Governor Jane Dee Hull was the second woman to serve as governor of Arizona and the first woman elected to the position.  After graduating from the University of Kansas with a degree in education, she taught elementary school in Kansas and later in the Navajo Nation schools at Chinle.  In 1978 she was elected to the Arizona House of Representatives as a Republican and served for seven terms, including two as Speaker.  She was the first female Speaker of the House in Arizona history.

Speaker Hull was elected Secretary of State in 1994 and assumed the office of governor after the resignation of Fife Symington III in 1997.  Significantly, Governor Hull was elected in her own right in 1998 and served until 2003.  As Governor of the second-fastest growing state in the nation, her top priorities were education, healthcare, the economy, and the environment.  In office she forged a close relationship with Mexico, working with President Vicente Fox and other border governors.

Jane Hull:
You just gave my whole speech. Thank you all.  Can you hear me if I stand there.  Thank you.  It’s a pleasure for me to be here today. I just told Jack he gave my whole speech so, it’ll be real short and we’ll just take questions.  But it was kind of fun for me to look back on 25, actually 30 years of politics in Arizona which I term, you know, Arizona history 101 or it could have been the good, the bad and the ugly.

Jane Hull:
As Jack said, my own introduction to Arizona was when my husband and I were out on the Reservation in Chinle in the Navajo Nation.  Something I had never experienced before and although we had seen all the rest of the public health facilities, we didn’t go as far as Chinle because we had three children and they assumed they would not send us anywhere that far away from civilization, but we were wrong.  I taught in what was a renovated World War II [inaudible] hut.  So when we, as we move on to students first, you’ll find out why I had some longing to do something with the schools. Terry was a public health doc up there and we left with four children. Then he came to Phoenix to take an OB/GYN residency and you may wonder why?  Four children.

Jane Hull:
But the best thing about that, is we finally had a stipend from the hospital that we could live on which was probably $5,000 a year or something like that.  I can’t even really remember.  My beginning of politics was like so many of us, was Barry Goldwater.  We were on the Reservation when he was running for President, but he had been to KU and we’d heard him before we came out and everything he said made a lot of sense to me and in his last few years, it still made a lot of sense to me. I think we all look back on what Barry believed and see if we’d gone that course, how much better off we would have been.  I did the Republican women’s clubs and I did the precinct committeemen and, you know, when I look back on those years, I think sometimes that they were the golden years of Arizona Republican politics.  You know, I came down and everybody said we were meeting in a phone booth.  Well, you know, that phone booth wasn’t too bad because there wasn’t enough room to fight in that phone booth.

Jane Hull:
You know, I also did the usual Girl Scouts and community service and all of the things that one does besides volunteering for politicians. I have to just because Ann and Steve Thomas are sitting up there, I just have to recognize them.  When I first decided to run for the legislature and I’m skipping way ahead, but I decided, well, I’ve got a lot of close friends, you know, they know me as this kind of flip, you know, Girl Scout leader so I better see if I can pull a speech together and tell them I know something about what’s going on in the state.  And I had, what, maybe about 20 of you all over there.  And tr – it was my first speech and I didn’t – haven’t gotten any better over the last 25 years, but it gave me a chance to at least have somebody kind of looking at me and they didn’t laugh.  I will say that.

Jane Hull:
And they also all contributed money which was always very kind because we didn’t run on taxpayer funded elections then.  In 1974, I became involved, I think I’m going to mention everybody that spoke in here, but I became involved in the…the Corporation Commission, Russ Williams race versus Raul Castro.  As there was an empty seat when Bruce Babbitt left.  Ambassador Castro – not Ambassador Castro won that election and you can never tell again, but if you look at Arizona you can’t tell what happened in those years when we turned over Governors faster than we almost than we turned over legislators. Governor Castro resigned in 1977 and you heard him speak in the last month or so and he is remarkable and a lot of times he drives himself back and forth from Nogales.  Wes Bolin became Governor and, unfortunately, died within 2 or 3 months and because Rose Mofford had been the Secretary of State, but appointed, she couldn’t take office, so we moved on to the Attorney General, Bruce Babbitt.  That was 9 years of what I thought was stability didn’t like everything that was going on because I was a very conservative Republican, conservative fiscally Republican and I used to fuss with Burt Barr a lot about what was going on and we all fussed with Bruce Babbitt, but I have to say looking back at those years, there was a bipartisan working group on everything. The big things that went on there, the groundwater code, I always say I’m probably the only one left that’s read it, oh no, there are a few left. 

Jane Hull:
The caps on spending and taxation.  The urban land regulation which is finally being changed after 20 some years, 27 years and AHCCCS was -- AHCCCS or Abscess as we preferred calling it. And I didn’t vote on it because my husband was a physician and I thought he might get paid.  That’s how high we were on conflict of interest.  I voted on it many other times after that.  It was honestly a good time in Arizona politics.  As I say, lots of things maybe I didn’t like, but it was civil.  And there were things, as a freshman legislator in 1980. That went by the wayside with term limits. In 1980, it meant you were seen and you did not speak, particularly didn’t speak on the floor.  Committees were okay. You didn’t want to ask a stupid question and if you had any smarts, you keep your mouth shut because it’s the stupid comments that end up in the paper.  It’s not the intelligent ones.  I took that really -- I learned that very quickly. After I suggested turning off the air conditioning in Perryville.
 
Jane Hull:
Burt always said be kind to your opponent today ‘cause tomorrow you’re going to need their vote.  And, you know, I still go with that. We – if your promised your vote to somebody, be it a legislator or a lobbyist or whoever, you kept it.  Or, if you didn’t want to keep it, you went back and you said, sorry, but I’m not gonna keep it, but at least you told them. You know, we just, it’s not that way anymore so, getting anything done down there is very difficult.  Then conflict of interest is say, I don’t remember what had happened, but that was a big, big thing.

Jane Hull:
There was one bill where I could remember 25 realtor/legislators, there were a lot of realtors there, stood up and recused themselves from voting on the bill.  And, unfortunately, the bill didn’t have enough votes then to pass.  As -- but Governor Babbitt was running for President in 1987, there was an open seat for Governor as most of you remember, Evan Mecham defeated long time majority leader, Burton Barr, Carolyn Warner was the Democrat primary winner and Bill Schulz popped in as an independent and when we woke up the next day, Ev Mecham was the Governor of Arizona.  And I think the whole state was probably a little bit stunned.  On April 8, 1988, Governor Mecham was impeached.  And Secretary of State Rose Mofford then became Governor.  We just kind of churned it over. It was -- Rose, if you ask her and she’s probably spoken to this group, will always say that was one of the saddest days of my life.  And I think she looks back and it really -- it was.  The Mecham impeachment, I’ll just talk about briefly because, you know, you look back and you think, should you, shouldn’t you.  What would have happened? 

Jane Hull:
You know, there were a lot of things that were going on that, fortunately, were never really brought out in the court case, but in hindsight, you know, I still think it was the right thing to do because of the dealership loan.  But also in hindsight, I look back at the fact that due process takes a lot longer than some of us thought it was gonna take.  The state was – we were budget deficits, nobody could pay any attention to anything. It let people not focus on what they should be because they were all into this.  It had a tremendous call on people’s reputations, on peoples – even on peoples’ ability to want to be in the legislature. Who knows what happens – what would have happened if impeachment hadn’t happened because I think the going bets were that if that hadn’t happened, the recall would have happened.  And so, the state, you know, hit the front pages of all the national papers again and it just was a very, very divisive period.  And I’m not sure that we have ever recovered from it. I don’t know.  It seems like things have changed a lot since then.

Jane Hull:
The legislature lost a lot of members from that impeachment, primarily Republicans who were all replaced by other Republicans.  Speaker Lane was defeated and I became the first woman Speaker of the House.  Governor Mofford stepped in and she was, and is the healing governor, who tried to bring things back to normal.  She tried and she did a good job.  Unfortunately, if you remember 1986, there was something that was called a change in the savings and loan legislation that resulted in that marvelous word, the RTC.  Which I can remember thinking will never ever, ever go away.  It will be with us forever. 

Jane Hull:
But, by some chance finally, it cleared up. Again in 1989, I do sound like a history professor... Jack will make this into a book, right?  We had an open election for Governor.  And as a legislator, we decided that we didn’t want another three way race, not to just end it, so we put on in all our intelligence a 50% rule.  So that was passed in before this election and you had to have 50% of the vote.  Well, Fife Symington ran and Terry -- defeated Terry Goddard but it wasn’t until February of 1990, because he did not have the 50% majority.  The Libertarian took some votes.  Of course that, the next year we put back on the ballot what was on the ballot originally so we didn’t have to do that again.

Jane Hull:
Fife has always said – well, I’ll tell you some quotes from Fife when we talk, but one of the things, that I would tell the Governor is, you know, the Legislature is kind of a meegbeak.  It – I don’t know if that’s a word.  It moves.  And if there’s a vacuum, it wants to move in it and I’ve always had a very firm, you know, this is executive, this is legislative and this is judicial. But always beware of a vacuum because somebody or something will always want to fill it.  In 1990, as I was reelected speaker and Governor Simington was running for his 50% vote, fiscal 2000 had been appointed to by Governor Mofford to basically examine a supposed structural deficit.  And whenever you hear the words, structural deficit, watch out for your billfold.

Jane Hull:
There was a great committee, there was – I think that was another million dollar study or back then maybe it was only $800,000 or something like that.  And twenty people worked for at least a year on it, plus, you know, thousands of staff.  It -- They worked hard.  They issued their report.  It enraged most of, some of the lobbyists, particularly the mines.  It enraged half – three-fourths of the legislators.  It enraged three-fourths of the public because it’s called whose axe was going to get gored.  Art Hamilton came to me one day and said, “Why don’t we just put it out on the Capitol Mall and light a match to it and move on. 

Jane Hull:
In 1991, again, working with Governor Simington became very delightful.  It was nice to have a strong executive, but in 1991, my second term as Speaker, all of a sudden we had something that is known all over the world as AZScam.  The Arizona political scandal of the year due to, as I’ve always said, stupidity and greed.  It…that scandal involved 10 members of the House and Senate, 7 in the House, 3 in the Senate.  I think.  I didn’t look back too well. I know we had 7 in the House.  And the -- I shouldn’t make light of it because it was very, very serious, but the legislative body like church, womens clubs, mens clubs, anything, is full of rumors and hearsay.  I mean, you know, it’s -- there’s a rumor an hour and if there isn’t, somebody will start one.  So, what you could hear in the halls starting about October of 1990, you heard somebody from Las Vegas, you heard gambling, you heard votes for gambling and you heard money.  And that’s all you could hear.  There was something going on and everybody, I don’t know that everybody knew it, but you know, as Speaker, I knew something was going on, but I had no idea what was going on. And, you know, you’re taught when law enforcement is involved, which I found out later, don’t ask because they’re not going to tell you anyway, so you might as well not ask. 

Jane Hull:
And one day it -- shortly after the election, Attorney General Bob Corbin called me up and Representative Jewitt had come to me and said he had been approached to meet with this man on legalized gambling and had declined, but he wanted to warn me in case he was coming to talk to me. So I called the Attorney General and I said, Bob, you know, something is going on.  I don’t know what it is, but there’s somebody out here that’s trying to get legislators to vote for legalized gambling.  And I think by that time I think we already had some indications, so I couldn’t figure out why a Las Vegas player would want to get gambling in Arizona as a -- I don’t think Las Vegas really wants to Arizona to gamble, wanted Arizona to gamble.  It didn’t make any sense to me.  But anyway, Bob Corbin said, “Well, if he calls you, would you wear a wire and go talk to him?”  And I thought, not in my lifetime, I won’t. 

Jane Hull:
But of course, I said, yes, of course.  And then I knew that he -- I knew that I wouldn’t be contacted. We were in, it kind of went on and you could, you kept hearing it, but you never heard anything, so we had started the legislative session.  We were in a quick special session for the Legislature.  It was a Thursday, February 1st or second or 31st of January to the 2nd which was a Saturday.  And I mean, actually whatever the issue was, and I can’t even remember, it must have been a pretty easy one because they never, ever, ever do special sessions in three days.  Um…But that one ended very quickly.  I was called, I’d been called by the press during that week a couple of times, you know, it was beginning to get that something really bad was going on and then a couple days before I was called by, basically by the Republic because the Republic broke the story on Saturday morning at 5:00 a.m. before the quote, as it turns out, sting was completed.

Jane Hull:
And again, you all remember the sting was a police chief Ruben Ortega and Rick Romley and they had hired Tony Vincent.  Tony Vincent sat in this apartment somewhere off, like 24th and Camelback, you know, barely, according to the tapes, it was barely furnished.  Did you know, it wasn’t and he would call people to this apartment to talk to them about legalized gambling.  And how many of you would go to an apartment of somebody you didn’t know to talk about anything?  It just -- I couldn’t believe it.

Jane Hull:
Anyway, this was one of those things that Speakers don’t have a whole lot of power, you know, he basically had taped every legislator in this apartment.  And every legislator likes to gossip.  So, when we had to listen to some of the tapes, some of these legislators were talking about other legislators who maybe weren’t involved and some of the things that were said didn’t make for real friendliness on top of the impeachment.  I could not do a lot.  I called together the business community which, I guess, was always one of my first things was, you know, call the Phoenix Forty or the Phoenix leadership or whatever it is and call some of these people and say, “What do you really think?”  Tucson and some out of Maricopa – they were all in Maricopa County. The first suggestion I got was hanging them at sunrise. 

Jane Hull:
And I said, there was a lot of anger there.  And I said, “That’s a great idea, but I don’t have the power.  I can’t do that.”  I’d kind of like to, too. What I ended up doing and I don’t honestly know and never will know and frankly don’t care if I had the ability to do so, but I did it.  I removed all five of the Republicans from their chairmanships and that included the House majority leader and the House judiciary chairman which was a very nice surprise to me. That at least put them on the floor.  A couple of them never came back, particularly the judge chairman and the House majority leader, but it took them off the floor, the rest of them off the floor.  But they didn’t leave.  They kept hanging around and the tapes kept playing.  And, again, the Legislature couldn’t do anything.  So, finally I said, I’m not going to take any bills to a floor vote while their on the floor.  They’re not going to final vote on a bill because if they are indicted and then resign, I don’t know what that does to the Constitutional bill.  That was at least my excuse.  It sounded good and it worked. 

Jane Hull:
And as I looked back, I did look back on the books that come out from each legislative session.  It was never, AZScam was never mentioned in those books.  But as you read the minutes of the daily log, I would come on the floor, we would do our little business and I would read the resignation letter from whichever one of the 7 had resigned that day.  And then we’d move on.  Obviously the one that was hardest and this is really looking back, was Jim Hardigan, who frankly I didn’t think had done anything worth, but he was the only one with the courage to stand up on the floor and say, you know, I’ve submitted my letter and it’s not as long and loud as I’m going to be, but he gave a speech that had tears in everybody’s eyes, Republican or Democrat, because he was a very well liked legislator. 

Jane Hull:
Anyway, moving that and this is actually when Governor Symington had started his first full term.  You realize, both Governor Symington and Governor Mofford came in the middle of a story. A legislative session’s like a story with no plot. 

Jane Hull:
So you know, you’re in there trying to figure out what to do.  Governor Symington had a strong agenda.  He was used to a business world and he, I guess, you know, by then I’d had 10 or 12 years of running around with these people that go like that, and I’m like herding cats.  And, you know, he would come up first of all because he was a strong leader, if the legislators were kind of being pushed back from the vacuum, and they didn’t like that a bit.  But I would go up to see the Governor often and he’d look, he’d say, “What’s wrong with these people? Why don’t they listen to the facts?  Why don’t they do what I want them to do?”  And, “Why is it so much harder to get things done down here than in the real world?”  And I said, “It’s government, I guess.  I haven’t figured it out in 12 years, so I don’t know that you’re going to be able to figure it out.” 

Jane Hull:
But I think his biggest frustration had to be, and I don’t think he mentioned this, but it had to be the joint leadership meetings because during the second term, Pete Rios, a Democrat was -- the Senate had gone Democrat, so he would have six Democrats and six Republicans and the Republicans would talk to him, but the Democrats wouldn’t and this is not a partisan, it was just funny.  So, he would try to order, the Republicans would try to meld and the Democrats wouldn’t say anything and, I mean, it just got so you felt like we were all wasting each other’s time. But, I loved the fact that he was up there.  I loved the fact that I think he also brought some good changes to government and I also loved particularly the year in ’97, the fact that he had had the courage to remodel the 8th and 9th floors.  And most of you, I’m sure were up there before and many of you have been up there afterwards.  I mean, it was embarrassing, particularly when the Mexican government or really, every western state has got -- as do the eastern states, have got a gorgeous capitols.  Well kept up, looked nice. I think we’re one of four states that does not have a, what we call a Capitol where you can entertain people or where you want to bring them, so that’s my plug for, yes, we do need to do something down there, but I was really thankful that he had taken it and done it himself.   

Jane Hull:
In 19 -- in 2003, Mark Kilian became Speaker of the House.  I had sat there in the summer going up to Pinetop and thought, I don’t need this anymore.  I really don’t need this.  And I had always been opposed to Speaker Kelly serving four terms.  I thought that was too long, so anyway I did not run for Speaker.  Mr. Kilian was elected Speaker and I found that I really wanted to find a nice peaceful hole to crawl in.  And as you know we’ve always had this cute resign to run law that was actually, it’s too long ago for me to remember.  Pete or Sawyer, Sawyer. You’re the -- can’t remember his first -- Ed Sawyer was gonna run for something or other.  A Democrat from one of the rural counties.  And so, again, put this you have to resign to run law.  Well, there were like 16 exploratory committees going on.  I knew I was gonna run for Secretary of State and frankly, I didn’t want to be in a legislative session, when I needed to be all over the state.  I thought it was a ridiculous waste of time.  And as I say later, I think they were starting another session on clean air, and I’d already been through 10 or 12 of those and I really didn’t have anything much to add so I did resign.

Jane Hull:
I did run for Secretary of State.  And it was a successful race.  It was fun.  I wanted to bring the Secretary of State’s office up, you know, into the computers, the digital world.  I may not have understood it very well at that time, but I knew that that’s where it needed to be.  The Secretary of State’s office is not a particularly easy one to run for.  I mean, you are the chief election officer and you run elections and that’s what everybody thinks, but you do a lot of business filings.  Oh, you dwell on the Uniform Commercial Code and on such things that, you know, everybody’s eyes glaze when you start telling them about how marvelous your job is.  But, I liked it.  I enjoyed the fact that we did a lot to that office in bringing it up to standard and that we began the changing technology which Secretary of State Bayless and Brewer have continued.  And now you can get almost everything that’s in that office online and that’s -- it would have happened anyway, but I was proud that we could be the start of it.

Jane Hull:
Well, I think everybody knows what happened next.  As I say, I was minding my own business reading the Uniform Commercial Code because it was so fascinating and all of a sudden, one afternoon about 5:00, I received a phone call from Governor Symington that he was resigning immediately.  We had already talked.  We had already agreed that if it happened, the transition would be seamless as possible and thanks to a good working relationship with the staffs, that’s what happened.  I look back on those -- I think I was probably the only person running for Secretary of State that had really no idea that that was going to happen.  I don’tthink I ever thought it would happen and I was perfectly happy doing what I was doing.  I was getting lazy at that point, I think. But the funniest thing of that date and my biggest recollection is, I believe that Governor Symington had a press conference.  We scheduled one for me the next morning.  And all of a sudden, I looked out of my office and there were four or five or six DPS officers milling around my office.  And you know, my employees were a little bit shaky about this and they were to be with me for the next five years.  Not those same ones, but certainly 8 or 9 of them have -- were within me for five years and I finally got used to it. 

Jane Hull:
We you know, spent -- I didn’t get home until late, obviously, that night and we spent some time and I got ready to go and, you know, my car was down in the Secretary of State’s office, the parking place right by the door and got ready to walk out and I had these papers and they said, “No, no. You don’t get to drive home.”  And I said, “What?”  And they said, “We are driving you home with a car behind.”  And I said, “Well, how’s my car gonna get home.”  They said, “We’ll have somebody else drive it home.”  And that was kind of the beginning of having DPS in my life.

Jane Hull:
They are neat guys.  They are fun guys.  They are the ages of -- most of them are the ages of both of my sons. They’re lots of fun, but I used to say to them, “You know, if you take the coats off, if you take the badges off and you take that silly earpiece out of your ear, nobody would know I was in Walgreens or the grocery store.  And you wouldn’t have to go either!”  But, you get used to it.  I only had one death threat during those five years and I’m ashamed to admit it ‘cause it was so -- the DPS spent the night there and I didn’t even know it.  The details are sketchy, but someone wanted to pay another person to kill Joe Joe Arpaio, just straight up kill him, for a hundred thousand dollars.  And he wanted to pay someone, the same guy, $5,000 to kidnap me. 

Jane Hull:
And I think eventually they were gonna kill me, but obviously he went to jail really quickly.  And it was one of those things I couldn’t get too excited about, but I said to Joe, “You’re worth that much more than I am?” 

Jane Hull:
When I became the 20th Governor of Arizona we did have a swearing in. I mean, I think I have been in the point of Arizona where we’ve had to make up more things because of these changes in government in the middle, but we did have a swearing in ceremony the next week.  Justice O’Connor, bless her heart, came all the way out from Washington to swear us -- to swear me in.  And again, we did, I think, have a seamless trandit – change.  Basically, Prescott’s so tired of hearing the word seamless that they would come in to me and say, “Don’t start this with seamless.”  So we had to find another word. When I went in, and I say it was September, the first thing I really had to do was visit every corner of the state which I had visited when I was running for Secretary of State.  And I have always had a lot of friends in the -- what I call the crater, Arizona, but it was really important that I – so there was a lot of traveling.  There was a preparation for budget and there was a special session that was the first one, really, that Governor Symington had been able to come to the start and the finish.  And it was a long one.  And also during that time, I was very proud to appoint Secretary Betsy Bayless as Secretary of State and she did a great job.  I’m just going to talk about a few of the issues that were around and because I don’t very often. And I won’t go into details.  I won’t tell you dates ‘cause I don’t even remember them.

Jane Hull:
But I’ve always said, I could pull out the brochure that I ran with in 1978 and stick it in your hand and it would look just like one today.  I mean, the issues stay the same.  And looking back on…on what we did when I was in office, you know, Kids Care is back.  That’s a federally funded program for uninsured kids.  And at one point we had the uninsured children down to like 15% after I hit the Legislature over the head enough to get it passed.  Republicans don’t agree with getting federal funds.  That I agree with that, but when you get 90 cents on the dollar, and you’re a state that doesn’t, you know, has been in the growth cycles, it just seemed to me that it was something you -- we were going to have to do.  Just like AHCCCS.  Our answer to Medicaid was finally passed because you had to do something.  We couldn’t afford to pay for it.   

Jane Hull:
Anyway, it’s back again.  I think the Governor Napolitano wants to make some changes to it.  And I would say to her, good luck.  I got about as much as I could get out of it at the time, but maybe times have changed and she’ll succeed.  In February, I announced that I was gonna run for a second term and that would be my only real term because the powers that be, the AG and I think the courts had decided that Secretary of State was one term and this was my second term, so I was term limited.  The negotiations then began with the primary election.  It was some of the most conservative members of the party would have preferred that I wasn’t there.  But as time went on I think they saw that I was doing a lot of what they wanted done and to have a very divisive primary which Republicans tend to do to each other all the time and then run against -- it was probably going to be Paul Johnson, was probably not a very good idea.  So I coasted through a primary and I’ve thanked the people that thought about it many times since then.  Because it let me deal with the state’s business unenhampered by a primary and I was very, very lucky with that.

Jane Hull:
In 2000, with the election, let’s see, of former Phoenix Mayor, Paul Johnson did become the Democrat candidate.  And I’ve always said, you know, Paul is doing a lot of in fill and development and things in the city and I’ve always said that I thought Paul had his mind on what he was going to be doing because he’s much more articulate than I am.  But his heart wasn’t really in it.  It just, you know, in -- it never became dirty.  It never became, you know, there were a few mailers, but it was just – except when he accused me of wanting sell Arizona’s water to Nevada.  And that was the -- easy to prove that I hadn’t done that, but I really don’t think his heart was in it. But anyway, I had an easy skate to be – probably the last one any Governor will ever have in the state. The winning of a -- of the election, my first real election, was not the big thing.  The big thing was that Arizona elected five women to the five major offices and you would have thought that the world thought that Arizona was just, I mean, we’d made headlines for Ev Mecham.  We’d made headlines for the RTC scandals.  We’d made headlines for AZScam.  And now we’re making headlines for having five women. 

Jane Hull:
The fab five is what it was called and you know, every one of us said the same thing to the press, whether we were together or not.  You know, none of us really noticed that there -- we just thought we were the best qualified candidates. 

Jane Hull:
Lisa Graham refers to it now, it wasn’t actually the fabulous five, it was the five easy pieces, if you’ve seen the movie. 

Jane Hull:
That took up a lot of time, if you’ll believe it, that first month.  I mean, I think we were on what’s that Oxygen or I don’t know, it seemed like we did one picture after another picture and I just, it was the -- I found it so interesting because Arizona is a state in which strong women have always – we had women in the legislature early, early, early on.  You know, we had a Congresswoman in 1930 something Greenway, ’32.  See, I like having my history professor over there!  The next four years was just a blur of time.  I tend to believe that a Governor should have a set agenda.  You should know what you want and where you’re going.  But, unfortunately, in that time and during that time, you know, there are these little bombs that explode.  That you’re not quite expecting and that was really not on the agenda.  You know, a flood is a good example of that.  The fire is a good example of that.  You know, you just weren’t quite expecting it, but I would hope that I’d be remembered as a Governor whose legacy was the children of the state ‘cause I worked a lot on education.  And I like to -- I worked a lot on open spaces which I think [inaudible] has now been declared unconstitutional -- Kids Care, as I say was one. First win, it was nice.  We had this little chart that said who’s winning.  See, somebody always has to win be it the legislature, the Governor or the courts.

Jane Hull:
In the end, the courts probably win.  We resolved a juvenile mental funding case that had been in the courts for 10 years.  And I have this feeling that when the judges make the final decision on the money, it’s gonna be twice as much as when the legislature makes it because judges they don’t have to pay the bill. So, I really did set about solving court cases.  Students First was, there was a write up in the paper, so I will not go into many of the gory details of it, but basically when [inaudible] in court for that because your poor districts and your rich districts didn’t have equal buildings and your poor districts were falling apart and your wealthy ones weren’t.  Now a poor district is more likely to be Osborn District that has a lot of business wealth, and I don’t think a lot of people are, you know, they think it’s all Scottsdale. 

Jane Hull:
We had two choices and I love that because Jack Feaster, we all sat and looked at it and what can you do?  We could either play Santa Claus or Robin Hood and Santa Claus meant you would collect some sort of your property tax, pull it into the state and redistribute it to the poorer districts.  Santa Claus, was we just picked the bill up on the state level and hoped people will stop passing bond issues ‘cause the taxes would have gone down.  I knew that Robin Hood wasn’t gonna get there. It wasn’t gonna fly and so we went for the -- basically for the state picking up the construction costs.  There’s a nice little chart in the paper today of all the money that’s been spent.  The schools are, as they’re building schools they’re, you know, needing more and more money for things that weren’t -- it was supposed to be a basic school and so we still having bonding and they --  it continues to grow.  The deficiencies have all been resolved, but again, when school budgets tight, they don’t fix the schools, they do something else.  And so we have – probably are working our way back into one of those court suits.     

Jane Hull:
The Proposition 301 was on the ballot in 2000 and we worked hard.  I came to the legislature in May of that year.  It had been in the back of my mind and I knew that we were gonna be facing another down turn before long and I just didn’t think we were doing enough for education.  Over the years, both as a legislator and during the Symington years, there had been a lot of accountability put in the school districts.  You know, things that they had to -- the AIMS test, it was in – and I thought it was time you kind of raised some money for the schools, so I knew the legislature would never raise taxes.  I didn’t want to raise taxes.  So we went to the ballot with a 600th of a cent sales tax increase and that money went to what everybody was complaining about.  It went to teacher’s salaries, it went to the classroom.  I’d like to have an audit right now to see where it really is, but it was -- very firmly that it was not to go to administration.  It wasn’t going to go to buildings.  It was to go to the classroom and to kids. Smaller classrooms and we added five additional school days, which we couldn’t afford to do.  Part of the funding went to the community colleges and to the universities and I’ll talk about that very quickly in a minute. We built a new state lab and we built a new state hospital because both of them were falling apart, and again there were court cases coming.  We did a lot with open space and we bought Spur Cross Ranch with Cave Creek and Maricopa County which is gorgeous if you haven’t seen it. 

Jane Hull:
The Indian gaming compacts were resolved eventually on the ballot.  But I spent two years meeting with the tribes.  They had to be renewed.  There wasn’t anything you could do about it.  I don’t like Indian gaming probably any more that anybody here does, but you can’t get – it’s there.  It’s just there. So, we negotiated compacts with them that basically gave us the regulation that we needed.  We could trust the fact that there were criminals being hired, people were taking advantage of the tribes and there was a lot in that, but we got the regulation we wanted and we also did ask for a cut.  And I think many people objected to that.  But the state takes in maybe 50, 60 million, but more than that, the local entities, you know, the little towns, the Pinetops and the Prescotts and they get a small percentage of that Indian gaming money because of the safety.  Because of additional police, the transportation and all that and I felt that that was only fair to pay for those things. 

Jane Hull:
Finally I have to talk about TGEN.  No, I didn’t wear the button.  But because of the money that went to the universities, they finally had a pot of money they didn’t have to defend to the legislature.  It was about 45 million that first year and I frankly don’t know what it is now.  But, I think that what I was proud of with -- of that was the fact all three university presidents saw the future, they saw the future, the universities, I mean, the joke used to be two-thirds for U of A, one-third for ASU and a half of a third or whatever that was for NAU, I mean, that was just the budget process.  And the state could not go on like that.  And we had three good university presidents that bit the bullet and said, okay, we’re gonna go together.  We’re going to become a research based, knowledge based economy.  And when I look at TGEN and I look what’s going on in downtown Phoenix, I look at the fact that finally we’ve got the medical school both in Tucson and we’ll have it in Phoenix, instead of bickering over it for the last fifty years, I think that that was probably the most important thing that happened when I was Governor and I’m very pleased with it. 

Jane Hull:
On September 11th of 2001 came a day that none of us will ever forget.  I can remember saying Arizona, America will never be the same and I don’t think we ever have been the same.  If you look at air travel, look at everything that we do in our daily lives, and it supersedes it.  It’s unbelievable to me that human beings could kill innocent human beings who they don’t know and I find sometimes myself wondering if too many people have forgotten what happened but terrorism is with us, from whatever point it is and it, I’m afraid, will be with us for a long time.  The last year of my term homeland security became a term,  we’d never heard of it and until it began and another one of those little things you look back and laugh, the fed – God bless the federal government, but they delivered to every Governor’s office, this little secure phone with a red button on it, you know, I thought we’d got the atomic bomb, but no we didn’t.

Jane Hull:
And the phone sat there.  And of course, all of us were afraid to touch it.  And periodically it would ring and it would be – I don’t even know that I remember if it was 542 exchange, but it would ring and it’d be, you know, one of you.  It’d be somebody on the phone from Arizona so we never did get a call from the feds on the phone.  We never had to activate the National Guard.  We had lots of…of phone calls…um…conference calls on the…on the regular telephone.  But I…I keep thinking one of these days I’ve got to ask the Governor if…uh…it’s still there or if they decided to use it for a decoration or something.  ‘Cause we just moved it around.  We were afraid to touch it!

Jane Hull:
We did, you know, as had been predicted after 2001, there was a downturn in the economy, life [inaudible] that and we, you know, we all kind of know that they’re coming and we do it a lot. So we were in debt, you know, what else was new?  We were always in debt ‘cause we spent too much money.  I’m talking too long.  Let me just mention the Rodeo-Chedesky fire, ‘cause that’s one of those bombs that comes to you and we’re going to the fire season, be careful.  You know, as I end, I just want to say, as I look back on those years, I miss the civility of my early years.  I miss the fact that I think, I said I think the state and the country are almost becoming, my own word, ungovernable.  I think we are almost deadlocked and gridlocked and not being willing to come together to solve a problem and that frightens me.  But on the other hand, things get done and it always does, so I’m always up on what will happen. Thank you for letting me have a chance to look back and I’m sorry I went so long, if I had looked at my watch I would have stopped. 

Jane Hull:
Thank you.  Have we got time for a few questions?  Yeah.  Questions?  You don’t want to hear anymore dates?  Uh huh?  These lights are glaring, so I can’t see. 

Audience Member:
[Inaudible] Governor, as someone who has successfully gone through gridlock, worked through it as a Speaker, as a legislator, as Secretary of State, as Governor, what do you think we need to do particularly in the state, in our own backyard [inaudible] and [inaudible] the future Governors of the state to work through that?  Give us some suggestions that you used successfully to in your legislative career.

Jane Hull:
It’s a good question and, you know, and I think about it and look at it, and I think at the last State of the State I mentioned – I am not a fan of term limits.  I think you’ve got a lot of people that are flipping back and forth, but once that happened, you know, the Art Hamiltons were gone, the Polly Rosenbaums were gone.  The people that could say, hey, we tried that 10 years ago and it didn’t work and that’s what I see now, I mean, we tried it, didn’t work but they’re doing it again.  I’m not a fan of clean elections.  I think what clean elections has done is enabled a lot of people to run on a very, very narrow agenda, they’re here, they’ve got their very narrow agenda.  They don’t need to go out and visit with the business community or visit with people in Sierra Vista and raise money state in a statewide race, statewide.  I think those things have hobbled us greatly.  The partisanship, you know, if people can’t learn that they have to work together and unfortunately it takes I think, three or four years in the legislature to understand that we’re a very diverse state.  We represent a lot of people.  And I changed as I moved from one office to the next because as Speaker even, I was representing the whole state and we have too many narrow, narrow, narrow interests of what’s good for me and my next door neighbor.  And then finally we’re not gonna shut it down, but if we could get rid of the Internet and the glogs and the blogs and the gogs and the whatever those are that they’re all listening to and the 24 hour a day news, I think that is contributing to some extent.  That my just very off the cuff remark.  Another question? 

Audience Member:
Yes, I -- you’re the first speaker that has addressed AZScam and Governor Mecham and as some of us know a little bit more of Governor Mecham’s career and term and I’ve interviewed for hundreds of hours and I’m curious to know what you thought of – what was your working relationship like with him over the various guises and forms that he took? 

Jane Hull:
My working relationship with Governor Mecham was interesting.  I mean, everybody knows that Governor Mecham was a Mormon.  And Mormons do not really believe that women have a place.  Except in the home with their children.

Jane Hull:
So, oftentimes, I think at that point I was the only woman in leadership as whip, but oftentimes I just didn’t go to meetings. You know, who I felt the sorriest for with Governor Mecham because of that attitude, other than that, we had a fairly good working relationship, but I always knew he really wanted me to go home take care of my kids, but they were grown. 

Jane Hull:
But the ones I felt the sorriest for were the Mormon women in the legislature who all continued to support him, but you know, he wouldn’t call the Ways and Means chairman who was a woman, he wouldn’t call the transportation chairman who was a woman, he’d find, you know, a man from that committee and I just found that to be, not an impeachable offense, but I thought it was just very, very wrong, but it was his upbringing.  I mean, it was the way he did things.  He also was very ill served by his staff.  He brought people in that didn’t know what was going on and he and he was ill served by the press.  I mean, every time he made a move, the press was on him, but he did not take advice well and he didn’t put people that knew the law into place.  And there are a lot of those people who know the law who are, actually they’re Republicans, so, and again Jim Coulter who was chief of staff was falling ill which, of course, nobody knew at that time.  So, it just -- it was a lot of circumstances.  But again, he was not a fan of women being out of the house, so that’s my last comment. 

Jan eHull:
Yes?  Thank you.  You’ve been a peaceful, quite crowd.

Oh yeah.  I got…

Audience Member:
I would like to ask Governor, if -- what are you doing today? 

Jane Hull:
What am I doing today.  Well, when I finished my term, as I say to everybody, as little as possible.  When I finished my term in office in 2004, I went back to the UN and was a public delegate to the UN for – to the General Assembly for three months.  Lived in New York and saw the UN at work and thought, well, you know, the legislature doesn’t look nearly as bad! 

Jane Hull:
But that was a fun experience.  But aside from that, you know, I kind of said when I left, 35 years of – I mean, it’s been a lot of years, and I wanted to go back to my family and I wanted to go back to my friends and I really have done that.  I’m not – I will when I recover a little bit more – do some community service.  I’m not involved with the party at all and I do -- I make, you know, probably a speech or two, or three or four a month, or do something like this.  But other than that, I really have kind of enjoyed this.  It’s nice to see friends. It’s nice to go somewhere and know that I’m not going to get called back for a special session.

Jane Hull:
So, we’re just enjoying retirement. 

Audience Member:
Thank you.

Jane Hull:
 Anything else?  Thank you all very much.