WELL, THAT SETTLES THE WHOLE RTA THING … DOESN’T IT?
After all the sound and fury over allegations that the 2006 Regional
Transportation Authority election was rigged, Attorney General Terry
Goddard announced this week that a recount showed the sales-tax
increase was, in fact, approved by voters.
This should put an end to all those allegations—based on what
was, at best, flimsy evidence—that the county flipped the
election. But it probably won’t.
Maricopa County election workers spent the better part of two weeks
counting all the RTA ballots. However, before the count even began,
election-integrity activists complained that chain-of-custody
procedures weren’t followed when the ballots were taken to Maricopa
County.
One final complaint, in a letter sent to Goddard by Pima County
Democratic Party attorney Bill Risner, was that 19,000 ballots
were possibly missing from the boxes. But earlier this week, activist
John Brakey, after looking at six hours of video footage of the
examination, determined the card stock used on the vote-by-mail ballots
has a different thickness than that used on the regular
ballots—throwing everyone off.
“I messed up,” Brakey told The Skinny. “I’m willing to take a hit
for it.”
That’s OK, John—by now, we’re used to you jumping the gun,
even if your heart is the right place.
Brakey did get some vindication last week, in the courtroom of
Justice of the Peace Jose Luis Castillo, who threw out
trespassing charges against Brakey stemming from his arrest during a
ballot audit last September.
The county said Brakey was causing trouble by asking auditors to
look at serial numbers on the precinct yellow sheets that came with
each ballot bag, as well as the numbers on the bags, to make sure that
they matched.
Pima County Elections Director Brad Nelson got fed up with
Brakey and told him to stop talking with auditors. When he refused,
Nelson asked a Pima County sheriff’s deputy to escort Brakey out. When
Brakey refused to leave, he was arrested.
Almost eight months later, on Thursday, April 16, Castillo acquitted
Brakey on those trespassing charges.
Bill Risner, who represented Brakey in front of Castillo,
tells us that the judge “found that Brad Nelson had ‘overreached’ in
ordering Brakey arrested.”
We’ll have more about the press conference on our daily dispatch,
The Range, at blog.tucsonweekly.com. You’ll also
find a video of Castillo’s comments on Nelson and Brakey, as well as
other bonus material related to the election-integrity battles. Do come
visit!
EVEN WORSE THAN THE GARBAGE TAX
The city’s money troubles are getting even more dire: Our new city
manager, Mike Letcher, gave the Tucson City Council a rough
outline of a budget last week that included $18 million in new taxes.
When Mike Hein—the guy who four Democratic members of the
council fired a few weeks back—had last presented his budget, he
was projecting that the council would need to raise $5 million.
That’s a $13 million jump, but we wouldn’t lay all the blame at
Letcher’s feet. Even if Hein were still at the helm, he might have
recommended some of these additional taxes, given the worsening budget
forecast.
Letcher has proposed a number of “revenue enhancements,” as the
politicians like to call ’em these days. There’s a tricky new
quasi-property tax on Tucson Water that’s supposed to raise $1.6
million, an increase in the hotel bed tax that’s supposed to generate
$1.8 million and an advertising tax that’s supposed to raise
$964,000.
But the money shot is charging landlords a 2 percent tax on their
rent payments, which would bring in an estimated $12 million a
year.
The rental tax is used in many other communities. Our sources tell
us that it used to be charged in Tucson, but it was repealed as a sort
of trade-off when state lawmakers started making landlords pay more in
property taxes. Those lawmakers, a few years later, changed their minds
and gave landlords a property-tax break, but the city never went back
to charging landlords their 2 percent tax.
Even if it’s fairly standard tax, council members are still facing a
major political fight. When the previous council toyed with this idea,
the Arizona Multihousing Association dropped fliers all over town
explaining that the council wanted to hike residents’ taxes. They
offered box lunches and bus rides to City Hall for a cantankerous
budget hearing that made it clear that supporting a rental tax would
generate political headaches.
This is a bigger problem for our current crop of elected leaders,
because council members Karin Uhlich and Nina Trasoff attacked their Republican opponents, Fred Ronstadt and
Kathleen Dunbar, for “springing” the garbage fee on Tucson
residents a few years back without a proper discussion. Regina
Romero and Rodney Glassman have also been critical of that
process.
Now the council members have to decide whether they want a long,
drawn-out process of listening to residents talk about how much they
hate the rental tax before approving it anyway; whether they just want
to rip the Band-Aid off in one swift stroke and approve it; or whether
they’ll shoot it down and leave a gaping hole in the budget. Decisions,
decisions!
The fun is scheduled to start at 5:30 p.m., Tuesday, April 28, when
the Tucson City Council has a big ol’ public meeting at the Tucson
Convention Center. And we hear the housing lobbyists are already trying
to figure out where to park their buses.
SPEAKING OF CITY BUDGET PROBLEMS …
Last week, the Tucson Association of Realtors revealed their summer
project: Funding an initiative campaign to ask city voters to approve a
proposition this November that would force the city to hire more cops
and firefighters.
TAR is providing the money behind the newly formed Public Safety
First Committee, which wants the city to adopt the standards of the
National Fire Protection Association 1710, which requires a faster
response time and a better medical-emergency service.
It would also force the city to staff 2.4 police officers per 1,000
residents. The city now has 1.9 cops per 1,000 residents, according to
Tucson Police Officers Association president Larry Lopez, so the
city would have to hire several hundred new cops over the next few
years. If you figure that each one costs the city roughly $100,000 in
salary, equipment and related expenses, the final cost would increase
the city’s budget by, oh, maybe, $40 million a year?
That’s a big chunk of money for council members who are already
trying to figure out how to save funding for outside agencies and put
money away into an affordable-housing trust fund.
Still, it will be hard to find someone who’s going to oppose the
initiative, which means it will probably pass.
Some folks are hoping that the proposition could be considered an
unfunded mandate and therefore get knocked off the ballot, but City
Attorney Mike Rankin tells The Skinny that the city of Peoria
faced a similar question in 1997. The Arizona Court of Appeals said
that it could go on the ballot, although it was ultimately rejected by
voters.
We’re still trying to figure out the reason the real-estate gang
wants to spend their money on this. Is it just to give Republicans a
reason to go to the polls in November?
By Mari Herreras and Jim Nintzel
Find early and late-breaking Skinny—and so much
more!—at The Range, our all-new daily dispatch at blog.tucsonweekly.com.
See Jim Nintzel raise your taxes at 6:30 p.m., Friday, on KUAT
Channel 6’s Arizona Illustrated. This week’s guest: Pima County
Supervisor Ray Carroll. Nintzel also talks politics with radio
ringmaster John C. Scott between 4:30 and 5 p.m., Thursday, on KJLL AM
1330.
This article appears in Apr 23-29, 2009.
