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November 14, 2003

Host: Michael Grant
Topics:
· The Journalists Roundtable
In-Studio Guests:
Paul Giblin, Scottsdale Tribune;
Paul Davenport, Associated Press;
Robbie Sherwood, The Arizona Republic.

>> Michael Grant: It's Friday, November 14th, 2003. In the headlines this week, Rural/Metro announced that it will discontinue fire service to Scottsdale when its contract expires in 2005.

>>> Michael Grant: A trial to determine the legality of Arizona's legislative and congressional districts started this week in Maricopa County Superior Court.

>>> Michael Grant: And lawmakers wrapped up the fourth week of their special session with no end in sight.

>>> Michael Grant: Good evening, I'm Michael Grant.

>>> Michael Grant: This is the Journalists' Roundtable. Joining me to talk about these and other stories are Paul Giblin from the "Scottsdale Tribune." Paul Davenport of the "Associated Press." And Robbie Sherwood from "The Arizona Republic."

>>> Michael Grant: Rural/Metro made an announcement this week saying it would terminate its firefighting service to Scottsdale when the current contract expires in 2005. You know, Paul, I've got to tell you, I'm not really surprised by many stories any more. This one just left me astonished. What the heck is going on?

>> Paul Giblin: It left everyone astonished. You'll remember the very contentious election just a few months ago. Rural metro spent $300,000 to convince Scottsdale that they ought to be the fire department going forward and then they pull up their stakes. It's very curious.

>> Michael Grant: It is like a -- remember the Saturday Night Live skit where they said "never mind"? I guess they were so focused on winning the election that they weren't focused on long-term planning.

>> Paul Giblin: That's what some of their executives said this week. They weren't looking at long-term planning and they got the election behind them and then they decided to pencil it out and find out that it's not a real money-making endeavor which is what the firefighters have been saying for months, that is, it ought to be run by the city, like every other city in the valley, and I guess Rural/Metro, which is a privately run organization came to the same realization.

>> Robbie Sherwood: How long will they last as a corporation without Scottsdale? Scottsdale has been the hub in the wheel of their entire corporation for all of these years. It's the biggest thing they have going.

>> Paul Giblin: You're right, Robbie. Rural/Metro was founded in Scottsdale. Corporate headquarters has been there for 52 years. The Rural/Metro executives tell us that the fire service only represents 2 or 3% of their business in recent year, they have been diverting business towards ambulance service. They have moved patients back and forth between hospitals and that sort of thing. That's where the real money is.

>> Paul Davenport: So the city has to set up their own fire department, set up fire engines and fire stations?

>> Paul Giblin: Yes and no. When they were thinking about starting their own fire department anyway because of the initiative earlier this year. They made plans, how do they start a fire department. What they came up with was that they would probably use Rural/Metro firefighters and that's what the firefighters wanted in the first place because they think they get better benefits with the city then the private company. So Jan Dolan, the city manager said yesterday, that they would go that way. They would look towards the existing Rural/Metro firefighters who would suddenly be unemployed and hire them as city employees. Now, the fire stations themselves, the buildings, the city already owns. The city owns those and Rural/Metro was using them. That's already in place.

>> Michael Grant: Going back to a couple of the issues during the campaign, Paul, one of them was four men on a truck, and if I recall correctly, hadn't the city council in doing its budget estimate for the increased costs assumed that they would in fact go to four men on a truck?

>> Paul Giblin: That's exactly right. Rural/Metro right now has three men on a truck and then they have another person on an ambulance, and they said that person would get off the ambulance and help fight fires if they wanted to. That was never -- to me, that never made much sense. The rule of firefighting is you need four people. You get two men into a burning structure at a time. And then if something should go on, you have two in reserve to come in to rescue them. When you have 3, no one can go in, you stand there and fight it from the outside and watch the building burn down. If they go to a municipal fire department, they will have four men on a truck.

>> Paul Davenport: What about the trucks? Do the city buy new ones?

>> Paul Giblin: They are the city's as well.

>> Michael Grant: Not only the fire stations but --

>> Paul Giblin: Much of the fire equipment the city owns. The city has that head start. They have been planning this because they thought they might have to do it if the voters voted that way recently. So there is some planning in place already. By giving them 18 months to do it instead of 6 months, they might be able to do it in a more worthwhile and deliberate, thoughtful way.

>> Robbie Sherwood: I think one of the reasons perhaps Rural/Metro lasted so long in the fire business when it's not profitable is the fact that Scottsdale has an extremely progressive sprinkler code. Since the late '80s, almost every structure built in Scottsdale has had a sprinkler system, residential and commercial. Rural/Metro has had the benefit that other municipal fire departments don't have of fires that are out when they get there.

>> Michael Grant: The ambulance service contract extends beyond the fire service contract?

>> Paul Giblin: Right, that's a couple years down the road before that expires. So the city will have to figure out how to integrate a private ambulance service with the public fire department, and there's other wrinkles similar to that. Fountain Hills also uses Rural/Metro right now. They are able to share resources if there is a fire in Scottsdale and they need trucks to come over from Fountain Hills they can do that and vice versa. The people in Fountain Hills are concerned because they will still have Rural/Metro theoretically. The city won't so they have to figure out can they share services still. Rural/Metro has not had great success sharing with other cities, for instance, Tempe and Phoenix.

>> Michael Grant: Moving from firefighting to law enforcement, Paul, in the wake of the interstate 10 gunfire last week between the rival coyote groups, the feds announced a new "operation ice storm."

>> Paul Davenport: That's right at the same time that the authorities are filing criminal charges against the folks allegedly involved in that incident on I-10. The federal authorities have come in and said they are going to beef up their enforcement efforts in that area. They have assigned 50 agents to the area. They are doing a hotline. They are going to be using more seizure tactics against the perpetrators. It's aimed at stopping the violence and if you are taking coyotes out of action as the smugglers are called, the predatory ones, that would have an indirect effect of cutting down smuggling to some degree. That's a projection more than anything else.

>> Michael Grant: I think at least the thought is that we ought to be following the trail of these coyotes -- the actual smuggling operation deeper into Mexico. It's almost like extending the border protection a little bit instead of waiting until they get across.

>> Robbie Sherwood: Which is taking off the trappings of the drug war because the smuggling operations are taking on some of the trappings of the drug trade where the people are just being treated as cargo. They are being snatched by rival gangs and kidnapped at gunpoint. So I think the feds are trying to respond and enforce in the same manner.

>> Michael Grant: In fact, Robbie, it's an interesting point, because the smuggling operations become more and more violent and the people become just like any other smuggled commodity, drugs.

>> Robbie Sherwood: They don't treat the people well at all. The results of the shooting last week left four people dead when the Mexican president was in town. I think that was the proverbial straw, but I think you had been seeing unsolved murders and bodies being found in the desert in some these desert mountain areas that the U.S. Attorney has been looking to for a long time. I believe the general belief is that those are coyote murders as well, retaliation killings, whatever.

>> Michael Grant: The Kinder Morgan pipeline break continues to generate news, including but not limited to, they are staring at potentially a hefty fine.

>> Robbie Sherwood: Right. The fine that they actually -- that actually was levied by the Department of Environmental Quality for the spill was lampooned as being low, $25,000.

>> Paul Davenport: That was a one-time event.

>> Robbie Sherwood: Exactly, but once this spilled gasoline was discovered in some of the ground water, then you are talking about serious money. The pollution it's caused there has caused a daily fine of something like $26,000 a day. It amounts to about $2.7 million so far. If it takes them much longer to clean it up, it could eclipse the largest fine of this kind which has been levied, which is something around $7 million. >> Michael Grant: They also boosted the number of gallons that they had estimated from the spill.

>> Robbie Sherwood: The original report was around the 10,000 range. Now they have estimated -- Kinder Morgan has upped that estimate 16,000. But it's believed to be much higher.

>> Paul Giblin: That's well and good that they are being fined. The question is are they going to continue to deliver gasoline or will we see a spike like we did earlier?

>> Robbie Sherwood: I think some of the problems that they are continuing to find in the pipeline, I don't know that problems like this are still out of our future. I think that -- I would hope that contingency planning in case something -- there are disruptions is better in the future. I think we've learned a lot of lessons.

>> Michael Grant: Strange operation by the Sheriff's Office toward the end of the week, Robbie. A lot of people kicking around the proposition of gee, did we waste money on this prostitution operation that they had going? Or is it, you know, appropriate law enforcement techniques when you get to this kind of activity taking place in neighborhoods?

>> Robbie Sherwood: Well, if you believe that prostitution suddenly no longer exists because of the Sheriff's Office operation, you might make the argument it was a waste of money, but it was a -- it's a unique tactic. The sheriff has cracked down on prostitution before. He typically targets street walking along Van Buren with his posse. This was an undercover separation operation that spanned the entire valley in which officers responded to personal ads. It was a different type of prostitute, if you will. It was women who were working out of their homes in some cases. In one case it was a 60-year-old woman living in Sun City that -- massage parlors. There were interviews with neighbors who had no idea that the person living next to them was working as a prostitute. There was a second phase to the operation which netted about 73 arrests between johns and prostitutes, but the second phase was the officers, after they made the cases, sat in homes and answered phones for a while. Come on over, and when the guy showed up, there was police waiting for them.

>> Michael Grant: Do I understand correctly that some of the sheriff's deputies got naked in this process?

>> Robbie Sherwood: This is a trend that started a couple of years ago in the Mesa PD when they were authorized to get nude to make cases against massage parlors, but -- it's described to me -- I'm assuming they are doing it for the same reasons that it would be difficult to make a case against a wiley prostitute unless you are willing to get naked. If you show any reluctance to do that, they'll probably mark you for a police officer and not do it. So I think you had deputies who were removing their clothes in order to prove that -- I guess seal the transaction up to a point.

>> Paul Giblin: One question that's never been answered, how do you make the arrest if you are in the buff and you are going to arrest a prostitute, you are under arrest but give me a minute while I grab my pants and show you my badge and hold my gun and then dig through again to get the cuff. How do you do that?

>> Robbie Sherwood: I was not there. But the way it was happening in the massage parlor cases that I covered a couple of years ago, the officer wouldn't make the arrest right then. He would make an excuse to leave, like his pager would ring, oh, gotta go, and they would come back with the evidence that there had been a transaction about to take place.

>> Michael Grant: If we see a spike in Sheriff's Office applications for deputy positions next week, I guess we'll know why.

>> Robbie Sherwood: And in a related story, the sheriff department jobs did go through the roof.

>> Michael Grant: A trial got underway this week in Maricopa County superior court to figure out if the 2002 legislative and congressional district lines are valid for use in the 2004 elections. Paul, what happened during the opening argument?

>> Paul Davenport: An attorney for the Democrats were challenging the legislative district, gave his opening statement quite lengthy. Paul Eckstein made the argument, the foundation of the whole case is that the commission did not do enough to make the districts competitive between the major parties. That's the essence of this case. There is some side issues, but that issue has applied to both sets of maps is what Judge Ken Fields will hear about for next four or five months. The interesting things about this trial, as Judge Fields mentioned, everybody knows that however he rules, this case is going to be appealed, probably right directly to the Arizona Supreme Court, and the question is, is it going to be resolved in time to affect the 2004 election. In other words, if the challengers win at the end of the day, is that the time to affect the maps used next year.

>> Michael Grant: You said four to five months, I think it's four to five weeks.

>> Paul Davenport: I did misspeak on that.

>> Michael Grant: As you get closer to people having to poll, get petition signatures and those kinds of things, it obviously can impact next year's election process.

>> Paul Davenport: There are little ways around that. If you think your district lines may be tinkered with, collect signatures from the middle of your district as opposed to the outlying edges, but some of the changes that the Democrats have talked about to create more competitive districts would totally redraw the lines in the parts of town we're talking about. Central, west side Phoenix, parts of Tucson.

>> Robbie Sherwood: You look at Ed Pastor's very safe Democratic district drawn by this commission and you see what Eckstein is talking about where the commission, they argue the voting rights act against the party that has the most minorities in it, the Democratic party. You don't want to bisect Latino votes. The argument was that had some of those Democratic votes on the edges of that district been sprinkled into a central Phoenix district it would have made it a swing district where Democrats may have had a fighting chance and Pastor still wouldn't have had problem getting reelected.

>> Michael Grant: There are some Hispanic groups that say, no, we need that kind of cushion to guarantee that in fact we will --

>> Robbie Sherwood: They vote, basically, in fewer numbers, and there was a divide. As you were watching these maps be created which unfortunately I had the job of doing, you saw a divide between Hispanic -- Latino Democrats and all of the other Democrats, and Latinos were packing those districts. They were not helping the competitive cause as they sought to protect districts in which they had majorities.

>> Michael Grant: The basic defense, Paul, by the commission is listen, once we got through the first checklist of factors, voting rights, contiguous communities of interest, we made them as competitive as we could, and we did a fine job.

>> Paul Davenport: Yeah, and that argument boils down to do you put competitive in that first checklist or not? That's a point of dispute. The commission dealt with other points on the checklist. They have higher priority under the constitutional amendment and the challengers say no, it's right up there.

>> Michael Grant: Give me a count on how many legislative districts and congressional districts this might impact. What's in play?

>> Paul Davenport: If you were to try to carve out a more competitive Phoenix district in the congressional map, you probably are talking about three or four congressional districts you would have to rearrange and take parts from. I could see at least half a dozen.

>> Robbie Sherwood: Yeah up to about 10. The original maps had the Latino coalition put in for consideration had 10 swing districts, arguably swing districts. And the final maps we elected last year had arguably three.

>> Michael Grant: And again, maybe not wholesale revisions to those districts, but shifting at their edges and those kinds of things? >> Paul Davenport: I would say everything is up for grabs if that commission is ordered to redraw the maps.

>> Michael Grant: Corporation Commissioner Kris Mayes, president ex- secretary will take a run at it next year?

>> Robbie Sherwood: She was put in as a non-politician, but it didn't take her long to get the political bug to bite. I think she -- I don't know if this is earlier than usual, but just a few weeks into the job, she filed paperwork to, you know, to run again, run for -- you can't call it reelection because she was appointed, but that's technically what -- she'll be running to that office. I think maybe she was a little moxie in the face of criticism that she faced within the Republican party because she was appointed by the Democratic Governor and has been a part of her campaign and that administration for so long.

>> Paul Giblin: And I think that was really unfair criticism when the other Republicans were feting her alleged lack of qualification. No one else on that commission is qualified to be there. The most of them roll off from the legislature someplace and try to stay on the state payroll long enough to fatten up their retirement. She is the opposite. This is her first position there. She's a smart woman. She has her law degree. She has been around politics long enough. She covered it for forever. I think that the criticism was unjust. I think she'll do a fine job quite frankly.

>> Robbie Sherwood: My own paper, the editorial board wasn't very easy on her when it comes to qualifications. It's a journalism thing, a little self-loathing that we would be qualified for anything other than what we do. But the qualifications of an investigative journalist fit in with what the corporation has to do. You argue before those guys. They are there to ask tough, penetrating questions and to be incredulous and not take everything at face value when these guys come before them.

>> Paul Davenport: It does put the Governor in an interesting spot. If there is a Democratic nominee running a credible nominee running against Mayes, how does she come down on that.

>> Michael Grant: We'll see.

>>> Michael Grant: At the State Capitol, lawmakers have concluded the fourth week after a special session. Robbie, I ask you again, was anything accomplished?

>> Robbie Sherwood: I've been writing about taxes for four and a half weeks. I reemerged and found out that not a whole lot has changed since I left. They are making progress on the issue of prisons. The house did a preliminary approval of a prison package that doesn't resemble what the Governor wanted at all. It's almost all private -- it is all private prisons, to you know, ease the overcrowding situation. They'll do a final vote on that on Monday. The senate, I think, is going to attempt to file a suit. I suspect, though, that there will be some attempts to change that to be more of a half measure between what the Governor wanted and what the house Republicans want next week. CPS, they are a long ways away from anything. The only committee scheduled to deal with CPS other than these working groups that have been meeting for weeks is next Thursday, senate family services.

>> Paul Davenport: And that's where the real action is at this point. They are trying to forge a compromise between the bill on the one hand and the Napolitano bill on the other hand. And there is closed door meetings at the house. They have mad working groups in the senate. They were not seeing too much actual changes being discussed. It's more like exploring the issue. But in the house, I understand they are trying to put a bill together.

>> Robbie Sherwood: And they have actually come up with something that the Governor can stomach. The prison where it looks like they are working, they are following the game plan of, you know, we're going to send up exactly what the Governor doesn't want, and you know, there is a -- which there is an old saying, if you repeat the same destructive behavior over and over again expecting something to happen, it's insanity. If it goes up there as it is now, she'll veto it again like she did the budget and other things.

>> Michael Grant: How critical is the situation? Is time running out there? They are obviously jammed for beds inside the system.

>> Paul Davenport: Yeah, I think the difference is right now they are jammed for beds. They need 4,000 beds which they can barely handle by the end of the fiscal year, what, 7, 8 months from now. We're talking about 5600. The Governor is starting to talk about things like cramming in more beds, the correction officers won't have clear lines of sight. You are talking about unsafe situations for them and that could be a problem.

>> Michael Grant: The funding side of this equation. They take money out of a correction fund?

>> Paul Davenport: That's not -- the corrections fund is not that big a part of the equation, it's just moving money around. The DUI would be a new revenue source. It's somewhat -- nobody has a firm handle how much money it would produce.

>> Michael Grant: A thousand dollars?

>> Paul Davenport: The thinking is $20 million a year, and they are starting to talk about how much some of this would cost, but not in the long-term.

>> Robbie Sherwood: It is a big jump in that fine from about $250 to $1,000 which has some people -- but it hasn't been raised.

>> Paul Davenport: Actually it's $250 plus $1,000 on top of that, plus you have the surcharge. This is a quote "assessment" it's neither a fine or surcharge. It would go to a new fund for prison expansion.

>> Paul Giblin: And Joe Arpaio would do his best to fill up those beds with whores and johns.

>> Robbie Sherwood: They will be arresting people who can't afford the DUI fines.

>> Michael Grant: I was going to say there are some questions being raised about just how reliable that money would be because at $1250, $1500, people in Mesa, don't have $1250 or $1500 bucks. >> Robbie Sherwood: They are building in a 20% decrease in DUIs overall saying that this is a deterrent, which I don't know that there is any proof that fines -- that people are thinking what the fine might be when they drink and drive. There is going to be a certain segment of the population that can't afford that.

>> Paul Davenport: They are building a prohibition into the bill as it's voted on Monday by the house that the judges can't waive any of that for DUI offenders, not the fine, not the surcharge, not the assessment.

>> Michael Grant: At least for the present time, Robbie, on the issue of private prisons, Republican side of the equation, legislature holding its ground saying okay, well, okay, the money, but it goes to private prisons.

>> Robbie Sherwood: Yeah, they backed off on one segment of this bill which would have steered this construction to one company that's already doing business here without a bid, at least they have opened it up to other companies for bids, but, yeah, this is primarily a private prison package. I think the Governor is looking at this as sort of the camel's nose under the tent, the first step in an attempt to widely privatize the system and she might try to put the kibosh to that.

>> Michael Grant: Paul, left shift back to the CPS side of the equation. There is some movement. Is it movement on the substantive reforms to CPS as opposed to the controversy over how much money CPS should get?

>> Paul Davenport: From what a hear from the folks involved in those meetings, it's on the more substantive policy sort of things, how does CPS handle various issues, how do the courts deal with procedural sort of things, and openness issues, more than the money. I've not heard that the money has been resolved.

>> Michael Grant: All right, maybe adjournment by Thanksgiving?

>> Paul Davenport: Maybe.

>> Michael Grant: Speaking of money, you've been doing a series on where the Arizona tax commission is or is not, variety of different things that they are looking at, 46 ways to raise your taxes, stuff like that? Do they really have a set of recommendations, though?

>> Robbie Sherwood: Yeah, I believe that they -- you can argue back and forth that maybe it's a soft set of recommendations, of the way that they've been kicking these things around for 10 months. It they didn't take any votes on anything. They would kick something around the table and it would be up to the chair and the staff to sort of divine a consensus from what they've heard. They took 46 points where they thought they had consensus, put it on a piece of paper and asked for feedback. There could be changes in those recommendations. I don't think they'll be wide scale. Some things you can tell they like. You can tell that there is strong support for a new tax on real estate transactions, for broadening the tax base so it's not so recession -- it'll make it more recession proof by taxing a limited number of consumer services like your haircuts, your lube shop, that sort of thing. And there is a big shift from the business to take the burden of property taxes high on businesses and move them to homeowners. All of this stuff will have problems with the legislature, though.

>> Michael Grant: All right, panelists. Thanks very much. Out of time. To share your views or contact us visit our web site at www.kaet.asu.edu, click on the word "Horizon." That will lead you to transcripts, links and information on upcoming shows. Speaking of which, let's see what's on "Horizon" on Monday.

>> Reporter: The holidays are coming up and for most of us that means worrying about the waist lines as we consume too much food. For others the concern is not enough food. Find out what's being done to help the hungry in Arizona. Also the start of a two-part series on the drought in our state. That and more on Monday at 7:00 on "Horizon."

>> Michael Grant: Thanks very much for joining us on this Friday evening. I hope you have a terrific weekend. I'm Michael Grant. Good night.

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