Tucson Weekly: The Skinny (April 16

Skinny
HERE COMES DA JUDGE: Pima County just voted more than $800 million in capital improvements, and part of that will eventually go to move the Adult Probation Department from the main County Courthouse, which is inexorably filling up with judges as the local criminal population continues to explode along with all other forms of growth in this burgeoning burg. The Probation Department's move is a way off, but a major law firm is already trying to pawn off its building, located not far from the Courthouse, on Pima County.
That building now houses the law firm of Miller & Pitt, a heavy establishment outfit with senior partner Donald Pitt once serving as a member of the Arizona Board of Regents. Pitt is essentially joined at the hip with legendary land speculator Don Diamond. The firm was once known as Miller Pitt & Feldman, until they used their political juice to get then-governor Bruce Babbitt to appoint partner Stanley Feldman to the state Supreme Court, where he still sits as chief justice.
Our spies tell us Feldman is sniffing around high-level county personnel, such as Presiding Superior Court Judge Michael Brown, in an effort to promote the sale of his old law firm's building. We don't know if he still has an interest, but considering the power and clout of the Supreme Court over the Superior Court system on many matters, including funding, this would be a clear conflict of interest in most other places--even Chicago. Unfortunately, Arizona has, for all practical purposes, abolished conflict of interest for lawyers and judges.
MORE MONEY PITT: Red ink--at least according to an account given in The Arizona Daily Star--is close to $3 million at the University of Arizona Science and Technology Park. Donald Pitt, the lawyer/mega-investor who heads up Campus Research Corp., had a most interesting take while talking about the former IBM plant to the Board of Regents. Said Pitt, a former regent: "There will be more failures than successes, but from time to time you will catch lightning in a bottle.''
The savvy Pitt and his partner, legendary land speculator Don Diamond, have indeed caught lightning in a bottle before. However, it would be nice if this and other bolts didn't strike taxpayers.
Meanwhile, the park's marquee tenant, the Arizona International Campus of the UA, is moving to prefab housing on the northeast corner of Speedway Boulevard and Cherry Avenue. Inaugural and departing AIC Provost Celestino Fernández got puffy press last week from the campus fishwrap, the Daily Wildcat. "Celestino State" has a whopping 450 applications--up from the stunningly low 125 last year and even more laughable 65 the first year. Fernández got to strut around with the new numbers for two weeks. Too bad he can't accept responsibility for this miserable venture.
Quite opposite--refreshingly so--is new UA Prez Peter Likins. He recently accepted full responsibility for the CatCard debacle in which worker and student Social Security numbers were improperly released to two companies as part of the school's new ID card system. It clearly was not Likins' fault, but he took the heat. Good move.
The card debacle clearly looks like an honest, but stupid mistake. A big mistake, to be sure. Still, it appears no one is trying to hide the truth, so we find it a little silly that some UA professors are demanding that people be fired over this goof. It's especially silly when you consider that these professors can make big boners themselves, and yet they're protected by tenure.
NAMES IN THE SNOOZE: The UA campus PR rag, Lo Que Pasa, which also touted the Celestino State application numbers, had a byline that rang The Skinny's bell. Jennifer Katleman, formerly the Tucson Citizen's county reporter, is a member of the UA's PR machine. The Skinny had heard she had applied to law school. She even got a letter of recommendation from Pima County Supervisor Sharon Bronson.
STALL ORDER: The Pima County Board of Supervisors--ultimately unanimously--instructed staff to bring forth a series of restrained-growth ordinances for their approval on May 19, the earliest date they could touch all the bureaucratic bases. The ordinances concerning buffers, wash protection, hillside development and grading will be presented to the County's Planning and Zoning Commission on April 22.
But there's a stall being worked in the back room that could delay these proposed ordinances. Supervisor Mike Boyd would like to re-bottle the genie he released by bringing all this "controlled sprawl" stuff up to begin with. Boyd has taken considerable heat from his Growth Lobby friends for losing control of the process to the aggressive attempts led by supervisors Sharon Bronson and Raul Grijalva to pay the issue more than lip service. Boyd's hoping to get a delay from P&Z to allow him to get a "blue-ribbon panel" appointed to talk it all to death.
Unfortunately, while the supervisors appoint the P&Z commissioners, the terms overlap, and thus the Commission still has several cementheads left who were appointed by former supervisors Paul Marsh and Ed Moore, including Commission Chairman Bill Clark, a Marsh appointee. Clark and others are being pressured by Boyd and the growth gang to delay the ordinances.
Stay tuned--we'll find out how many votes the stall has in P&Z on April 22.
FLUNKED: After 29 days in special session, Arizona lawmakers finally passed a school finance bill which, more than likely, will be ruled unconstitutional. Which, of course, means they'll have to craft another bill, probably in another special session this summer, because the courts have said they'll shut down the public school system unless lawmakers straighten out this disgraceful mess.
The Legislature has now had four years to come up with an equitable solution to funding school construction, and they've failed every time. But take heart: At least this year, they did manage to define male sexual arousal!
UP IN ARMORY: The Arizona Department of Economic Security recently agreed to rent a yet-to-be-built warehouse space on the edge of the historic Armory Park neighborhood. The state agency hopes to use the facility for handling walk-in caseloads and handing out food stamps and other assistance.
But, as usual, no one bothered to check with the folks in Armory Park, who are none too happy with the plan.
Anne Lawrence, president of the Armory Park Neighborhood Association, says the 'hood already struggles with the homeless, who turn up to sell their blood at the nearby plasma center and hang out in Armory Park, creating an atmosphere that leaves the elderly residents of the senior center too frightened to use the park.
"We're taking DES from a place where they're right across the street from public transportation and moving them to the perimeter where there is none," she says. "So now they're doing pedestrian trafficking through my neighborhood."
Ward 5 Councilman Steve Leal, who represents Armory Park, is concerned as well.
"DES has done no outreach at all," says Leal. "They have not spoken to the neighborhood. Their decision to do this with the landowner is very premature and they need to come and talk to the neighbors."
TRUTH IN LABELING: Arizona Daily Star reporter Rhonda Bodfield did a good job presenting the Sierra Club's internal war over immigration limits. But it's a mystery why the Star continues to refer to Isabel Garcia as an "immigration attorney and civil rights activist.'' She certainly has earned her credentials as both. But since late 1992, she's been a public employee--a Pima County department head, as a matter of fact. Garcia heads the Pima County Legal Defender's Office. Like its sister agency, the Public Defender's Office, the Legal Defender represents indigent criminal defendants. Garcia is paid $80,388 a year.
As for her immigration work, we thought she left that to her bankrupt husband, Jesus Romo-Vejar. The guy should really try harder to pay his taxes--it tends to tick off the feds when you don't.
WE JUST WANTED TO USE THE WORD "KUDOS": Kudos to local car dealer Jim Click for his work in helping to create Linkages, a locally-based, non-profit organization which bills itself as "the bridge between businesses and people with disabilities." This first-of-its-kind operation provides an umbrella organization for a wide variety of rehab and training programs for the disabled, and supplies a needed link with the business community.
Linkages was officially launched at a breakfast meeting at Ventana Canyon Resort. Featured guests included a surprisingly witty former U.S. senator Bob Dole, an even-more-surprisingly interesting Sen. John McCain, and Gov. Jane Dee Hull.
But it was Click's show all the way, as the businessman spoke movingly and convincingly of the need for such an organization, citing the staggering 67 percent unemployment rate for disabled adult Americans. He spoke of the wide range of jobs which can be done by well-trained disabled people, and added proudly that his local car dealerships employ more than 60 such people.
Besides providing a coordinating link between all of the various federal, state, and local agencies which provide training, Linkages adds the crucial component of acting as liaison between local companies with job opportunities and those rehab facilities which have qualified people who are ready to work.
For more information on Linkages, contact Jennifer Perez at 571-8600.
DO THE SHUFFLE: The game of musical chairs rarely stops in Pima County's bureaucracy. In the latest round, Gwyn Hatcher, director of the county employment offices, and her top crew moved recently to the Health & Welfare Building, where they were before. This makes room on the 10th floor for the feared head of Central Services, Carol Bonchalk.
(A former budget director, Bonchalk is the woman who helped assure Hatcher of her $250,000 settlement stemming from her 1993 demotion ordered by the Board of Supervisors' then-Republican majority. Bonchalk told Hatcher, "They don't need a token black upstairs anymore.'')
County officials never seem to have costs available for these incessant space shifts. But this one should help Democratic Supervisor Sharon Bronson. Now she'll have only one floor to descend to visit with her close ally, Bonchalk. Another Bronson confidante, Maveen Beehan, is already on the 10th floor. Skirmishes will arise, however, with disputes over who has the most instant access to County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry.
HOUSE ARREST: Speaking of Ms. Bonchalk...she recently forbid the county's chief budget officer, Tom House, from having direct discussions with supervisors or their aides. All talk about the fiscal year 1998-'99 budget must be with her. The order is as baffling as it is unnecessary. House is an apolitical straight shooter.
HOT TIME AT THE USPO: Last week, first thing and bright and early Thursday morning, three large, suspicious packages were discovered by Post Office personnel in front on the Casas Adobes branch on North Oracle Road. The boxes had no postage and were addressed to someone in Colorado. The return address was the same as the destination address.
The boxes were taken inside the building and management claimed they had called the appropriate postal inspectors. The boxes were placed in the front part of the building, not far from the public area. Management did not ignore them completely--they placed a discussion of them on the agenda for the weekly 10 a.m. safety meeting, as the seventh item, right after the safe-driving award.
Nervous employees worried about the mysterious boxes all day. Their grousing finally brought one of the supervisory personnel around enough to call higher authorities again. This time he either reached someone who cared, or he did a better job of explaining the problem. At about 4 p.m. postal inspectors arrived with Pima County Sheriff's deputies, who cleared the building and checked the packages. Turns out they were full of magazines left by the addressee's ex-wife, who figured they'd be delivered "postage due" (which wouldn't have happened, by the way). No big deal, right?
Wrong. The attitude towards these packages is contrary to all federal procedures--try that stunt in an airport or the Federal Courthouse and see if they take it seriously there.
The delayed reaction just might have been motivated by the bonus structure post office management works under now. Hey, that probably isn't a bomb, so wait till the end of the day and don't hamper our "productivity."
How much sloppy safety affects productivity long-term is another question.
DIPLOMATIC RECOGNITION: We pointed out several issues back that The Arizona Daily Star's northwest edition had dropped references in their masthead to "serving Tortolita and Casas Adobes" from the list of communities in which the section is distributed.
We accused them of slavishly slobbering over their anti-incorporation editorial policy, but it turns out that what we attributed to conspiracy was really just good, old-fashioned ineptitude. Our spies now tell us the editors changed their masthead when the two new towns were incorporated, ran it for a few months, and then misplaced it. So the deep thinkers at the Star just ran with the old one until somebody bitched.
The editors have now corrected their blunder, and Tortolita and Casas Adobes once again are given equal billing with unincorporated communities like Saddlebrooke and Catalina. One would think an outfit that pulled more than $20 million out of this market last year could afford to reset the type a little quicker.

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