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October 24, 2003

Host: Michael Grant
Topics:
· The Journalists Roundtable
In-Studio Guests:
Le Templar, "The East Valley Tribune";
Paul Davenport, "Associated Press";
Chris Coppola, "The East Valley Tribune

>> Michael: It's Friday, October 24, 2003. In the headlines this week, Arizona lawmakers return to the State Capitol for a special session on CPS reform and other issues. An Arizona Supreme Court justice refused to delay the start of a trial next month on the legality of the State's new congressional and legislative districts. And a Maricopa County Superior Court Judge ruled this week that Scottsdale voters can have the final say in a plan to redevelop the Los Arcos property.

>> Good evening, I'm Michael Grant. This is the Journalists' Roundtable. Joining me to talk about these and other stories are Le Templar from "The East Valley Tribune"; Paul Davenport from the "Associated Press"; and Chris Coppola from "The East Valley Tribune."

>> Michael: Lawmakers return for the start of a special session. The biggest issue, of course, the reform of Child Protective Services. Le, resist the tendency to say "nothing." What has happened so far?

>> Le Templar: We did get a couple of smaller bills out in dealing with withholding taxes and judicial collections, basically repealing the mistakes they made apparently back in the regular session. The big issues that the Governor called them in for, CPS and dealing with prison overcrowding, not a lot of action this week. Lawmakers spent a lot of time studying their budgets, learning about the Governor's -- generally about the Governor's proposals and also talked a little bit about the upcoming budget issues in the next session for the regular…

>> Michael: Now, we do have, as I understand it, a CPS bill?

>> Le: Governor's proposals were provided Wednesday afternoon in a bill outlining the reforms to the agency in the state law that she says are needed to improve its efforts. That has to come with approximately $35 million in addition to an existing budget. That does not include where the money would come from.

>> Michael: But, we do not have a bill on the corrections issue and don't expect one until next Tuesday?

>> Le: Governor said Monday or Tuesday before it would be dropped. Basically the problem is the Governor went in with a really ambitious plan to build more than 9,000 beds over the next 5 years, costing $100 million. The opposition to that was so strong that she said, well, we could hold off on most of that but we need the supplemental request for $27 million to go to the agency now to get some temporary beds and help us to recruit corrections officers and reduce our turnover rate.

>> Michael: Now, Le, call me whacky, but is it unusual to show up for a special session and not get a bill for, say, 8 or 9 days?

>> Le: Quite unusual. Usually you call a special session knowing what you are going to try to accomplish and what the people pushing the special session have in their plan. The Governor gambled that she would be able to get a coalition together in three weeks between when she called the special session and when it started. Of course, she was looking at…this is the timing when they were looking at possible impeachment of Jim Irvin from the Corporation Commission. They thought the process might have started this week. She didn't want to wait to the holidays when she knew there would be a lot of pressure to show up and turn around and leave. She wants lawmakers to be serious about making these changes, knows that they are wrestling with the issue of where to come up with the money and one of them -

>> Michael: But you know, Paul, it seems to me that the delay in providing legislation, both on CPS and on corrections, just adds more fuel to the point that many legislators have been making that the session was prematurely called, it was a bad idea, they weren't really ready for it, those kinds of issues.

>> Paul Davenport: That's right. You are definitely hearing that. You've been hearing it for the past month, and since they've come into session, she responds by saying you can't get a consensus from the legislature until you get them in, and the leaders can sit down and talk with her all they want, but they can't do anything unless the troops are in the room to gave a yea or a nay to whatever plan they come up with.

>> Michael: The arguments against the additional money for CPS reform did get a boost from the auditor general this week; correct?

>> Paul: That's right. It's a very sort of shocking development about four days into the special session to have this audit come out and raise so many questions about one of the named elements of the funding package and that is to hire -- I think it's about 95 more CPS people to -- mostly case managers -- to reduce the caseload to national standards. And then this audit comes out and says, well, they are already at these national standards at so many key areas. There were a lot of red flags from the sponsors. who are saying whoa, we've got explaining to do and figuring out to do. The Governor portrayed it as this is an opportunity to go down and sell my plan and explain it. It sounds like damage control.

>> Michael: Le, is most of the flap about the $35 million bucks as opposed to there also is a large package of substantive reforms --

>> Le: Right.

>> Michael: -- to CPS.

>>Le: Right.

>> Michael: How's that being received?

>> Le: Generally positive. The problem being that it requires CPS to do in terms of more investigation of reports, and working with law enforcement more closely and moving cases faster through the system for permanent resolution of child custody. CPS says they need more bodies to accomplish all of that. The Governor says the only way to get more bodies is to get more money into the agency. The response by Republicans is then why can't we redesign the agency to shift funds from other areas that aren't as high priority as protecting children from harm to provide this funding instead of pulling new money in from outside of the agency, and the Governor just said where do we take it from? We haven't been able to -- the only thing we can eliminate in two years of budget problems, a lot of things she wants to add more money to and was expecting to offer those suggestions when she unveils her next budget in January. She says it has to be new money.

>> Paul: One other thing to figure into this is there will be another bill on this subject coming from legislators and county attorney Romley and former chief assistant attorney general Steve Twist. That's going to be part of the mix probably next week early. That'll have some of the same elements, but there will be maybe some restructuring and more heavier on the law enforcement components.

>> Michael: Paul, let me shift back to the law enforcement side of the special session. Assuming the bill shows up next week, given its collapse to the now more temporary measures, smoother sailing for that?

>> Paul: I don't think that necessarily bodes that at all. I think a lot of legislators don't want to proceed on that issue at this point. Maybe they'll do some supplemental funding, maybe even going beyond the temporary housing a little bit, but I don't see that as a sure thing at all.

>> Le: And isn't this tracking with what the public thinking is, they wanted action on CPS? I'm just not hearing as much concern about the prison situation, even though we've written a lot about it.

>> Chris Coppola: I think a poll did come out that kind of tried to assess that. State residents' views on these issues. A lot of support for the Governor on CPS issue. I think this polling was done before the audit came out, but in terms of prisons, not as much. It's more of a 50-50 thing. And spending money on prisons is a harder sell traditionally to voters. We really need them, but by gosh, you know what I mean, shouldn't money go elsewhere first.

>> Michael: Chris, one of the other issues on public opinion polls is what has been in the news recently, and certainly, I mean, we've had story after story about problems with CPS, high profile CPS cases, and I think that drives public opinion as well.

>> Chris: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this past summer alone, we've had several right here in the Valley area. Even have these commissions where the Governor foremost among them was studying this issue to do something. So the political heat is on to do something. I guess what I wonder is, are the lawmakers themselves sensing that same kind of pressure. It's apparent that the Governor knows that she has to be forcefully advancing something here. Are you sensing that the lawmakers feel the same way? They didn't even want to come for this, right?

>> Paul: I think there is real apprehension on a lot of their parts that if they don't do anything, they will pay a price for it.

>> Michael: I believe there were some predictions that this session was going to run at least till Thanksgiving.

>> Le: No question it's going to run to Thanksgiving at this point, given how she's now going have to have to fight for everything to come out of this, particularly given the alternative bill on CPS. We haven't see it yet, but what we've heard is it's radically different than what the Governor wants to do in terms of really pulling CPS, making it a separate entity, giving it lots of new responsibilities, taking the time to meld the two proposals or one up and one down. It will take a couple of weeks.

>> Chris: Did anyone question the timing of the audit? Are these timed way ahead of time on when it was going to come out?

>> Paul: They did. I spoke to one of the sponsors of the Napolitano bill. And he says this appears to have been rushed and their contention was that there were flaws in it and it should have been held off until it was "fixed." When I talked to the auditor general people, they denied that. They said we did what we were asked to do. We followed the parameters we were asked to follow, and we put it out when it was done.

>> Michael: Well, we can't leave this segment without mentioning the fact that a series of tax proposals, they are not yet recommendations, were dropped this week, and Le, they kind of went "plunk" in a lot of different quarters, including but not limited to the 9th floor.

>> Le: Right. The problem is the Governor established what appears to be a truly independent blue ribbon commission to look at the entire taxing system in the state and propose what they would see as a model for the way the system should work. The group has been divided on where to go. The chairman of the group, one of the chairs of the group tried to plod it along, basically crossed out a list of things that they were willing to talk about. They said we've got to vote on these eventually. We're going to miss our October 31st deadline the Governor gave us. We're scheduled to make a final decision on November 10th, we're still not willing to start making decisions about it. And a lot of discussions have been out there before, ranging from expanding the goods and services included in the state sales tax, adding a real estate sales tax, so when you sell a piece of property over $100,000, some of the money goes to the state.

>> Michael: Lifting the cap on homeowner property taxes, that's written into the constitution. That should fly really well, I would think.

>> Le: One of the few protections homeowners had seems to be a tough sell. Also, reducing the percentage of the personal property taxes of businesses which is 25% closer to the homeowners 10%. The argument against that is well, the only way you keep government running, you keep the money coming from somewhere so you increase homeowner taxes in response.

>> Michael: The bottom line is stay tuned?

>> Le: That's right.

>> Michael: Arizona Supreme Court Andy Herwitz ruled that the lawsuit challenging the new legislative and congressional districts can proceed as scheduled next month, but Paul, it's not the final word?

>> Paul: No, it most assuredly is not. The redistricting commission is virtually out of money. They have spent almost their entire $6 million appropriation approved by the voters, and they say, you know, we've got this trial coming up with charges. We're going to have appeals, and if we lose, we're going to have to redraw lines, it's going to take a lot of money, they don't have that money. The problem from their point is the Governor won't expand the special session call to put it in front of the legislature. Meanwhile, the judges, including Justice Herwitz will not delay that trial. It's scheduled to start on November 12th. It's going to go on the entire Supreme Court on Tuesday in a closed door conference to see if they'll accelerate consideration of an appeal on that, and meanwhile, we're going to see some action on the legislature probably early next week. The Republicans really want to have this in front of them and they are really mad at Napolitano.

>> Michael: Political overtones, Le, are that the districting commission came up with what are generally perceived to be pro Republican lines for both legislative and congressional districts, and the suspicion is that may be one of the reasons why the Governor is not too anxious to move some money to the redistricting commission for its defense.

>> Le: I'll tell you what Republicans are accusing her of doing. Jim Peterson and other Democrats are challenging those lines saying the commission didn't follow the provisions to make competitive districts, and so Republicans are accusing her of sandbagging the redistricting commission so they can't defend their boundaries. Her defense is, they got $6 million from the voters when they adopted the system in 2000. And the vision at the time was the $6 million was supposed to pay for drawing new boundaries and dealing with expected legal challenges, because it seems like this day and age, every time you draw boundaries you go to court over them.

>> Michael: Sure.

>> Le: The Governor says she wants to know why -- she thinks they could have done a better job of saving that money to deal with this challenge.

>> Michael: Is the Governor's office making an argument that the legislature is powerless to appropriate more money or just simply pointing to the $6 million cap?

>> Paul: So far all they are doing is saying we haven't made up our mind.

>> Michael: All right. Representative Karen Johnson says she's not running for Mesa mayor?

>> Chris: Right, she had announced her intention to challenge Keno Hawker but after reviewing the state constitution which says the city legislator must serve out their term before she can run for another office, she decided to step away. She had considered challenging that in court, but I don't think there will be a shortage of other prominent Republicans to step forward to challenge mayor hawker.

>> Michael: Keno Hawker strong or not?

>> Chris: He has run into problems. He has a good base of support but he has run into problems because of the controversies involving the property rights disputes, particularly with the downtown brake shop, which the business owner has prevailed on now in court.

>> Michael: He voted against that, though.

>> Chris: He initially voted against expanding the downtown redevelopment district to include the area where the brake shop sits. After that, subsequently, he did vote several times to keep going forward with the redevelopment plan there. He says he is philosophically opposed to that.

>> Michael: Speaking of elections, we've got the presidential primary next February, and we've got a poll out that -- well, virtually shows a three-way dead heat, right?

>> Le: Right, Howard Dean has 13% of people, likely Democrats, to pick him. 12% for Wesley Clark. 11% for Senator Joe Lieberman. Just a couple of points there, more than 40% of that poll were undecided. So any one of those three candidates or maybe even a couple of others if they manage in the next couple of months to pick up momentum could surge to the top. But Howard Dean is, you know, the buzz keeps going around the country. He's doing well in other key states like New Hampshire and Michigan. He continues to raise more money than any other candidates. He was just on Jay Leno this week and did a pretty good job. And so he's going to be tough to beat, I think.

>> Michael: And if you are looking at the trend line, putting to one side the margin of error, certainly it doesn't look good for Joe Lieberman, because if I recall correctly, a couple three months ago, those numbers for Lieberman were more 16%, 17%, 18%.

>> Le: Adding to Senator Lieberman's problems is -- we've mentioned before -- John Kerry hired Mario Diaz, the campaign manger for Janet Napolitano. He has built support for Kerry. I don't think that wins Kerry Arizona, but that takes away potential support for Lieberman.

>> Michael: Joe Lieberman trying to get some hometown support with his pickford fence secretary?

>> Paul: I don't know if that's his true motivation, but he did create a stir when he suggested that it would be a good idea if John McCain would say yes to an offer to become defense secretary in his administration.

>> Michael: And finally, Le, what happened with the recall effort against Phoenix City Councilman Peggy Neely?

>> Le: She's going to stay in office. The recall effort wasn't able to raise enough signatures. A lot of people were upset at the time that the group that was trying to recall her with the single issue dealing with my grant worker or day laborer center in her district, and there just wasn't enough justification for recalling a city councilmember. Apparently they weren't able to collect enough signatures to get the ball rolling.

>> Michael: It appears voters in Scottsdale will get the final say in a redevelopment plan for the Los Arcos -- easy for me to say -- Los Arcos property. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Jonathan Schwartz ruled that residents can vote on the redevelopment plan by the city council. Chris, the city council has a meeting scheduled Monday on whether or not to appeal that ruling, but man, a giant monkey wrench got tossed into it.

>> Chris: It did. One of the Scottsdale city council members announced her resignation from the council so that she could pursue her bid to run for mayor which had been widely speculated for a long time. So that's going to happen right away. As a result, that leaves an even number of councilmembers here, and on Monday, they still are going to take up the question of whether or not to appeal this court ruling, saying that the voters can now vote on that Los Arcos plan. But a 3-3 vote --

>> Paul: You have somebody stepping down from the council leaving a potential for a tie to run for another office. Why didn't this person wait until Tuesday?

>> Chris: Well, you know, I'm not sure that we've got a clear answer on that. There has been, you know, speculation that, you know, she has sort of been kind of tossed back and forth on this. One of those who has been a little less clear on where she was coming from on that, and it's a good way to rid yourself from that. The council has 30 or 31 days, I believe, to pick a replacement. Still there is the question about whether Steve Ellman himself will appeal this court ruling, because, of course, he stood to gain a pretty hefty subsidy from the city, $37 million to go forward with the big Wal-Mart redevelopment at the corner there.

>> Michael: Paul, we've got new information on the severity of the Kinder Morgan pipeline break?

>> Paul: That's right. There was some testing done to the ground at the site where that pipeline in northwest Tucson ruptured spewing gasoline and the Department of Environmental Quality says it found gasoline contamination fairly deep in the ground and they are worried about ground water contamination, and their theory is that there might have been a leakage long before the actual rupture. The pipeline may have had a leak in it. Kinder Morgan's immediate response was we don't see signs of that, and they are not playing along with that theory.

>> Michael: Could be major money, though, if it turns out that the pipeline had been leaking for a period of time?

>> Paul: That's right. The fines are keyed to the day of of occurrence. I think it's $25,000 a day. If you stretch it back in time, that could ratchet that up.

>> Le: Of course, DEQ is raising this issue because the federal government has charged at this point not to sanction Kinder Morgan or suggest sanctions and a lot of people have complained that $25,000 is not even a slap on the wrist for this huge pipeline company, and they are not going to change it unless you give them a heavier fine.

>> Michael: Speaking of more money, ASU president Michael Crow wants to take it to the next level and it's only a price tag of $60 million?

>> Le: Dr. Crow told a group of people at a town hall meeting to discuss the university's future that he's going to go into the legislature asking for an additional $60 million to the state's budget above what they might be receiving next year, saying that's a necessary step to transform the university, particularly researchwise into what he wants to see as a top university in the country. He acknowledges it's a difficult move given the state's relative tough financial straits, but he believes he was brought in to transform the university and he needs the money to do it.

>> Chris: It's verying interesting. The timing would seem to be colossally bad, but he can walk in there and say, look, I've walked in here with this vision about what we need to do and present the evidence, look, I've got pretty hefty private donations to this university, particularly to the engineering college and the business college here. We've made the move by increasing tuition quite a bit here, and now, you know, I'm coming to you. I've done these other parts for this and this is part of the conversation as well. He may not get what he wants, but I think he knows he has to advance that part of the argument to advance his vision here.

>> Michael: And you know, Le, from the last regular session, there does seem to be viability for some these subjects out there at 1700 West Washington that you would think would not exist because the funding for the infrastructure program was ultimately approved.

>> Le: Well, the problem being, I think at least some moderate Republican lawmakers who voted for that, thought that was the answer that the university needed to launch on this new mission that all three are looking at moving towards. Now to be told, well, that's not enough, we now need another $60 million in additional cash next year in the State's worst financial crisis in history going over three years now, it's going to -- I can only imagine it's going to be a tough sell, and we don't know if the Governor is supportive of this at this point.

>> Chris: And any talk at the legislature of more money for ASU has to include more money for U of A and NAU. That's just the way it works, right?

>> Michael: That's right. 40/40/20 does not exist.

>> Michael: More money, America West Airlines had a great quarter.

>> Chris: Absolutely. They didn't even have to go to the legislature for it. And they are crediting, you know, a boost in summer travel and more people returning to business travel. Their third quarter posted $33 million in profits there, and the company is predicting that that turn an annual profit for the year here and expect to continue doing that into next year.

>> Fourth quarter they are not low-balling it, right?

>>Chris: Yeah, they want to be conservative about that, especially travel is dropping off somewhat compared to summer and I think, you know, they just want to probably just play it cool there, but they came in there, their per share earnings I think were twice what everyone had predicted at this time.

>> Michael: Finally, no grocery strike over the weekend.

>> Chris: It came out today that both sides are going to keep talking. The contract won't expire until tomorrow night for the grocery workers' union. They agreed not to strike and keep working on it. They have set an indefinite time line to keep that going.

>> Michael: All right, bad news for the big box stores, I guess. Thank you panelists. We're out of time.

>>> To share your views or to contact us, visit our web site at www.kaet.asu.edu, click on the word "Horizon." That will lead you to transcripts, links and, of course, information on upcoming shows. Speaking of which, let's take a look at what's on "Horizon" on Monday.

>> Reporter: Food retail competition is hot in the Valley. The economy of supermarkets affects us all.

>>> Also, the rise of the creative class. Author Richard Florida says he has the answer for urban economies looking for growth and change, Monday night at 7:00 on channel 8's "Horizon."

>> Michael: On Tuesday, we'll take a look at Proposition 414. That would create a special taxing district for Maricopa County's health system. On Wednesday, we'll have a preview of what the United States Supreme Court is looking at for this session. All of that and probably more next week on "Horizon." Thank you very much for joining us on this Friday evening. I hope you have an incredibly fine weekend. I'm Michael Grant. Good night.

 

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