The guardrails on 414

Is it a slush fund? … Ciscomani takes questions … And that's a lot of emails.

Can the City of Tucson be trusted with $800 million?

Opponents of Proposition 414 argue that the city — or more specifically the Tucson City Council — can’t be trusted with the taxpayer dollars set aside for various projects.

Critics argue that city leaders will pull a bait and switch down the line and find a way to fund their pet projects instead of what voters had backed.

It wouldn’t be the first time the city has had major pushback after a measure was passed.

2017’s voter-approved Prop 101 put $100 million into city streets, but not everyone was satisfied with what was fixed and what wasn’t.

2018’s Proposition 407, a $225 million bond package to improve city parks, included a plan to expand the zoo, but the proposal to bulldoze Barnum Hill wasn’t widely understood by the public until 2021.

Elected officials, city employees and community leaders supporting the measure have repeatedly rejected the premise, noting the Council adopted specific guidelines on how the tax revenue will be allocated and spent.

The City of Tucson’s breakdown on how Prop 414 money would be spent.

Additionally, supporters note that a third-party oversight group will be established to keep an eye on spending for the next decade – assuming voters pass Prop 414 next month.

Critics remain skeptical. They argue the independent oversight group will be filled with political appointees willing to rubber stamp changes to how the money is spent.

So where to start with this nebulous accusation a few weeks before election day on March 11?

The first place is what the ordinance actually says and does:

“The money in each fund shall be used exclusively for the payment of expenses for projects and programs eligible for payment from that fund as set forth above and in accordance with a more detailed community investments plan approved by the mayor and the council,” reads city ordinance number #12122.

The ordinance sets up five separate funds, each with a specific focus and a dedicated percentage of revenue from Prop 414.

In practical terms, the city can’t spend more than 30.75% of the revenues on "capital investments for first responders." The city has put out a detailed list about how they want to spend the revenues, but there is some wiggle room in this area.

For example, the city devotes just 122 words to describing a $44.3 million project to build "a combined Police and Fire center" in southeast Tucson.

There is a lot that is left unsaid, from exactly where it’s going to be built, to the size of the facility or even when it would be built.

These specifics remain fluid for a variety of practical reasons. Identifying precisely where the facility will be built would only raise the value of the land, especially if the land was privately owned.

But where is the firewall if the project costs $200,000 more than initially estimated?

City staff and the oversight board would first have to publicly approve the change in funding in a fully transparent process before it went before the Council.¹

If the combined Police and Fire center came in under budget, the money would be used for something related to that project that falls under the umbrella of "capital investments for first responders."

Tucson City Manager Tim Thomure has worked on a number of voter-approved bonds and temporary sales tax increases in his 19 years with the city of Tucson, and he’s seen his share of disagreements about how to spend the money.

There have been arguments about which road should be paved, what amenities a specific park should get and some very public fights, like the redevelopment plans for Barnum Hill and the Reid Park duck pond, he said. Recently, some golfers have been teed off about delayed irrigation plans at the Dell Urich golf course.

But these are natural disagreements about how to spend money, not some smoking gun of financial scandal, he said. And the fact that there’s some flexibility in how to spend money for voter-approved measures like Propp 414 actually means the city can get a bigger bang for its buck.

”We layer other investments when we do a project instead of saying we're just going to spend those dollars to do just one thing,” he said. “If we have other dollars, we want to do a better improvement and layer those dollars to work together.”

Well, what if the fix is in? The second half of the argument from the critics, that the measure lacks substantial financial oversight, is tied to the reality that the Tucson City Council appoints the commissioners of the “independent oversight group.”

Thomure says it isn’t practical to assume the dozens of commissions with hundreds of appointees would all be in lockstep in such a conspiracy.

“They're not tasked with worrying about how our budget is doing, what are the conflicts, what are the competing interests for money. Their job is ‘you told the voters you would do this, how are you doing that?’ And in some cases, like [Proposition] 409, actually that committee chose projects,” said Thomure.

Retired judge Margarita Bernal, who served on several city commissions, said the commission’s work is publicly available, meetings are open to the public and the job of the commissioner is to act independently, not to acquiesce to each request from city departments and do favors for political allies.

Asking what happened when she disagreed with the person that appointed her, Bernal laughed at the idea there is some unspoken quid pro quo, noting she regularly clashed with both staff and elected officials.

“We were volunteers,” Bernal said. “What are they going to do, fire us?”

You might not want to serve on or even attend a quarterly meeting for an oversight board meeting. But help us pay for Joe to keep going to these meetings. Upgrade your subscription today.

In the past, we’ve asked our subscribers to weigh in on how we’re doing and what you want to see in future editions of the Tucson Agenda.

It’s a healthy conversation to have from time to time – looking back at what we’ve accomplished and being open to new challenges in the future. Plus, it gives readers a chance to make some suggestions.

But today we’re going to pivot a bit. Instead of asking what you’d like to see us do, we want to know what you want to see your local elected officials do, particularly in this uncertain moment when the Trump administration is causing a great amount of bureaucratic paralysis.

So please take a moment and fill out today’s reader survey!

Talking Trump: Tucson Congressman Juan Ciscomani said “my job is not to comment on everything the administration is doing” when he sat down with Dan Shearer, the editor of the Green Valley News, last week. The two-term Republican defended proposed cuts to Pell Grants and Head Start but added that President Donald Trump has a mandate from southern Arizona to carry out his campaign promises.

Cushy assignment: Gov. Katie Hobbs created a position that pays $170,000 for Dana Allmond, a former legislative candidate in Tucson who went on to work as director of the Department of Veterans’ Services, Capitol Media Services’ Howard Fischer reports. The new job is at the Department of Economic Security and is funded by federal stimulus funds. The creation of the new position is the latest in a long-running battle between Hobbs and the Senate Committee on Director Nominations.

Deputy sentenced: The former Pima County Sheriff’s Department sergeant at the center of a scandal was sentenced to one year in jail, the Tucson Sentinel’s Natalie Robbins reports. Ricardo “Ricky” Garcia was sentenced Monday after he was convicted of the attempted sexual assault of a coworker. Sheriff Chris Nanos took a lot of heat over how his department handled the investigation of the assault. The county supervisors asked the Arizona Attorney General to look into it and they found no criminal wrongdoing, although they did point to several department policies that may have been violated.

Stuck in limbo: In Sonora, recently deported migrants have tough decisions to make as their legal options to return to the United States remain unclear, the Nogales International’s Daisy Zavala Magaña reports. Right now, there are two groups in Nogales hoping to cross the border: recently deported individuals who want to return to their families and those seeking legal asylum waiting for a legal path forward.

Tweaking policies: The Tucson Unified School District Governing Board will be discussing making immigrant employees a protected class, Sentinel columnist Blake Morlock writes. The policy has been amended 13 times in the last three decades to conform with changes in federal policies, but the proposed new language affirms the "civil rights protection of immigrants."

AMA about your AMA, Douglas: The Arizona Department of Water Resources talked to Douglas residents about developing new measures to conserve groundwater, the Sierra Vista Herald Review’s Shar Porier reports. The new active management area (AMA), which covers the southern half of the Sulphur Springs Valley in southeast Cochise County, was approved by voters in the 2022 election.

Thousands of federal workers in southern Arizona were asked by the world’s richest man to give him (or the poor soul who has to read 2 million emails from federal employees) a list of five things they accomplished last week and to respond by email no later than Monday night.

We’re not laughing at what seems to be a terrible way to manage millions of federal employees or that several federal agencies told their employees by Monday morning to ignore Elon Musk’s emails.

We’re laughing at all the responses. Once the email to federal employees went viral, some Americans who don't necessarily work for the federal government opted to send him their top five lists as well.

If you are a federal employee and want to share your email response, Joe would love a copy of it. Also, to those who sent the feds a similar email in an unofficial capacity, please send yours too - just let us know you don’t work for the federal government.

1. Joe swears he has lost count of how many of these oversight meetings he has gone to.