We must be doing something right

Bring it on … Choose Your Own Adventure: Silicon Valley, Texas, or Mexicali ... And Dejahova's Witness.

We really want to like Pima County.

But good grief, they make it hard sometimes.

For the past two weeks, county officials have been complaining — loudly — about the way we cover what they’re doing (or not doing).

Normally, we’d say that just comes with the territory, as we’ve done over the past year or so whenever they get persnickety. We always own up and correct anything we get wrong. Maybe with a chuckle if they’re being uber-uptight.

News reporting is messy. Mistakes are regrettable, but inevitable. As a former co-worker of Curt’s used to say “If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not doing enough.”

But the county’s complaints are getting pedantic. And frankly, we’re sick of it.

They’re asking for corrections on things that aren’t incorrect.

At this point, they’re not trying to ensure facts get through — they’re trying to shift the narrative.

And they’re making it public if we don’t acquiesce to their demands.

Our art intern, ChatGPT, thinks this is how county officials react to our stories.

To us, this isn’t a sign that we need to change how we do things. Not at all.

It’s a sign that we’re doing some real reporting. They don’t make these kinds of complaints when reporters re-print their press releases.

And more than anything, it’s a reminder that it’s been a long time since county officials had to answer hard questions.

You can almost see the dust gathering on local political conversations.

Seriously, you should go to a meeting or try to read one of their agenda packets.

The agendas are a bureaucratic mess. The debates are rarely substantive exchanges of ideas or points of view — each supervisor just fires off a couple of their talking points and calls it a meeting.

Where’s the beef?

Here’s an example of what’s been happening lately. The chief of staff for one county supervisor recently went on social media to criticize our reporting.

Here was his beef: We didn’t write about a measure that his boss voted on in the exact way his boss wanted.

This is what we wrote:

“A proposed tax hike for affordable housing is dead. Well, at least for two weeks.”

It’s hard to misconstrue the meaning of those sentences, but he still called and asked for a correction saying the proposal was “postponed,” not “tabled.” We tweaked the language to accommodate him, but he still complained about it on social media.

He also had some other mini-beefs, but one of our readers already showed how badly he missed the mark, so there’s no reason to go through them point by point.

The problem is they want a stenographer to show up to their meetings, not a journalist with critical thinking skills and a spine.

We value accuracy. And we value candor and honesty.

We want people to engage with local politics. It’s hard to do that if you have to slog through stifling newspaper-speak or bureaucrat-ese, or if you don’t have context beyond the official county line.

The real problem that county officials have with our reporting isn’t that it’s “inaccurate,” it’s that it doesn’t toe the line that county officials want.

For example, one of their recent beefs was over our coverage of the PEEPs program.

County officials want to pretend that the PEEPs program and the libraries aren’t in conflict for funding. All signs point to that being flatly wrong.

They may come to a solution that saves both. But they haven’t yet.

And they don’t like us pointing that out.

Rather than trying to make their case clearly about their plan for saving both, they’re essentially taking to social media to scream “Fake News!”

It’s silly, but that’s what happens when you have a bunch of thin-skinned public officials who aren’t used to critical pushback from the press corps.

It’s our fault

Reporters in Tucson have allowed this to go on for too long.

Local elected officials spend most of their time throwing stones at Republican state legislators or Donald Trump, who don’t really care about Tucson anyway.

There’s no risk there.

But when we’ve pointed out that county officials spent a lot of federal dollars supporting asylum seekers, the county takes to social media to accuse us of serving a “right-wing narrative.”

It’s not a narrative. It’s a fact. And honestly, we’re proud of the Tucson community for stepping up to support asylum seekers.

Supervisors make nearly $100,000 a year to attend two meetings a month.¹

If they want the coverage of those meetings to reflect their worldview, the least they could do is show up prepared and make a clear case.

Right now, they often sail into the meetings like children coming home from school, wondering what activities their mom has in store for them.²

Let’s do a practice round.

Why not start with the topic du jour, the PEEPs scholarship program?

We challenge county officials to write up a 600-word explanation of how the county got from saying this in a Sept. 10 memo:

“The Library District does not have sufficient revenue streams to sustain a $10 million PEEPs program on an annual basis without significant restructuring. The options listed above provide ways to sustain the PEEPS program for a limited period, neither offers a permanent solution to ensure long term funding.”

To writing this in the May 5 memo the county sent out, presumably to rebut our reporting:

“PEEPs is sustainable and successful in its current form.”

We’re looking for an explanation, not a declaration.

If it’s in plain English, we’ll publish it.

If we’re misunderstanding the situation, then lay out the math so we can understand how you’re going to pay for it in the long-term.

You’ve got our numbers, give us a call when it’s ready.

If you like reporters who don’t lie down on the job, click that button and support our mission!

Are you tired of weirdo tech-bros in Silicon Valley shaping the world you live in?

Then this week’s edition of the A.I. Agenda is for you.

A bill making its way through Congress would help grad students and tech startups that want to make the next dynamic leap forward in AI, but don’t have a billion dollars lying around.

“Right now, if you want to be on the cutting edge of AI innovation, you need to work for a Big Tech company or study at a Bay Area university that feeds those companies.

Making breakthroughs in AI tech is just too expensive for pretty much everybody else, including bright minds studying at Arizona’s universities or working at one of the many tech startups here.

To level the AI playing field, Congress is considering the CREATE AI Act to make resources like advanced infrastructure and massive datasets available to the rest of the country.”

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This week’s edition of the Education Agenda has a little bit of everything: Legislative fights over funding, sassy veto letters, and Texas launching a huge voucher program, along with all the new laws on the books.

“One of the biggest complaints we hear from news readers is that reporters often cover a topic and then move on, never to return.

Well, as we looked back on our reporting over the past few weeks, we found a lot of interesting stories that need updating.

Today, we’re getting you back up to speed on some of the highest-profile stories in Arizona education.”

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It’s a long way from the Rocky Mountains to the Sea of Cortez.

Travel back in time, and across the Arizona-Mexico border, in this week’s Water Agenda as we trace the history, and the ongoing political battles, of the Colorado River Delta.

“A long time ago, at the Mexicali coast, the Sea of Cortez greeted the fresh waters of the Colorado River after their long journey south from the mountains of North America.

The Colorado Delta was roughly 2 million acres of rivers, backwaters, and wetlands. Back in 1922, American ecologist Aldo Leopold described it as “a milk and honey wilderness” of “a hundred green lagoons.”

This paradise in the desert supported giant fish, lush cottonwood-willow galleries, and vast flocks of migratory birds. The Cucapá — literally the “River People” — relied on seasonal floods for fishing, farming, and ceremony. Today, only fragmented patches remain where fresh water trickles through salt-crusted sands.”

Unspoken rule #4: Don’t tell a woman how to dress.

Congressional candidate Deja Foxx launched her own Substack this week (welcome to the club!) and we got a chuckle out of her response to someone telling her how to dress when she goes out knocking on doors.

The social media strategist handled the criticism with charm, telling her Substack subscribers this:

“This gave me and my friends a near cry laugh session. Because why did this account with no profile pic eat me up like that. I’m trying to push hope and democracy. If you see me in my standard white button up and jeans campaign trail uniform please open your door.”

Props to Foxx for not letting the trolls win.

1. We expect to get at least one angry phone call from the county about that line.

2. We expect more angry phone calls from the county about that line.