Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The Tea-Publicans from the state of Maricopa despise the City of Tucson and Pima County simply because we are a Democratic colony that they have not yet been able to subjugate under their harsh colonial rule.
The worst offenders, however, are the Tea-Publicans who come from Baja Arizona, the insurgents among us who do the bidding of their Tea-Publican masters from the state of Maricopa in an attempt to subjugate the City of Tucson and Pima County by micromanaging our affairs from Phoenix.
On Tuesday, the Pima County Board of Supervisors adopted two resolutions in opposition to the micromanagment from the state of Maricopa. County opposes 2 bills in Legislature:
The supervisors voted 4-0 to oppose HB 2416, which would force the city to extend water service to the proposed Painted Hills development in the Tucson Mountains.
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The board also voted 4-0 to oppose HB 2757, which would allow electronic billboards on state highways. Such signs are banned in Tucson and unincorporated Pima County.
Retaliation by our colonial overlords did not take long. On Wednesdaty, the House revived a bill requiring Tucson to give water to planned development:
A bill requiring Tucson to deliver water to the proposed Painted Hills development in the Tucson Mountains got a last-minute reprieve in the state House Wednesday.
Narrowly defeated last week on the House floor, the bill passed by a 32-26 vote on reconsideration Wednesday. Passage came after the bill's sponsor reached an agreement with other legislators in late morning to send the proposal to a joint Senate-House committee for further discussion. If it passes the Senate, it will come back to the House for final action.
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Bill sponsor Rep. David Stevens, R-Sierra Vista, said "This bill is trying to handle Painted Hills."
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Chris Avery, Tucson Water's chief counsel, was not pleased by the House's turnaround.
"There is a current bill out there that's a really poorly drafted piece of legislation and that is apparently what got through the House," Avery said. "Arizona can't afford bad water policy. It can't even really afford mediocre water policy, and this is horrible water policy."
As written, the bill prohibits a city or town lying inside a county of 500,000 to 1.3 million people from denying water to landowners outside the city boundaries who aren't in other water utilities' boundaries, if they meet certain conditions. Among the conditions is that they lie near pipelines or other water infrastructure owned by the city in question, or are "accessible" to that pipeline system or are substantially adjacent to the city or town.
The bill's population range limits its impact to Pima County. Its conditions clearly apply to the 284-acre, 260-home Painted Hills project, where Speedway and Anklam Road merge, that has been trying unsuccessfully for many years to get city water service.
[I]f the bill is limited only to Painted Hills, it will be illegal special legislation.
Pima County may be too late on the electronic billboards bill. Digital billboards OK, senate committee says – East Valley Tribune:
The Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Transportation approved legislation Monday designed to legitimize the 70 digital billboards in the state and pave the way for more.
HB 2757 is being pushed by the billboard industry after the state Court of Appeals ruled last year that the law does not permit the internally lighted billboards with changing messages adjacent to federal and state highways. Wendy Briggs who lobbies for Clear Channel Outdoor, said the legislation returns the law to what it was presumed to be before the ruling. [Note: Clear Channel lost a decade long legal battle with the City of Tucson over billboards several years ago.]
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Sen. Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake, said she wants representatives from the astronomy industry to sit down with billboard companies to see if a compromise can be worked out before the bill, which already has been approved by the House, goes to the full Senate.
Then there is the ongoing feud between the Town of Marana and Pima County over the Tea-Publican legisature seizing a sewage treatment plant from Pima County last year and handing it over to Marana, for which Marana has yet to pay the county. In retaliation, a Senate panel of the Tea-Publican legislature on Wednesday voted to audit Pima county's bond spending. Senate panel OKs audit of Pima's bond spending:
Rep. Terri Proud, R-Tucson, said there are many discrepancies between what the county claims to have built with the bond funds voters authorized and what actually exists. That's because, Proud contends, "there's some bullying going around with (County Administrator) Chuck Huckelberry."
To address that, the measure she pushed through the Senate Committee on Government Reform calls not only for a forensic audit of where the 1997, 2004 and 2006 bonds were spent, but also whether the county changed the timing or amount of projects "to reward or to punish an entity, party or official who stood to benefit from or be affected by the project."
Proud is not alone in the push. The town of Marana is lobbying for the examination, too. [Jonathan "Payday" Paton is a consutant to the Town of Marana.]
County lobbyist Michael Racy told lawmakers they are free to spend state resources to put the auditor general to work. And he said they also are legally entitled to force the county to spend the money to respond to each request.
But he said HB 2408 amounts to using "public money for what is more of a McCarthyesque witch hunt."
Martin Willett, the chief deputy county administrator, called Proud's proposal "a political vendetta". . . "I'm not surprised she's confused that something doesn't seem to reconcile," Willett said.
But just because Proud doesn't understand how to read them doesn't mean they can't be reconciled, he said. He offered to have county officials sit with her to go through the documents.
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[Pima County Administrator] Chuck Huckelberry said this bill – and another one Proud sponsored to impede the county's bonding ability – can be traced to the fight over control of the sewage treatment plant, which Marana obtained after losing several court battles before finally getting the Legislature to force the county to hand it over.
Huckelberry said Marana still owes Pima County nearly $200,000 in legal fees.
Wednesday's committee approval of HB 2408 comes just a day after Proud backed off a separate demand to create a new bond-oversight committee for Pima County – and only Pima County – which would have given three smaller incorporated municipalities the ability to veto bond plans for the entire county. See (Update) Terri Proud and 'tyranny of the minority':
Marana is the only jurisdiction that supports the measure.
The mayors of Tucson and South Tucson wrote letters opposing the bill. The Pima County Board of Supervisors is set to approve a resolution opposing it. And the mayors of Sahuarita and Oro Valley have written letters criticizing the bill.
The proposed law – which would apply only to Pima County – would establish a Regional Bond Accountability Committee with one representative from the county and one representative from each city and town.
At least this bill is dead . . . for now. Nothing is certain until Sine Die.
The top-elected officials from Arizona’s largest cities are sending a strong message to the state Legislature: Stop interfering with local decision-making. The Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required) reports Mayors to Legislature: Get out of the way – Arizona Capitol Times:
The mayors of Phoenix, Tucson, Mesa, Glendale and Chandler criticized lawmakers for introducing bills that propose new restrictions on cities, saying the measures would stifle job growth, economic development and add new layers of bureaucracy.
And they said they’ve heard from top CEOs about how headline-grabbing legislation, such as last year’s immigration measures, hurts their efforts to recruit talented workers or lure new companies to their communities.
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They cited bills that would require local elections be held at the same time as statewide elections; a bill that would allow businesses to get a tax credit if they believe they’ve been over-regulated; bills that would add new layers of state oversight to city rulemaking and licensing; and legislation that would outlaw photo enforcement in cities.
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Chandler Mayor Jay Tibshraeny, a former state senator, suggested that people should first serve on a local school board or on the city council before becoming a legislator to get a true sense of who their constituents are.
“And they’re not the Goldwater Institute,” Tibshraeny said in response to a question about why the conservative think tank appears to be targeting cities. . . One Goldwater Institute bill that Tibshraeny specifically mentioned, HB 2815, creates a new individual and corporate tax credit for costs incurred because of “excessive regulation.”
This assault on cities and counties mirrors the encroachment by our Tea-Publican legislature on the powers of the constitutionally prescribed Arizona Corporation Commission and the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission. It is about authoritarian concentration of power.
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