A subtle shift in coverage of the Rio Nuevo Board at the Star

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

OK, so this story is more than a week old, but you may have missed its importance. For several years now, the Arizona Daily Star has gone out of its way to trash City of Tucson government. A certain editor and what David Safier tagged The Brodesky/O'Dell tag team (AKA, the B&O Journalistic Railroad) had all the answers, and the City could never do anything right.

More importantly, the Star gave a platform to the mouthpiece for the state legislature-imposed Rio Nuevo Board, Jonathan "Payday" Paton, to also trash the City of Tucson government. There was not a whole lot of separation between what the Rio Nuevo Board had to say through Paton and what the Arizona Daily Star had to say.

But there has been a subtle shift in coverage of the Rio Nuevo Board at the Star of late. The John Munger-Jodi Bain-Jonathan Paton triumvirate that controls the state legislature-imposed Rio Nuevo Board has spent all of its time on litigation and investigations rather than producing any tangible results since it was imposed on us.

The breaking point seems to have been a second notice of claim in anticipation of litigation filed a couple of weeks ago. City drops mediation plan with Rio Nuevo:

The City Council voted Tuesday afternoon to end all mediation with the Rio Nuevo District after receiving a $25 million notice of claim against the Tucson Convention Center.

The vote was calculated to force the dispute between the city and state-appointed Rio Nuevo Board over who owns what property and owes what money to go to a judge to decide.

"If trying to talk to (the Rio Nuevo Board) about putting $1 million into the TCC generates a new $25 million notice of claim," said City Attorney Mike Rankin, "I think my responsibility is to tell the mayor and council that there is no reason to spend time in mediation."

Rankin said his next step will be to advise Rio Nuevo that the mediation is off, "and that any offers that we had put on the table are no longer on the table. And we'll let the litigation play out."

At least one half of the B&O Journalistic Railroad now appears to have had a change of heart brought about by the actions of the triunvirate that controls the state legislature-imposed Rio Nuevo Board. Josh Brodesky: Like a monster, Rio Nuevo lurches down ruinous path:

What a horror story Rio Nuevo has become. It's tempting to liken the state-run Rio Nuevo Board to the monster in Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein": an ugly and misunderstood creation, shunned by the public, that turns on its creator.

But a more fitting analogy for the downtown development entity would be to simply think of the board as a zombie, mindlessly wreaking havoc on the public at large. The proof is in the legal fees. It's in the $25 million claim Rio Nuevo has filed against the city. Instead of building a conference hotel or an improved convention center downtown, Rio Nuevo has only built enmity.

What a waste of time this has been.

After filing a $25 million claim against the city over needed repairs at the Tucson Convention Center, Rio Nuevo Chairwoman Jodi Bain said, "We are trying to work together, and we need the community to remember that."

That's a head-scratcher, since the claim torpedoed the flimsy mediation talks between the two sides. But really, what else would you expect from the captain of a rudderless ship?

* * *

When the state grabbed the Rio Nuevo reins in 2010, the hope was it would clean up the meandering mess the city had created. But here we are, a little more than two years later, and the state-run version of Rio Nuevo looks a lot like the city-run version: aimless and conflicted, a source of community indignation and embarrassment. Somehow Bain and Co. took the roughly $230 million the city spent on Rio Nuevo with little to show for it, and made it all worse.

* * *

It's here the Frankenstein analogy is at its best before giving way to zombies. In both Rio Nuevo and Frankenstein, monsters are unnaturally brought to life. Their creators had good intentions – someone needed to intervene with the city's handling of Rio Nuevo. But in Frankenstein, the monster has good intentions only to be shunned for its ugliness, which makes it destructive. Here, Rio Nuevo is just ugly, destructive and no one knows the board's intentions.

* * *

Every good horror story needs a hero. But this is Rio Nuevo, which means the community just gets hosed. Instead of a hero, we get a stack of legal bills.

Now, Brodesky is still inexplicably enamored with Jonathan "Payday" Paton in this opinion, the wannabe tinhorn dictator of Tucson who was responsible for the state legislature-imposed Rio Nuevo Board, and was part of the triumvirate responsible for all of the actions of which Brodesky complains about. Take the rose-colored glasses off kid, "Payday" Paton was not a good guy. He is one of the bad guys.

Luckily, "Payday" Paton has resigned from the Rio Nuevo Board to focus on his next failed bid for Congress. May we finally be rid of this cursed individual.

Even David Fitzsimmons, who has been crtical of Rio Nuevo over the years – and who hasn't – nailed it with this editorial cartoon.