The Daily Agenda: AG clears Nanos (mostly), sewer money incoming, and more

Big broadband project inching forward ... RTA Next compromise in the works ... Bringing the movies back to Tucson.

Today’s batch of news nuggets comes from the Pima County Board of Supervisors meeting this week and memos from the county administrator.

The Arizona Attorney General’s Office said they found no criminal wrongdoing by Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos in his department’s review of an alleged sexual assault of a female deputy by her sergeant at a department holiday party in 2022.

But the AG’s Office said they were concerned that some behavior may have violated the sheriff department’s policies, such as helping an officer in danger, immediately reporting incidents, command staff reporting their involvement in an incident, and failing to properly secure evidence. The AG’s Office started looking into the matter at the request of the Board of Supervisors last September.

The public could get to have their say in the RTA Next plan soon. The Regional Transportation Authority board is holding a special meeting today to consider a compromise hammered out by RTA board member Ted Maxwell and Sahuarita officials, Supervisor Rex Scott said at the supervisors’ Tuesday meeting. Scott said he was “cautiously optimistic” that public review of the plan could begin soon.

Treating 30 million gallons of wastewater every day isn’t cheap. The supervisors approved issuing $54 million in sewer revenue obligations to fund capital projects at places like the Tres Rios Water Reclamation Facility, where biosolids are processed. The county is limited in how it spends cash reserves, so they issue debt to fund these types of projects, County Administrator Jan Lesher said in a memo to the board.

The supervisors also gave the green light to $40 million in certificates of participation to pay for improvements at the sheriff department’s San Xavier Substation, the medical examiner building, and the Superior Court building. As collateral, they put up the public works building, the adult detention center, and other buildings.

In another big-ticket item, the supervisors kept working through the details of building a 140-mile fiber optic ring around Pima County’s urban core. The “middle mile broadband” project could boost internet access for thousands of households in rural areas like Three Points, Vail, and Sahuarita, Michelle Simon, director of the Office of Digital Inclusion, told the board. County officials already accepted $30 million in federal funds (the county and other local governments are putting up about $13 million) and on Tuesday they put the county administrator in charge of the paperwork.

In a preview of how it might work if he gets on the board, John Backer, the Republican candidate running against Democratic Supervisor Matt Heinz in District 2, took a few minutes at call-to-the-public to say the Stop Fentanyl at the Border Act (co-sponsored by Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly) won’t do much to stop fentanyl. The board voted later in the meeting to publicly support the bill, with Supervisor Steve Christy casting the lone “nay” vote. Heinz was absent from the meeting.

Bright lights, big bucks: The filming of “Duster,” an HBO series from J.J. Abrams, led to 10,000 room nights at Tucson hotels two years ago, Jimmy Magahern writes for Tucson Local Media. That’s the kind of money tourism officials hoped to see more when the state’s film tax incentive program started early last year. But the actor’s strike and the writer’s strike squashed those hopes. Now, Film Tucson is expecting to see more TV and film production in Tucson. (Plus, Abrams was seen buying some equipment at the Chicago Music Store, which is pretty cool.)

Clear divide: Clean energy was a dividing line among candidates for the Arizona Corporation Commission, the Arizona Daily Star’s Charles Borla reports. At the debate Tuesday, Democratic candidates Ylenia Aguilar, Joshua Polacheck and Jonathon Hill called for renewable energy like solar, while Republicans Rene Lopez, Rachel Walden and Lea Márquez Peterson want to keep fossil fuels in the mix.

Cut red tape, get funded: Amid the affordable housing crisis, U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani touted proposed legislation that would give money to local jurisdictions that streamline their construction regulations for developers, the first-term Republican wrote in an op-ed in the Tucson Sentinel. The bill would create pilot programs in communities that meet certain criteria, which match some areas in Southern Arizona.

Taking stock: City of Tucson officials released their first major report on the city’s historical and cultural heritage as part of the “¡SOMOS UNO! A Cultural Heritage Strategy for Tucson” initiative. The goal is to catalogue the city’s “cultural ecosystem,” like murals, music, film and theater productions, and come up with a strategy to to make sure they can thrive.

113: The expected high temperature in Ajo today. The National Weather Service issued an excessive heat warning for much of Southern Arizona, including Tucson where the high could hit 107 degrees.