Tucson Weekly: Grijalva's Gravy Train (April 29

Grijalva's Gravy Train

A Short History Of Supervisor Raul Grijalva's Tax 'N' Spend Approach to Local Government.
By Chris Limberis
AT LEAST PIMA Supervisor Raul Grijalva makes no attempt to conceal his longstanding love affair with taxes.
A Democrat in his third term, Grijalva vacillates now only on how to tax: jack up property taxes as he's done whenever the opportunity is handed to him by partisan majority, or levy a half-cent sales tax that voters throughout the county, his district, his precinct, his own block have said no to three times since 1986.
Grijalva appeared ready to abandon his quest for a sales tax on Friday,April 23, telling a Weekly reporter that the issue was dead.
Currents But he regained his position as the sales tax champ in the Sunday Arizona Daily Star, saying:
• A sales tax is "more politically palatable" than increased property taxes.
• That a sales tax would not be repealed, a fact that is "a negative for some people but not for me."
Thanks to weak opposition, Grijalva graduated from the Tucson Unified School District Board of Governors to the Board of Supervisors in 1988. He's been re-elected in similar fashion with incapable opponents. In December 1986--Grijalva's last month on the TUSD Board--Pima County voters gave their first answer to a "politically palatable" half-cent sales tax.
The results of that election, as well as the ones that followed in 1990 and 1994, have become so ingrained that even the out-of-touch dailies can recite the defeats: 57 percent to 43 percent in 1986; 61 percent to 39 percent in 1990; and 70 percent to 30 percent in 1994. The first two sales tax proposals were tied to road-building and transportation plans, while the final proposal was wedded to juvenile detention and jail expansion.
It's clear that the projects didn't completely turn off voters. Taxpayers were willing in the successful 1997 bond elections to go into debt and use new gas tax revenues for new roads and other transportation improvements and increase property taxes to pay for new juvenile detention facilities and new jails.
Pima County does not have a sales tax. Consumers pay a nickel per dollar in state sales tax and 2 cents per dollar in Tucson, South Tucson, Marana and Oro Valley.
Revival of the county sales tax scheme came during Grijalva's first term in 1990, when county lobbyists won approval by the state Legislature to seek voter approval for a half-cent tax to pay for a city-intensive transportation plan. But that wasn't all. The lobbyists also scored legislative permission to ask voters for a quarter-cent sales tax for new jails. The clincher was permission for all Arizona counties--except Maricopa--to levy another half-cent sales tax, for unrestricted spending, that could be imposed simply by a unanimous vote of the Board of Supervisors.
That third option was dormant until County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry, architect of each of the failed sales tax proposals, prodded supervisors in 1995. But Republican Paul Marsh was the holdout to the unanimous vote. His successor, Republican John Even, likely would have accepted Huckelberry's plan. But Even died after just four months in office. And Ray Carroll, the Republican Grijalva put into Even's seat in 1997, defeated Even's widow Brenda and tax watchdog Ken Marcus in a special election last year. Carroll opposes the sales tax.
Grijalva wants the $44 million the tax would raise in its first year to erase the debt, between $44 million and $49 million, that is burying the county.
But election canvasses show the sales taxes are anything but "palatable."
Grijalva's District 5 includes some of the southside's heavily Hispanic precincts, including his West Ohio Street block; affluent Sam Hughes; neighborhoods north and west of the University of Arizona; the westside and most of the Tucson Mountains.
Only two precincts in his district supported the 1986 half-cent sales tax that would have funded a billion-dollar transportation plan faulted for its scarce concern for the environment (crossing of Sabino Creek, for example), inducements to sprawl and rewards for land speculators with its outer loop feature.
Four years later, Grijalva's neighbors, in Precinct 49 west of South 12th Avenue, rejected the next half-cent sales tax proposal by 59 percent to 41 percent in a strong turnout of 45 percent.
Voters in only 32 of the county's then 344 precincts favored the sales tax in 1990. Most of the sympathy came from Grijalva's district, with 21 precincts supporting the measure. Still, it failed in District 5 by 56 percent to 44 percent. The transportation plan that year was heavy on bike and pedestrian paths that appealed to Grijalva's UA and Sam Hughes voters. Others thought overpasses, such as at Grant and Campbell, would ameliorate daily congestion.
It only got worse for sales tax advocates in 1994. Despite the undeniable need for more jail and juvenile detention space, voters crushed the quarter-cent sales tax. Grijalva's district and neighborhood were not exceptions, although the only two precincts of the 400 in the county that year to approve the jail tax were micro-precincts in Grijalva's District 5.
Voters took another look at the juvenile and jail questions almost two years ago. They agreed to pay off bonds with new property taxes to build the facilities. And now the county is too broke to open an expanded juvenile center.
GRIJALVA IS NOT going alone on the sales tax. He has votes from Sharon Bronson, the Democrat he helped elect in northwest and rural District 3 in 1996; Dan Eckstrom, the third-term Democrat from southside District 2; and Mike Boyd, the second-term Republican from central and foothills District 1.
The three Democrats also have increased property taxes in the last two years by 8 cents per $100 of assessed value--or $8 a year for the owner of a $100,000 home.
Bronson, once a leading neighborhood activist who is now the board chairwoman, was a key member of the opposition campaigns that helped kill the sales tax proposals in 1986 and 1990. Neighbors in her own Precinct 233 have rejected the sales tax proposals by these margins: 71 percent to 29 percent in 1986; 73 percent to 27 percent in 1990 and 78 percent to 22 percent in 1994.
Bronson's own Precinct 233, and neighboring precincts off West Ajo Way, also killed the three sales tax proposals.
Bronson's district stretches to Ajo in the western corner of Pima County. Enclosed in the county's Precinct 1, Ajo had little to gain in the two transporation projects that were to be funded by the sales taxes of 1986 and 1990. Voters there killed them 93 percent to 7 percent in 1986 and 81 percent to 19 percent in 1990. Ajo voters also killed the tax for jails in 1994 by 76 percent to 24 percent.
Carroll fears he's risking ostracism. And his four board colleagues have powerful help from County Attorney Barbara LaWall and Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, Democrats who've become non-stop promoters of the sales tax increase.
Carroll successfully killed Huckelberry and Grijalva's attempt to change state law to allow sales tax passage with votes of just four supervisors. Now Carroll is seeking legislative permission to put the issue before voters.
While Carroll's Tucson Country Club neighborhood, graced with the homes of several of Tucson's wealthy car dealers, supported both half-cent sales tax proposals for roads (by 61 percent to 39 percent in 1986 and 51 percent to 49 percent in 1990), it rejected the quarter-cent tax for jails in 1994 by 63 percent to 37 percent.
Fourteen precincts in the retirement haven of Green Valley also have Carroll's attention. Voters there hate the sales tax, as the results in 1986, 1990 and 1994 show. The average margin of defeat in 1986 in Green Valley was 71 percent to 29 percent. That grew to 73 percent to 27 percent in the 1990 sales tax election. And in 1994, crime-conscious voters in Green Valley rejected the quarter-cent sales tax for jails by an average margin of 71 percent to 29 percent.
The outcome of the sales tax fight is still uncertain, despite Grijalva's quickly reversed pronouncement that it's dead. The one thing that is certain, however, is that if such a tax does come to pass--whether via the unlikely event of voter approval, or through more devious means--Grijalva is its major champion.

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