schools where the vaccination rates are low.

“The reason I put this item on and asked Dr. Cullen to come and speak to us a bit about it is, frankly, because this is terrifying. Measles. We went through a pandemic with COVID and I watched it kill dozens of people right in front of me and right in front of the nurses I work with. COVID is laughable compared to measles. Measles is a terrifying potential viral epidemic, and it is incredibly, incredibly contagious,” Heinz said.

If the program moves forward, these clinics would only operate at schools that request them, and parents would need to give written approval to any students who would be vaccinated.

The only Republican on the board, Supervisor Steve Christy, questioned whether the program was needed.

Waving around a piece of paper that nobody could read, Christy said he had researched the average number of measles cases over the last few decades.

“From ‘93 all the way to 2024, it never goes above 250 cases. And right now, according to the CDC on this chart, there have been only 301 cases in the country reported,” he said.

Statistics from the CDC tell a slightly different story, with an average of 143 a year, including when there was a 31-state outbreak in 2019 that led to a record-setting 1,274 cases.

The county already has protocols in place if a case of measles was reported in Pima County, said Pima County Public Health Director Theresa Cullen.

Christy voted with Democrats on the board supporting the program, if it doesn’t cost too much and is a temporary measure, not the creation of a long-term new program.

It’s too early to know how many cases there will be by the end of 2025, but those 301 cases of measles reported in just the first three months of the year are not an encouraging sign.

For now, Heinz is hoping to ensure Pima County stays measles-free by raising the vaccination rate.

A meeting within a meeting

Supervisors decided during an executive session Tuesday that they will not fight a judge’s ruling overturning the county’s requirement that gun owners report lost or stolen guns within 48 hours.

After spending roughly 90 minutes debating behind closed doors, they voted unanimously to avoid a protracted legal battle with the Goldwater Institute and the Arizona Citizens Defense League.

If they appealed the ruling, supervisors would have to convince an appeals court that the county ordinance isn’t in conflict with a state law that bars cities and counties from adopting gun ordinances that are more restrictive than state laws.

That would be a tough case for supervisors to make, considering basically any local attempt to regulate guns is automatically more restrictive than state laws.

Pima County Supervisor Rex Scott, who championed the county’s gun ordinance last year, said he was disappointed with the ruling. The ordinance would have helped to prevent prohibited possessors from getting guns through “straw” purchases, he said.

Supervisors on Tuesday also decided behind closed doors to formally respond to a FEMA letter challenging roughly $50 million set aside for federal reimbursement related to migrant shelters.

The Biden administration already reimbursed Pima County for about $3 million out of the $50 million it had allocated in federal grants, but county officials are concerned that $10.2 million hasn’t been reimbursed yet – and now the county may never recoup that cash.

The reimbursement figures are based on the number of individuals that the county temporarily provided shelter for during a specific time frame. With the daily population in the shelter steadily declining last year, the county only used about $13 million of the $50 million grant set aside in the three grants under FEMA scrutiny.

County officials plan to “pursue all our options to ensure we are reimbursed,” Scott told the Tucson Agenda, but they haven’t decided yet whether they’ll “mount a specific legal challenge.”

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The list of candidates vying to take the seat of Congressman Raúl Grijalva, who died last week, is already growing.

But they’re probably not names you’re familiar with.

Candidates started filing statements of interest on Monday for the seat in Congressional District 7. By Tuesday evening, the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office listed 13 candidates:

Three Democratic candidates threw their hat in the ring: David “Bees” Bies, Stefawna Welch, and Patrick Harris, Sr.

Nearly three times as many Republicans stepped up: Daniel Butierez, Sr. (who ran against Grijalva last year), William “Bill” Hunter, Carolyn Norris, Jorge Rivas, Raul Verdugo, Michael Rebeiro, Gabriel Tapia, and Joe Wells.

Rounding out the list so far were Libertarian candidate Alan Aversa and frequent Green Party candidate and political performance artist Richard Grayson.

Still not on the “officially running” list are Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, and Pima County Supervisor (and daughter of the late congressman) Adelita Grijalva. Both are expected to make announcements in the coming days.

Trying again: Republican Janet Wittenbraker isn’t done trying to win a local elected office. She ran unsuccessfully for Tucson mayor two years ago and a seat on the Pima County Board of Supervisors last year. Now she’s running for the Ward 3 seat on the Tucson City Council that’s currently held by first-term Councilman Kevin Dahl, the Tucson Sentinel’s Jim Nintzel reports.

“I would love to take an election cycle off, but I can’t stand by and let the Democratic Party run unopposed,” Wittenbraker told the Tucson Sentinel.

Border wall talk: President Donald Trump plans to build seven additional miles of border wall in Arizona, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Twitter. As of Monday, no border wall construction was confirmed in Arizona, the Arizona Republic’s Raphael Romero Ruiz reported, but the first border wall contract of Trump’s second term was awarded for a project in Texas. On the legislative side of border policy, Republican U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani sponsored a bill to let Customs and Border Protection build more roads and temporary structures on federal lands near the border, Arizona Public Media’s Katya Mendoza reports.

DEI support: A finalist to be the next provost at the University of Arizona said diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility are “embedded” in the UA’s identity, the Arizona Daily Star’s Prerana Sannappanavar reports. Eric Landon Barker acknowledged the “threats that are coming towards us” about DEIA as he pointed to the school’s status as a Hispanic-serving institution and its partnerships with Native nations.

Left in limbo: A farmer in Amado was all set to install solar panels to power his garlic and butternut squash farm. But then the Trump administration froze the program that would have covered half the cost, KGUN’s Joel Foster reports. That left John Rueb uncertain about what to do next, and worried about the contract he already signed for the solar panels, which included a $2,000 nonrefundable fee.

“I felt a bit betrayed because I thought, if there was somebody I could rely on, it would be, you know, the federal government,” Rueb said.

We feel your pain, Supervisor Steve Christy.

At one point during Tuesday’s meeting, Christy stopped a staffer because he could not follow the presentation on the monitor he was watching from across the room. The words were too small and the numbers were hard to decipher from a distance.

He thanked the Clerk of the Board for setting up the presentation on his computer (likely the Youtube stream of the meeting) but Christy clearly wanted the presentation in another form. And maybe ahead of time.

We agree. It would be great if the County had a dedicated website where they could upload the presentations before the meeting…

Editor’s Note: This story has been modified to correct the amount the County has accrued in costs related to running temporary shelters for asylum seekers.