The Skinny

SCRAMBLEWATCH ’09: IN-AND-OUT EDITION

The City Council’s decision to fire Mike Hein earned Ward 3
Councilwoman Karin Uhlich a brief primary challenge: Bennett
Bernal, who was known for providing some of the best constituent
service in the city under the previous Ward 3 councilwoman, Republican
Kathleen Dunbar, pulled papers to launch a campaign last
week.

But within days, Bernal saw the handwriting on the wall: He wasn’t
going to find enough support to take out Uhlich, so he abandoned his
campaign.

However, the removal of the city manager appears to have pushed
Republican Ben Buehler-Garcia off the fence and into the race.
The political rookie formally filed as a candidate on Friday.

While Buehler-Garcia might cause Uhlich some headaches, it will take
a minor miracle for a Republican to knock out a Democrat in this town
at this point, given the voter-registration advantage.

That said, the Democrats who are running this town couldn’t have
given Republicans a better platform on which to campaign.

A DIFFERENT SORT OF TRANSPARENCY

Rumors are swirling that the underlying tensions between council
members Nina Trasoff and Karin Uhlich—exemplified
by the fact that Trasoff was furious about Uhlich’s decision to fire
Mike Hein last week—stem from the fact that both women
harbor ambitions about becoming mayor in two years, when Republican
Bob Walkup’s third term comes to an end.

(We wouldn’t be surprised to see Ward 4 Councilwoman Shirley
Scott show some interest in that contest as well. And we’re not
counting out Ward 2 Councilman Rodney Glassman, although we hear
he might have his eye on the larger prize of Arizona secretary of
state.)

On Arizona Illustrated last week, Uhlich said she had no
plans to run for mayor in two years and is concentrating on winning
re-election in November. But she also declined to pledge to serve her
full four years if re-elected.

Uhlich says she believes in a simple, nonpolitical mantra: “Do good
work; work hard; stay centered on the public’s interest; and the
politics unfold. I don’t know what doors will open to me in the future,
if any. I think a lot of people in public office get pulled off-track
by looking toward whatever ambition might lie ahead. And so I don’t do
that.”

Okey-dokey.

During the TV interview, Uhlich also said she was open to increasing
the city’s environmental-services fee, which was derided by Democrats
as a “garbage tax” when Uhlich and Trasoff were running for office four
years ago.

Uhlich, who had supported a trash fee when she was on the city’s
budget committee in the 1990s, was more careful about her rhetoric than
Trasoff during the campaign. Rather than calling for a repeal of the
fee, she criticized the implementation of it. She also declined to take
any kind of position on what should be done about it, saying only that
the council needed “to revisit the whole thing and put everything back
on the table.”

After they were elected, Uhlich and Trasoff made an effort to
persuade their colleagues to consider reducing the fee, but the once
the incumbent Democrats who had opposed the “garbage tax” actually had
the power to do something about it, they discovered they liked spending
all that money. Surprise, surprise.

Now Uhlich says the fee, like many others in the city, isn’t too
high after all. Instead, it’s too low and should be indexed to
inflation and subject to regular increases. Now that’s what we call
revisiting.

Uhlich says indexing fees to inflation makes sense, because too
often, politicians don’t regularly increase fees.

“Often, governing bodies are afraid of any revenue discussion,”
Uhlich said. “We avoid it, avoid it, avoid it, avoid it, and then every
10 years, there’s a 25 to 50 percent jump.”

We wonder why politicians are afraid of talking about raising
revenues, which is the latest code for hiking taxes. It could be
because when they do, challengers come along and relentlessly pound
them for doing so. Good thing Uhlich is above that kind of thing.

Listening to Uhlich reminded us of how the City Council avoided any
talk of raising bus fares until last year, when the Transportation
Department suggested a 25-cent hike in bus fares. Who led the
opposition to that increase? Oh, yeah—Karin Uhlich.

Instead, the City Council threatened to fire Hein and created a new
mass-transit committee to consider whether the increase was justified.
And even though that committee came back with a recommendation to hike
the fee, the council has taken no action.

So let’s see if we understand how this is supposed to work: First,
support a fee. Then oppose its implementation, because the increase is
too high. Then once elected, keep it at its current level until costs
increase, and then call for annual future increases.

We can’t imagine why Mike Hein would run into trouble working with
these people.

WHO’S THE NEW BOSS?

Our new city manager, Mike Letcher, is set to retire in
November, so council members need to find a replacement.

Councilwoman Nina Trasoff, hoping to regain some political
traction in her rapidly shifting world, sent out a memo this week
asking that council members figure out what they’re doing at the
upcoming City Council meeting on Tuesday, April 21. She asked that
council members decide whether to do a national search or tap local
talent.

We’re hearing a few local names being dropped behind the scenes,
including Albert Elias, who has worked for the city’s
transportation and planning departments. With the Planning Department
being merged with Development Services, Elias is on his way over to the
Community Services Department.

There’s not a very deep bench atop the city of Tucson right now.
Hein moved out many of the high-paid assistant city managers and pushed
many longtime employees into early retirement to save the city money.
The downside: a decline in institutional memory.

IT’S HAPPENING DOWNTOWN

One of City Manager Mike Letcher’s first acts was firing
Greg Shelko, who came to Tucson from Milwaukee in 2004 to head
up the downtown-revitalization effort.

Rather than flat-out firing Shelko, Letcher let him know that his
position was being eliminated with the start of a new budget year on
July 1.

So who will head up the city’s downtown-revitalization efforts? It
appears that Republican lawmakers, if they agree to maintain Rio Nuevo
funding, will look for a private management company to handle, at the
very least, the expansion of the Tucson Convention Center and the
construction of a downtown hotel. They don’t want the city to have any
control of the money. But given that the money is supposed to improve
city infrastructure and pay for an expansion of a city-owned facility,
we’re a little baffled about how that’s supposed to work.

Speaking of downtown: Developer Scott Stiteler, a friend of
Mike Hein who is the money man behind the east-side
redevelopment of downtown (see “East Side Story,” April 9), ran into
Mayor Bob Walkup outside of City Hall a few days after Hein’s
firing.

Walkup assured Stiteler that there would still be four votes for his
downtown plans.

Stiteler’s reply: “That’s what you told me last time.”

See Jim Nintzel apply for the job of city manager at 6:30 p.m.,
Friday, on KUAT Channel 6’s Arizona Illustrated. This week’s
guest: State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne. The
program repeats at 12:30 a.m., Saturday. Nintzel also talks politics
with radio ringmaster John C. Scott on Thursday between 4 and 5 p.m. at
Scott’s new home, KJLL AM 1330.

Find early and late-breaking Skinny and so much more at The
Range, the Weekly‘s all-new daily dispatch, at blog.tucsonweekly.com.

This article appears in Apr 16-22, 2009.