The Daily Agenda: County tightening its belt
Lately, all roads lead to budget talks ... Tax hikes could be coming to Pima County... Abortion ban roils Arizona.
Amid a budget crunch, the county supervisors are debating whether to raise property taxes.
They’re still a good stretch away from deciding, but Supervisors Matt Heinz and Sylvia Lee urged the rest of the Board of Supervisors to keep a tax hike on the table as they deal with state legislators shifting costs to counties.
If just one other supervisor gets on board with a tax hike, that would make a majority. And two other supervisors didn’t exactly say it was a nonstarter.
The issue came up after County Administrator Jan Lesher gave a budget presentation at the April 2 meeting that showed an $18 million deficit next year.
“We will be tightening our belts” to cover that deficit, which could come in the form of a 3% cut to county departments, Lesher told the board.
At the same time, she recommended the property tax rate remain unchanged, noting it fell consistently over the past six years, although there was a slight increase this year.
That recommendation didn’t sit well with Heinz.
“Why are we so committed to keeping the tax rate flat?” he asked.
The Legislature made a “really dumb decision” when they set the state tax rate and now they’re shifting costs to counties to deal with the state’s own deficit, Heinz said.
“That shouldn’t harm the residents of Pima County,” he said. “So I don’t want you to enter into this budget cycle with the premise that we absolutely, at all costs, must keep that rate the same. It doesn’t have to be. It can go up. And it should, probably, depending on what those cost shifts end up being.”
Lee agreed with Heinz, saying the cost shifts have “hit home now” and she didn’t want to cut core services. She said she’d “like to see all the options” related to the property tax rate.
Supervisor Steve Christy, the lone Republican on the board, didn’t say one way or the other what he’d like to do, but he did make sure to get Heinz and Lee on the record clearly stating they’d support raising the primary property tax rate.
Before the county raises taxes, Supervisor Rex Scott said they should take other steps, such as “putting a dent” in the hundreds of vacant positions the county has maintained for years. That would be an “indication to the taxpayers that we are taking care of our own house before we go to theirs.”
Supervisor Adelita Grijalva said the board should be mindful that some departments can’t afford to trim staff any more than they already have and “when we’re talking about cuts, we’re talking about people.”
Now that Lesher gave the supervisors the gist of the budget situation and heard their feedback, she’ll put together her recommended budget and give it to the board later this month. From there, the supervisors will vote on a tentative budget, which sets the spending cap, in May.
They’ll vote on the final budget in June, which will set the tone for how the county handles all sorts of issues, such as coming up with money for affordable housing or funding early childhood education.
You can watch Pima County Board of Supervisors meetings on the county’s YouTube channel. Their next meeting is April 16.
Dark day: The Arizona Supreme Court upheld a near-total ban on abortions yesterday, ruling that a territorial-era law that bans abortions except to save the mother’s life should be enforced, the Tucson Sentinel’s Jim Nintzel, Dylan Smith and Paul Ingram report. Justices ruled 4-2, with the two dissenting votes coming from Vice Chief Justice Ann Timmer and Chief Justice Robert Brutinel. Gov. Katie Hobbs said it was a “dark day” for Arizona, urging lawmakers to repeal the law.
Next steps: Arizona voters are now responsible for the fate of reproductive rights in the state, with the fight moving from the courtroom to the ballot box, Elvia Díaz writes in an editorial for the Arizona Republic. With reproductive rights advocates saying they’ve collected enough signatures to put the issue on the ballot, voters need to take the chance to enshrine abortion rights in the constitution, not for political revenge, but for freedom and survival, Díaz says.
Campaign stop: Vice President Kamala Harris will be in Tucson Friday for an event focused on “reproductive freedom,” the Republic’s Laura Gersony reports. Harris appeared in Phoenix in early March, saying that Arizona’s laws criminalize doctors and punish women and calling the state’s anti-abortion activists extremists. Since the beginning of March, President Joe Biden, Harris, both their spouses and several other campaign representatives have all visited Arizona, hoping to gain votes.
Connectivity issues: The Nogales International’s Angela Gervasi spoke to several Santa Cruz county residents who have been having problems with their internet service providers, including frequent outages, unreliable connections and slow connectivity. But there are several ongoing solutions to bolster internet accessibility, including the installation of fiber optic infrastructure along Interstate 19 and a grant that would bring fiber optics to homes in Patagonia.
Staying out of it: The Ninth Circuit has declined to get involved in a wrongful arrest and racial discrimination case that seeks to expunge the conviction of the man accused of setting Tucson’s deadly Pioneer Hotel Fire in 1970, Courthouse News Service’s Joe Duhownik writes. The three-judge panel decided the issues would be better served upon a retroactive appeal, saying it was unsure whether a federal judge can expunge a state conviction. Louis Taylor sued Pima County in 2015 after spending more than 40 years in prison in connection with the fire, saying he was wrongfully charged.
Going to the dogs: This is Tucson’s Elvia Verdugo just updated her local almanac of dog-friendly places and things to do, including outdoor spots and hiking trails, restaurants and shops, attractions and dog parks. The guide lists 35 patios around town and includes links to find dog parks in the city, Pima County and Oro Valley. Get out there with your pup before it gets too hot!
$5.10: The combined property tax rate in Pima County. That rate fell from $5.97 to $5.06 between 2018 and 2023. This year it rose slightly, according to Lesher’s presentation.
We do NOT have enough signatures yet to ensure abortion protection is on the ballot in November. Coverage claiming we have enough signatures misses the reality of the situation.
While true we have more signatures than are technically needed, we are facing an organized and well-funded opposition that will try to invalidate every signature we collect. To ensure this gets on the ballot in November, we are aiming for an additional 250,000 signatures in less than three months.
We have less than three months to collect these signatures. If you haven't signed the petition yet, there are events all over Phoenix and Tucson. You can find more info at Healthcare Rising Arizona.
Pima County Board of Supervisors are having to deal with the fact that the state legislators are shifting their costs to Pima County. At the same time these same legislators are preventing cities and counties from making decisions. We need more responsible state legislators.