The Daily Agenda: Getting down to the nuts and bolts

We’re back with another batch of news nuggets ... Budgets are starting to tighten ... Dueling opinions about Sheriff Nanos from deputies.

In a break from our usual format, today we’re back with more interesting nuggets about what your elected officials are dealing with this week. We’ll be back tomorrow with our normal format.

• The Pima County administrator could get a pay raise soon. Right now, County Administrator Jan Lesher makes $260,000 in base pay, along with a benefits package. That’s about $32,000 less than what former County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry made. At the request of Supervisor Matt Heinz, the Board of Supervisors will consider whether to give Lesher a pay raise at their meeting tomorrow. How much of a raise? The meeting materials didn’t give a dollar amount, just that it should be “more competitive with market rates and more in line with Ms. Lesher’s qualifications and experience.”

• The topic of discussion for an executive session at the supervisors’ meeting tomorrow is “communication with the Federal Government.” The agenda doesn’t say whether it’s communication with a postal carrier, an FBI agent, or the president. This is the same vague language used for an executive session last August, which the Tucson Sentinel connected to a federal probe into Huckelberry’s secret retirement in 2022. (The Sentinel reported on Friday the Department of Justice had dropped the investigation after finding no federal crimes to prosecute)

• Tucson-based Bourn Companies is trying to move ahead with Vail Crossings, a master-planned community south of the Cienega Creek Natural Preserve in Vail. The developers pointed to the housing needs of the anticipated 3,000 workers at the Rosemont Mine, about a dozen miles to the south. Bourn asked the Pima County Design Review Committee last week to approve their plans for a mixed-use project on nearly 100 acres of vacant industrial land. Bourn bought the property early last year and Pima County Supervisor Steve Christy championed the project. 

An image included in the materials submitted to the Pima Design Review Committee for the Vail Crossings project.

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• City of Tucson officials are gearing up for a tight budget year, City Manager Mike Ortega wrote in a memo to the city council. The city’s revenues from sales taxes are coming in more or less as budgeted, but city officials are hearing from the state Legislature that the income tax revenue the state shares with cities and counties is going to start shrinking. The state is facing a budget deficit of more than $400 million this fiscal year and an even bigger deficit for fiscal 2025.

If only the state would share some of that sweet tax revenue with us! In the meantime, why not help us out with a paid subscription so we can keep tabs on where all those tax dollars are going?

• Tucson police officers are spending less time dealing with homeless encampments, according to the first monthly update to the Tucson City Council on how the city is dealing with local homelessness. One piece of the city’s strategy is to lessen the need for police officers to show up at cleanups of homeless encampments, unless there is a safety issue. Instead, city officials want outreach specialists from other city departments to do it. Tucson police were present at 73 cleanups at encampments in October, but that dropped to just six cleanups last month.

• The city council is going to discuss how state law determines the scheduling of local elections for ballot measures. The meeting materials for tomorrow’s study session don’t give much detail, but big news on that front came last week when Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes issued an opinion about the Prop 413 election last November, which gave the mayor and council big pay raises. Mayes supported City Attorney Mike Rankin’s interpretation of state law, saying it doesn’t allow for a recount on those types of elections, even if they have a razor-thin vote margin.

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The Arizona Legislature earlier this month.

• Voting centers could be a thing of the past if state legislators approve a measure introduced by Tucson-area state Rep. Rachel Jones. HCR 2032, a concurrent resolution introduced by Jones and co-sponsored by Sen. Justine Wadsack, both Republicans from Legislative District 17, would prohibit county boards of supervisors from establishing voting centers. It is up for debate at a hearing of the Committee on Municipal Oversight and Elections on Wednesday. If passed by the Legislature, it would go directly to voters, so Gov. Katie Hobbs can’t veto it.

• Elections for school district governing boards would be partisan, including holding primary elections, if legislators pass a bill introduced by Wadsack. SB 1097 would take effect at the start of 2025. Reps. Jones and Cory McGarr, a fellow Republican from LD 17, co-sponsored the bill. It is up for debate at a hearing of the Committee on Education on Wednesday. 

• In other news from our local legislators, the window for getting an ovarian cancer awareness license plate would extend until 2025 if legislators pass HB 2567. State Rep. Nancy Gutierrez, a Democrat representing Legislative District 18, introduced the bill. It’s up for debate at a hearing on Wednesday of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. 

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Write a letter to the editor (email Curt at curt@tucsonagenda.com). Or you can reach out to your city council member, county supervisor, state representative or senator. You can watch meetings of the Tucson City Council here and the Pima County Board of Supervisors here.

Rest in peace: Retired Pima County Supervisor Ed Moore died last week at the age of 88, the Tucson Sentinel’s Dylan Smith and Jim Nintzel report. Moore first got involved in county politics in the early 1980s, leading an effort to prevent the Rillito Race Track from being torn down. He was first elected to the board as a Democrat  then switched parties, running for reelection as a Republican. Four years after that, he ran and won as an independent, serving on the board from 1984 through 1996. People he worked with and campaigned against recalled him as a “good man and a contrarian.”

Accountability ask: The United Campus Workers of Arizona is demanding the resignation of University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins and Senior Advisor and former CFO Lisa Rulney, saying that while senior leadership has taken no accountability, workers are facing layoffs and rapidly increasing workloads. The group says that the hiring and salary increase freeze instituted by Robbins means that workers will not see proper compensation or relief anytime soon and called Rulney’s retention hypocritical. The union is also asking Gov. Katie Hobbs to provide more oversight and accountability of the Arizona Board of Regents to ensure transparency.

Oceans away: Seawater desalination plans dominate a list of project ideas sent to the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority of Arizona, the Arizona Daily Star’s Tony Davis reports. While the locations range, more than a dozen project ideas submitted to the authority are wholly or partially devoted to projects that would make seawater drinkable. One project proposal that claims Tucson Water as an ally aims to combine a water desalting project with a low-tech plan to bring more stormwater and treated sewage effluent into the Santa Cruz River Basin in Southern and Northern Arizona.

Dueling opinions: The day after the Pima County Deputy’s Organization announced its vote of no confidence in Sheriff Chris Nanos’ leadership, a second group voiced support for Nanos and refuted claims of a toxic workplace, Arizona Public Media’s Hannah Cree reports. While there are five unions within the department, the Pima County Sheriff’s Deputy Association is the one that holds bargaining power with the Pima County Board of Supervisors. The association has been active since 1997 and has about 170 members, while the deputy’s organization was started last year and has just over 200 members.

Questionable timing: Pima County Supervisor Steve Christy is criticizing the timing of County Administrator Jan Lesher’s call for belt-tightening “in light of worsening financial conditions,” the Green Valley News’ Kim Smith writes. During Thursday’s Green Valley Council Board of Representatives meeting, Christy said Lesher’s suggested measures will cause some discomfort, but said they make sense and questioned why they weren’t doing this all along so the county “didn’t get to this position.”

Retirement racket: A U.S. Justice Department investigation into the secretive retirement of longtime Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry is closed, with no finding of prosecutable federal crimes, according to the Sentinel’s Smith. Huckelberry officially resigned in 2022, but continued to collect his full salary while also being paid his pension. Supervisor Christy said an outside attorney retained by the county told him the U.S. Attorney’s Office said the investigation had been closed.

831: The number of bills introduced at the state Legislature since the start of the legislative session on January 8. The legislative “silly season,” where legislators introduce tons of bills even though they know few of them will actually become law, is going to run until the middle of February.