Passing the Buck

Ex-City Manager Mike Hein had a reputation among political insiders
for deals “written on the back of a napkin.” As a result, he was
fired.

As he exited, a call for transparency was trumpeted, and a new way
forward on downtown development was proclaimed.

But neither Hein’s dismissal nor the pledges of accountability have
erased the leftover promises, real and perceived, many of which
centered on Tucson’s beleaguered and decades-long efforts to revitalize
downtown.

The keeper and occasional scribe of Hein’s metaphorical
napkins—the deals that were supposed to jumpstart downtown and
defy expectations of development malaise—was left behind when
Hein packed up in April after three years on the job. Assistant to the
City Manager Jaret Barr, Hein’s longtime right-hand man and his point
man on downtown, still holds his title, though his boss has changed,
and it’s unclear what his current duties are.

The mention of Barr’s name now has the potency to kill a deal. An
agreement that would have formalized a consulting relationship between
the city and the nonprofit Downtown Tucson Partnership was quietly
withdrawn earlier in August after Barr was revealed as the would-be
public-finance specialist and right-hand man to the proposed new
downtown planner, partnership CEO Glenn Lyons.

In interviews, City Council members cited a variety of reasons for
revising the contract with the downtown booster group, including the
need for clearer boundaries between the city and the partnership, a
more explicit description of the services to be provided, and
spelled-out procurement practices.

By all accounts, Barr, who makes an annual salary of about $106,000,
will not be part of the revision. He’s not part of City Manager Mike
Letcher’s new downtown team, and no one on the council or in the City
Manager’s Office is willing to talk about what he is, in fact,
doing.

Barr himself demurred, saying that the negotiations over the
contract were between the City Manager’s Office and the Downtown Tucson
Partnership, and did not involve him. As a political appointee, he
works at the will of the city manager, without the security of civil
service protection. He would not say what he anticipated doing
next.

City Council members promised after firing Hein that there would be
no purge of municipal employees close to him—and no one was
closer than Barr.

Fran LaSala, who oversaw the Scott Avenue streetscape project as an
assistant to the city manager, was also included in the earliest
iteration of the agreement with the partnership, but he has since been
assigned to a position in the city’s Environmental Services Department.
He has civil-service status.

Despite the wrangling, the deal between the city and the Downtown
Tucson Partnership will likely live on.

“We’ll be contracting directly with Glenn,” said City Manager Mike
Letcher. “Otherwise, I’d have to hire someone. We just don’t have that
expertise.”

Letcher has designed a downtown team without the usual suspects, and
they’ve been meeting weekly since April. The team is envisioned in
three overlapping parts: finance, led by the finance director;
operations, led by the director of the General Services Department; and
planning, led by Lyons, even though the city is not paying him. (He
continues to draw an annual salary of about $130,000 from the
partnership.)

Under Letcher’s plan, Lyons’ list of tasks is long. It runs from
downtown master planning to customer service and quality assurance to
negotiating development agreements and designing a standard agreement
form.

Critics of the plan say it would contract out decisions to the
Downtown Tucson Partnership that should be made inside the city
bureaucracy, to ensure transparency and minimize unfair influence.

Bill Risner, president of the Community Development and Design
Center and a longtime activist on downtown issues, has been one of the
most vocal opponents. He thinks the contract would increase the
influence of developers and political insiders. Among the suggestions
Lyons made in a draft downtown master plan is that the city and county
review their land holdings and sell off the surplus downtown land for
development, in an effort to guide downtown revitalization over the
next 15 years or so.

“It’s simply a mechanism to loot the city,” he said. “This is how
you do it if you’re trying to rip the public off.”

Risner said the draft version of Lyons’ vision for downtown shows
that his goals aren’t consistent with the city’s, and that they favor
developers over the taxpayers. Risner said by advising the city to sell
the land now, while the real estate market is struggling, is analogous
to looting. “It just doesn’t make sense,” he said.

Risner is also concerned that the deal would result in more trouble
for the public to obtain records. The contract specifies that all
records requests must go through the city.

Members of the City Council argue that hiring Lyons would actually
have the opposite effect to what Risner suggests.

“It would provide a set of checks and balances that up until now,
we’ve not had,” Council-woman Karin Uhlich said.

“Glenn would report to the city manager as a consultant,”
Councilwoman Regina Romero said. “It’s not just the Downtown
Partnership making the decisions.”

The contract will specify that the city is hiring Lyons himself,
Letcher said. In that scenario, the partnership’s board, which includes
several power brokers who have been involved in Tucson’s downtown for
decades, would have a say only in approving the contract, not in Lyons’
specific duties.

Lyons is keenly attuned to the controversy.

“I understand conflict of interest,” he said. “I understand that you
work for your client.”

Letcher is betting on Lyons to rescue a project beset by a public
perception of failure and inside dealing; an attempt by the state
Legislature to sever the sales-tax stream that funds Rio Nuevo; and a
recession that has all but eliminated the funds that were expected.

Before becoming city manager, Letcher knew little about these Rio
Nuevo issues, despite being deputy city manager under Hein. Minutes
after Hein was fired, Letcher received a stack of papers—an
introduction, if you will. But that was only part of the picture.

The other bit was on napkins.

“Having both a planning and finance background is what makes Glenn
unique,” Letcher said. “He has experience, and I’ve had a chance to
kick the tires and see whether it works. … This is a forward-looking
contract.”

The council is scheduled to review the revised agreement in
September.

This article appears in Aug 27 – Sep 2, 2009.