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October 17, 2003

Host: Cary Pfeffer (substituting for Michael Grant)
Topics:
· The Journalists Roundtable
In-Studio Guests:
Chip Scutari, "The Arizona Republic;"
Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services;
Kathleen Ingley, "The Arizona Republic."


>> Cary Pfeffer: It is Friday October 17th, 2003. In the headlines this week, Governor Janet Napolitano is being criticized for her refusal to sign off on a request by the independent redistricting commission for legal fees to defend the new legislative map. State lawmakers are preparing to return to the capital on Monday for a special session to deal with child protective services and prison overcrowding. And the Arizona Department of Education released a report this week that shows the number of underperforming schools in Arizona has declined since last year. Good evening, I'm Cary Pfeffer filling in tonight for Michael Grant, and this is the Journalists Roundtable. Joining me to discuss these and other stories are Chip Scutari from "The Arizona Republic," Howard Fischer from Capitol Media Services and Kathleen Ingley from "The Arizona Republic." Governor Janet Napolitano is being accused of playing partisan politics by Republicans for questioning legal fees requested by the independent redistricting commission. The IRC is asking for $4 million defend its new legislative maps in court. Chip, we saw your piece on that. The idea is that the maps have been approved. Now it's being challenged by some Democrats and the question is will there be money to defend that process?

>> Chip Scutari: Well, it's funny, because when this redistricting passed in 2000, it proclaimed we're going to strip politics out of this map making process and it seems like Howie and I have been covering this and Kathleen has been covering redistricting for a while, it seems like this soap opera won't end. The Department of Justice approved the maps. Now Jim Peterson, who is head of the Democratic Party, who pumped in about $600,000 of his own money to get it on the ballots suing saying the maps aren't sufficiently competitive and they need about $4.2 million to defend this late Estelella suit. They've burned through the $6 million allocation they got in 2000. The governor is saying, wait a minute, I want to scrutinize these legal bills to make sure you're not -- didn't overspend, being too excessive and house speaker Jake flake was saying since when are you a fiscal conservative? If you are, I'm a vegetarian. The governor somebodying criticized because it's a state agency, they need the money to defend the maps. The governor in 2000 when she was 2000 supportive of it wrote a piece in the voter pamphlet saying it's a great thing. So now J.D. Hayworth jumped on board criticizing her which is another political sidebar ‘cause everyone is thinking he will run for governor. It will be interesting to see if the governor does the money for the legal fees.

>> Howard Fischer: One of the things that is going to happen is it's probably going to wind up before the state Supreme Court under a very interesting legal theory. The idea is if the constitution creates a state agency, and this is constitutionally created, can the legislature undermine the function of this state agency by not funding it? Clearly they can't. For example, if the legislature were to refuse to fund the courts, the courts would order you have to fund it. The legislature can't refuse to fund the Attorney General, cannot refuse to fund the Corporation Commission. Here you have a situation where the commission was not only formed to make the districts but to defend them in court, and if in fact they can't do that, then I think the courts are going to say, "you can't go ahead and just cut off their money."

>> Kathleen Ingley: What's interesting is how obscure this is. They have not used this provision since the 1940s. This is really -- their backs are against the wall because the trial is in November. So we have a very short period -- what's going to happen, we're going to look over there and there will be empty chair

>> Howard Fischer: There's one other point that needs to be raised in terms of the governor's complaints saying I want to make sure you're wasting the money. Every bill from the IRC for the attorneys and consultants had to go through the department of administration. They had a chance to review it. In fact, there were things they kicked back and said, we don't believe this is justified or we need more support. So for her to suddenly say now, I don't know that you're spending the money right is a little hollow.

>> Cary Pfeffer: One other question to clarify this, if we go through this special session and that money then is not allocated or somehow the governor line item vetoes it, then what happens?

>> Chip Scutari: Well, they're hoping, obviously, what Howie mentioned, the special action none Supreme Court, they'll get the money, but it could be an odd circumstance where you have the Democrats with Jim Peterson with their high paid lawyers like a Paul Eckstein and over here you have an empty bench. I don't think it will come to that. I think the governor is playing politics, make them squirm a few weeks and end up funding it. What is interesting in play here is Jim Peterson pumped about $4 million into the Democratic Party which helped the governor get elected against Matt Sam un and now it's looking like she's doing a favor for a friend.

>> Fischer: I think the other piece of what the governor is doing, I think is trying to make a point. The legislate -- lawmakers are saying we don't have the money for this and she is turning around and saying if you don't have the money for children and inmates, how can you spend money for that?

>> Cary: Also a formal panelist on Fridays and now Corporation Commissioner Kris Mayes, some questions being asked about when she was indeed a reporter.

>> Fischer: This was something that was bound to come up once she was named to the commission. When the Arizona Republic was owned by central newspapers, essentially family owned with some stock -- low voting quality stock that was available to the public and employees, there was a -- there were a lot of rumors it was going to be sold. It was fairly common knowledge this was not insider trading, nobody having certain special information, and some employees, there were, I think, 10 of them, took money from their 401K program and shifted it to central newspaper stock.

>> Cary: Now this question is coming up because she is a public official.

>> Fischer: Exactly. Not only is she a public official, but she's regulating the sale of securities and they're saying perhaps she acted unethically. Personally I don't think any laws were broken but I think it was foolish of her to think this wasn't going to come up. What happened was there was a big whispering campaign, the broke when Laura Knaperek wrote a column for the Tribune. At the present time you've got them saying there needs to be an investigation. Then she's forced to respond and then it looks like she was hiding all along.

>> Scutari: The day Kris was appointed when we were up in Prescott, I think Howie and I both talked to her about this and her response was, hey, if any Republicans go on the record I'm more than willing to talk about this. None did, so she didn't mention it.

>> Cary: Now it comes up in a newspaper article --

>> Scutari: Her thought was, hey, if none of these Republicans have the guts to go on the record to mention this, then I'm not going to respond to it and came up in a column in the Tribune done by former Tempe lawmaker Laura Kanab recollect who apparently didn't Kris to ask her about it but just raised the question. So a little questionable journalism on Knaperek's part.

>> Fischer: I think it was fairly bone headed on Kris' part now that she's in an elected position to think I can ignore it and it's going to go away.

>> Cary: We'll see fit has legs. Onto other issues, on Monday Arizona's 90 lawmakers return to the state capitol for the start of a special session. They're being asked to approve reforms for child protective services and deal with prison overcrowding. Howie, let's start with some predictions. Is this going to be a short one or a long one or are they going to be able to get things done?

>> Fischer: There's two questions in there. As far as the length, I'm guessing two to three weeks. Now, unfortunately the amount of work always expands to the amount of time they think is available. What will they accomplish? There are two minor issues out there which are going to go through change in judicial collections and a change in this $5 withholding that was basically ill conceived in the first place. The bigger issue is more problematic. The governor wants 26 million up front for prisons this year, just to deal with this year's budget. I think the lawmakers will give her most of that. But she also wants to start a $470 million construction program that will build 9,000 beds, take care of it for five years of prison growth, we pay for it for 15 years and lawmakers are saying, wait a second, first of all, there's no emergency, second of all we would like to look at the whole sentencing scheme to find out, are we going to have this kind of growth? Between 1990 and 2000 the state population grew 40%. Prison population doubled. Clearly something is out of whack there. The second issue is child protective services. I think lawmakers agree there are problems. I think lawmakers agree that the laws governing when CPS workers can go in needs to be changed. I think lawmakers also agree we need more caseworkers. That's 8 pill 81. But the other 27 million the governor wants because she says I just need it to balance the budget for the agency, trust me, and we're going to do -- that's going to be real problematic.

>> Cary: Obviously CPS is an issue that's gotten plenty of attention in the newspaper, and a certain amount of emotion comes with it as well.

>> Ingley: Absolutely. I mean, we are looking at heartbreaking cases, cases that are simply appalling, and one of the big problems there is turnover. And low pay -- one reason being low pay. Just as people are understanding how to deal with the system, maybe getting some ideas about how to handle these cases, getting familiar with them, bang, they're out of there, and that is a reason I think -- conservatives are saying this makes sense. You got to do something about that turnover.

>> Cary: And the pay scale. That's right.

>> Scutari: I wish I was as optimistic about the two to three week time frame.

>> Cary: When you said two to three weeks, I was surprised --

>> Scutari: He has been around since the 1930s, so he knows -- but what I'm noticing when I interview lawmakers, even moderate lawmakers who are not too antijanet Napolitano is that they're saying she rushed into this thing, it's a political move, they're really upset she didn't consult with them. So there's a lack of consensus, a lack of money in how she is going to pay for it. Not only is the CPS thing 35 million this this year but it's a 51 million annual cost which there is no money for. One of the key funding elements is the State Compensation Fund which is iffy and there's a federal waiver that's also a 50-50 proposition. So I this special session is going to be the toughest political battle for the governor because lawmakers I've talked, to even on the prison issue said, we're not too crazy about doing anything. We might wait until January to see what's happening with the sentencing guidelines, any reforms possible. So her lack of communication with lawmakers might come back to bite her this time.

>> Fischer: I agree with you, but my feeling is --

>> Scutari: You do?

>> Fischer: But the reason I say three weeks is at a certain point it's going to become obvious we can't do any more, and I think that's what's going to happen, is we will get so far and nothing will change and Thanksgiving is coming and the lawmakers don't want to be here Thanksgiving, do not want to be here for a special session between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

>> Scutari: Here's another bizarre thing about this special session. Most rank and file lawmakers haven't seen a prison bill or CPS bill, won't see it until Tuesday or Wednesday. They're just getting sponsors today for these bills. So the rank and file lawmakers who will vote on all this haven't seen any of it. So I don't think we're going to see any CPS hearings until about Thursday or maybe even the next week.

>> Cary: Which automatically means you're pushing the time line out.

>> Scutari: Lawmakers don't like to work on Friday, which we all like. But I think this is going to be a long SLOG and for the CPS issue you have the governor's bill, a Rick Romley, Steve twist bill, big on reforms, not big on pulling a lot of money into the system. There's not a lot of consensus heading into the special session.

>> Fischer: Some of the things they're going to be talking about, one of the big issues is do you split out Child Protective Services from the Department of Economic Security. Rick Romley contends while you have an agency whose job it is to provide benefits and support and unemployment compensation, you cannot also have the police end of the agency, the people who are supposed to go in and find out are you beating your kids. I'm not sure that lawmakers are quite ready to make that leap. I think they're willing to put a sort of wall in there. They recognize there needs to be more enforcement powers for CPS but the idea of creating a whole new bureaucracy is going to go down very hard. The rest of what Rick Romley wants, again, I think he and the governor are in agreement to the extent they both agree the money has to come with the reforms. Now the question of chicken and egg is what's going to happen here? The governor says I need this 35 million now to make the reforms work. I think most lawmakers are not convinced, particularly in the house.

>> Ingley: The prison side, there are some real safety issues that the prison director has brought up, and they are at the point where they have people practically stacked like cord wood, double-bunking, putting people -- the safety issue is not just the crowding, the safety issue is they're losing their sightlines, which means then they have to put in extra staff. So I think you're getting to such a safety point that something's going to have to happen, at least some stopgap on prisons.

>> Fischer: One of the big fights that occurs here perennially is more public prisons versus more private. Lawmakers are big fans of private prisons and say it can be built cheaper. The new state corrections director said, no, in fact I found a way to build public prisons cheaper. You don't have to build maximum security and you can build them on the locations adjacent to Safford, adjacent to Florence, adjacent to Perryville. Of course the private prison folks come back and say if we're not building to the same standard, then we still think we can do it cheaper.

>> Cary: It seems like there is some internal conflict there in general with the governor being supportive of some of the proposals?

>> Fischer: Actually the governor -- she's willing to use private prisons as a stopgap member measure. She believes in the long run the state saves the money because the private prisons have to make a profit, even if we have to borrow $470 million, which becomes 750 million over 15 years, it's cheaper in the long run, and the state has better control over what happens there. The other fact, the more cynical folks would say, she's very beholden to the unions and the fact is the unions helped her get elected and the unions represent the correctional officers, fewer correctional officers, fewer union supporters.

>> Scutari: But the bottom line for both of these big issues, like the famous line from Jery McGuire, "show me the money." For CPS and prisons, it's about 61 million --

>> Cary: At a time when there's not a lot --

>> Scutari: Her funding mechanisms she threw out there were on shaky ground to start with.

>> Cary: At least in that scope, so we may see some sort of more modest progress if there's progress at all.

>> Scutari: That would be my prediction.

>> Cary: We will see what happens. Also this week, the Arizona Department of Education released its 2003 school rankings. The number of underperforming schools fell by half from the previous year. Kathleen, I have three kids in school. I try to understand some of this and I have to say, I'm challenged.

>> Ingley: Well, join the club. Join the club. As a matter of fact, they're redoing their website in the hope that parents will have some shot at understanding. This is so extraordinarily complex that I actually was talking to a principal who was explaining it to me and I realized the explanation was wrong. Which is very easy to understand when you look at how extraordinarily complex this is and you have the federal standards which are one set of standards and then the state standards and then the state change the way they labeled the standards, then miracles, miracles we have fewer underperforming schools because we've change the requirements some and we changed them also so we have more excelling schools. Now, the department will make the argument that it was technical correction on the 81 performeding side but the fact of the matter is if they hadn't changed it would have been 22% underperforming. When they did the technical corrections we came out with 13.5% underperforming.

>> Fischer: The federal system is adequate yearly progress. One of dozens of things could cause you to fail. Whereas the state system looks not at any absolute measure but, in other words, if you're improving, I mean, you may still be below standards -- your stat 9 scores may still be below average but to the extent you're moving forward you can become a performing or highly performing school and so it becomes easier for schools to do better under the state standards than under the federal standards.

>> Ingley: The federal standards are wonderful. First of all, you have eight ethnic or special groups, each of one of those groups must improve. And each one of those groups, you must test 95% of them. Well, so, there are a couple kids you aren't able to test. Everyone does better, too bad, you're failing. It is a very strange system.

>> Scutari: This is why I'm glad I cover politics and don't cover schools.

>> Fischer: Me, I cover marijuana.

>> Cary: Maybe we'll get to that. Also, all of this comes at a time when I can tell you from the school side, they've redone the report cards that go out, there are more detailed sorts of things, and if parents at the end of the day indeed do feel like they're wondering where their school is or having a hard time getting a handle on that, that only adds to that -- to the overall feeling of sort of loss of control or wondering where you are.

>> Ingley: Now, of course, this is the first year that we've -- that we've changed the labels for Arizona, so we have -- it's the first year that all the schools instead of only the schools have that a high proportion of students lower income are being judged on the federal level. So this will be the year probably of greatest confusion.

>> Cary: Also on a schooling and education question, the charter schools are trying to sort of tighten some of the underpinning behind the famous charter school system. Where are we on that?

>> Fischer: Well, there was a report that came out from the auditor general's office that basically said the state board for charter schools did a pretty lousy job of oversight in terms of monitoring the schools, in terms of making sure they had the qualified employees, and specifically in terms of finances where you have charter schools failing and all of a sudden in the middle of the school year, you have a school with a bunch kids and nowhere to go, failing financially and closing their doors. The charter school board said we will do a better job. They promised to tighten up the standards, although they insist they really don't have a lot of say over the financial oversight, which is sort of half true. They do have say when a new charter school comes in and says here's my budget.

>> Cary: At the beginning they come before the board and at that point they can look at the financial.

>> Fischer: More to the point, what they don't do at this point is actually say how realistic are these projections? How realistic is it to say I have this money coming from here and this grant money and this much tuition money. That's part of the reason the failures occur in the first two years. Clearly more needs to be done on that and I'm not sure the charter school board has gone far enough.

>> Ingley: This will be the first time they've used outside consultants. You can't just look at someone's plan. I could paint a nice picture, but do I know how to do it? A sticking point, it seems to me, is the board's insistence that they have no statutory authority to act against the school because of poor financial health. This is up to the school board, I -- parents -- instinctively they don't think that. They think someone's watching the book.

>> Cary: There's a safety net there that somebody from the stateside is keeping an eye -- not only in the first couple months but in an ongoing basis which we're finding isn't the case.

>> Fischer: That's particularly important because everyone forgets that while these are private schools, they're state supported schools, getting thousands of dollars per school. To say we can't look at that rings a little hollow.

>> Cary: Let's get to the medical marijuana since we have our resident expert. The Supreme Court rules --

>> Fischer: Just because I never exhaled --

>> Cary: We turn to Howie on the medical marijuana question.

>> Fischer: What happened was California law which says doctors may recommend medical marijuana to their patients who they believe need it for pain, terminally ill patients, the drug enforcement administration came in and said, if you do this, doctors, we will revoke your prescription writing privileges and bounce you out of Medicare and Medicaid. They said you can't do that. First amendment issue. The Supreme Court agreed with the 9th circuit and said, you're right, you can't tell doctors what sue say. In Arizona we have a similar law. It says doctors may prescribe. Prescriptions are not protected by the first amendment. They need to change it to recommended.

>> Cary: The idea is in order for any of this to make any difference in the State of Arizona there are still going be to have to be additional changes?

>> Fischer: In fact, last year on the ballot there was such a change to go from recommend to -- from prescribe to recommend, the problem was that the fools who pushed this threw everything else in there, including a system that said anybody with a medical marijuana card could go to the DPS and get free dope. You know --

>> Cary: That distribution system --

>> Fischer: I think -- that was --

>> Ingley: That was the last straw.

>> Fischer: That was the last straw and people said it didn't make sense that you it's very important, doctors have told me, the doctors -- Dr. Singer here from Phoenix, who is a surgeon, he said, look, for some people the drugs we're prescribing, A, don't work, and B, like Oxycon like our friend Rush got in trouble with are more addictive. We should have the option to discuss all possibilities with our patients legal or otherwise, and clearly the Supreme Court felt the doctor-patient privilege is sacrosanct. You can't have the state coming in saying discuss certain things we say you can discuss.

>> Cary: We'll see where that goes. I have to before we leave talk a little bit about Maricopa. It's just -- it is just something, to me, that is -- I mean, I've lived here since the early '80s, to see what's happening in Buckeye, Maricopa, Queen Creek, it is something else.

>> Ingley: Maricopa is not interesting case because they have 2,000 residents now. 10 years from now they're predicting 200,000. Which would be like Chandler. Something has been bubbling there. It must have been five or six years ago that I wrote about growth coming to Maricopa, and there was a development there sitting there all planned, nothing happened, nothing happened, nothing happened. Now all of a sudden the moment has come. It is obviously poised to explode. It's going to be one of those things that, you know, blind sides us because they're not remotely ready to cope with all the strain.

>> Cary: It brings up every infrastructure question you have, every police and fire question you could have, any of these these communities are going to be struggling.

>> Ingley: And expands that area we have to worry about air pollution and yet at this point it's not within the boundary where people have to get their cars tested.

>> Fischer: The other related question is the fact that if in fact this becomes a bedroom community we're talking about more traffic coming up I-10 around the 202 South Mountain loop that's going to come in and creating more air pollution problems in the Valley, much less the question of what their problems are going to be down there.

>> Cary: Going to ask you quickly to just weigh in. We're a week and a day since the democratic debate. All the candidates were here in town. Now a week and a day later, are any of them measurably stronger, weaker?

>> Scutari: I think Howard didn't didn't hurt himself with the fund raising edge he has. He's still the front-runner. I think Clark hurt himself that night.

>> Ingley: I mean, if you think -- if you think money talks, it's talking for Howard.

>> Fischer: I think that the lower level candidates like Kerry did fairly well with the exposure. I think Clark did very poorly. I think he showed he really didn't understand the conflicts of his own statement and the fact he was the one candidate who refused to talk to reporters later showed he doesn't understand how this process works.

>> Cary: Right. You have an interesting situation with him because again when you come in late, sometimes that ends up being sort of your M.O. Thank you to awful for being here. Appreciate that. To share your views or to contact us, please visit our website, www.kaet.asu.edu. Not easy to say. Click on the word "Horizon" and then that will lead you to transcripts, links and information out shows. Let's see what's "Horizon" on Monday.

>> Reporter: The state legislature begins a special session looking at prisons and CPS reform. One of the central figures of the Jason Blair scandal visits Phoenix. And senator Jon Kyl talks about an extreme form of the muslim faith. Monday night at 7:00 on "Horizon."

>> Cary: Tuesday we'll give you the results of of our KAET/ASU poll which focus on the special session topics of CPS and prison overcrowding. We'll also tell you about prison reform. Have a great weekend.

 

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