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October 2, 2003

Host: Michael Grant
Topics:
· First Thursday, The Governor on HORIZON
· The future of Arizona's forest health
In-Studio Guests:
Governor Janet Napolitano;
Dr. Stephen Pyne, Arizona State University professor

>> Michael Grant: Tonight on "Horizon," Governor Napolitano names her press secretary to replace a disgraced Corporation Commissioner. The Governor has also asked for more money for prisons. She'd also like to see more money for Child Protective Services. Those are all topics on the table as we visit with Governor Janet Napolitano. Plus, we wrap up our series on forest management with a look to the future.

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

>>> Michael Grant: Welcome to "Horizon's" monthly interview with the Governor, "First Thursday, the Governor on Horizon." Today the Governor named her press aide, Kris Mayes, to fill the seat vacated when Corporation Commissioner Jim Irvin resigned amid scandal. Joining us now to talk about that and much more is Governor Janet Napolitano. Why Kris?

>> Janet Napolitano: Well I was looking for someone who would ask tough questions, who was devoted to representing the best interests of Arizonans, and who would inject some energy into the Commission. Kris is a life-long Republican. She has a master's degree in public administration. She has a law degree, and she also has roots outside of Maricopa County, which I thought also was important. She is a Prescott person, and we were up in Prescott today to make the announcement. It was real fun.

>> Michael Grant: Yeah, that was interesting timing. She's young. Has she got enough experience?

>> Janet Napolitano: Well, I think she does. She's had a really a tremendous career already for somebody that young, and as somebody who became a U.S. attorney in my early 30s, sometimes I think, you know, you don't have to have 20 years of experience to be able to do a good job. I think she'll do a terrific job for Arizona.

>> Michael: When does she take office?

>> Janet Napolitano: Very soon. They are arranging for the oath to be administered early next week.

>> Michael Grant: Okay, let's go to the prison issue first and then we'll go to Child Protective Services.

>> Janet Napolitano: Sure.

>> Michael: You've called a special session for those two topics for later in the month. $700 million for prison overcrowding? Now first question is --

>> Janet Napolitano: No, no, no, no, no. that was a miss -- Here's the deal. We need $26.4 million to house the prisoners we have through the end of the fiscal year. Basically the legislature appropriated for 27,000 inmates. We have 31,000 inmates. That has to be fixed. And that's what's for the special session. We also, however, need to be looking at prison construction going forward based on the kind of inmate growth we have, and so what we have proposed to the legislature, actually is a re-do of the existing prison construction schedule which actually avoids $300 million in costs over time. We need to build facilities about -- to house about 9,000 inmates if current patterns are retained.

>> Michael: Above the 32,000 number that you mentioned?

>> Janet Napolitano: Correct, correct. And, you know, so the planning needs to begin for that. I saw the $700 million number in the paper today, and it was like, you know, when you buy a house, right? You know, when you finally sign your financing statement, you have that huge number, but you are still buying a $100,000 house. That's what we're doing on the prison side. That's the financing and everything over many, many years.

>> Michael: That was my question. That is not a special session subject; correct?

>> Janet Napolitano: Yes, what is a special session subject, what I think we ought to get done for sure in the special session is what we need to get through the end of the year with the inmates we currently have.

>> Michael: Alternatives, shock incarceration?

>> Janet Napolitano: Yes, one of the reasons our prison population is going up so much is because we have a number of people being sent back for technical violations of probation and parole. And the only option that the judge has is to send them back to complete their whole sentence. So they end up staying on average 13.8 months. We think the judge should have a middle option which is to sentence to shock incarceration, shorter time in, perhaps, about 120 days would be a likely model, probably absolutely just as efficient and effective and we save all of those bed days.

>> Michael: What about a more general review of mandatory sentencing across the board?

>> Janet Napolitano: Well, I think when the legislature sees, you know, the prison construction costs over time, they have become more interested in looking at sentencing and there is a committee chaired by Representative Kopinicki (phonetic) that is doing that. Sentencing in my view always needs to be looked at from a criminal justice perspective. What is the right length of sentence, for the type of crime that has been committed. It shouldn't be used as a budget balancing maneuver.

>> Michael: Okay. Private prisons, is that a way to also whack at $700 million bucks or whatever it is?

>> Janet Napolitano: No, we have gone through the prison construction budget and we have looked at all sorts of alternatives, and have come to a fairly strong conclusion that simply building private prisons, (A), doesn't save us much money, and (B), creates a lot of problems for us down the road.

>> Michael: Texas and Florida tried to make a strong case that privatization of prisons works.

>> Janet Napolitano: They have lots of issues with their prisons, but I think for Arizona, it's not the way to go.

>> Michael: Okay. Let me get back to the $27 million that is the subject of the special session.

>> Janet Napolitano: That's the supplemental that would be needed. The 26.4.

>> Michael: Where does that money go in terms of handling this additional $4,000 or so prisoners that you referred to?

>> Janet Napolitano: Well, there is a package. A big chunk of it is to basically rent short-term beds. We went beds in county jails, we went beds at other state systems and we rent beds in other private prisons where we need to. It also goes for some correction officer retention benefits and so forth, because we need more guards for the -- more officers for the inmates we have. And it also goes to complete construction of a few small prisons that have already been started.

>> Michael Grant: All right. Let's shift to Child Protective Services. You brought out your recommendations?

>> Janet Napolitano: Yes.

>> Michael: This week?

>> Janet Napolitano: Yes.

>> Michael Grant: We covered this last time, but I want to go back over it. Why not a separate agency, separate from the DES for Child Protective Services?

>> Janet Napolitano: You know, in my view, a separate agency issue is simply rearranging boxes on the organizational chart. Really what I have proposed is a much more sweeping look at Child Protective Services from who investigates the case to making sure every case gets investigated, which every case doesn't get investigated now, to closer linkages with law enforcement for cases of felony abuse and neglect, to getting case worker loads, caseloads down to national standards. Right now they are grossly above national standards, to putting more support into the foster care system for the foster care parents we have who haven't had reimbursement rates adjusted since 1996. So my -- I just said look, you know, to separate out the agency, the preliminary analysis was it would cost about $8 million to do that. I would rather spend that $8 million -- that 8 million would basically allow us to hire enough case workers so they could have decent caseloads. That's where I think the money ought to go.

>> Michael: County attorney Rick Romley, and I suspect a lot of legislators, are going to say, no, we don't put more money in Child Protective Services until we're sure we have got a system that works. What do you say?

>> Janet Napolitano: Well, I say, look, fellas, this system is broken. It's been studied to death, and you're not going to fix it without putting some more money into it. And anybody who has had any experience at all with Child Protective Services and looked at that knows that this is true. So I think for some legislators, not for Rick. I think Rick is really passionate about this issue and I respect that, but for some legislators, this is another way not to address Child Protective Services, yet another year, and still we'll have more families in crisis and more children who are abused and killed.

>> Michael Grant: Let's take one of the recent cases, though. One of the recent cases involved a situation apparently where CPS had been there six times and still had taken no action. There have been other cases where it was ranked as a low priority call and perhaps the system broke down that way, but this case,was one where they had been there repeat lead and still had not taken action. More money won't cure that, will it?

>> Janet Napolitano: Well, I'm not going to talk to the specifics of that case, because there are some things in that --

>> Michael: Use it illustratively.

>> Janet Napolitano: What money will help, for example, many of the cases where there has been prior CPS involvement, there is no follow-up. Why is there no follow-up? Because there is nobody to do the follow-up. Some cases where there has been prior CPS involvement, you know, the parents need to be in substance abuse treatment or alcohol abuse treatment. That's a very common pattern. We don't have those services available through CPS to get the parents into drug or alcohol treatment. Under my plan, under the proposal we've made, those things all get wrapped in together. And it's very interesting. We laid out -- these proposals were the results of nine months of work from an advisory commission which I appointed which included legislators, prosecutors and others, and we have -- since I announced them have been meeting in a bipartisan way with committee chairs and subchairs with the committees that have to look at this legislation, and I think we're developing a very strong consensus that this plan will work but, it won't work without money. You can't impose extra responsibilities on CPS, which I'm proposing that we do, without funding it.

>> Michael Grant: Now, another proposals that the legislator is floating, because as you know, sometimes CPS has also been accused of too prematurely pulling a child or inappropriately pulling a child from the home situation. One of the proposals is give the people a jury trial to get the child back. What's your position on that?

>> Janet Napolitano: Yeah, Senator Anderson raised that with me yesterday, and I said it's something I'd be willing to look into and actually we are looking into that.

>> Michael Grant: Certainly another issue that has been brought up is you are insistent that the safety of the child has to be number one. There are, I think, well-intentioned people on the other side of that issue that say, listen, sometimes preserving the family unit, particularly --

>> Michael Grant: It's a false dichotomy, Michael. It's a total false dichotomy.

>> Michael Grant: But given the options that we have, sometimes keeping the family unit together is better than the option.

>> Janet Napolitano: Absolutely. All we are saying is that in the mission of CPS. It ought to refer to the safety of the child. Right now when you read the statutory mission of Child Protective Services, it doesn't talk about child protection or child safety. That needs to be part of the definition. But what you really want to have is a system where a case worker who is always looking out for the best interests of the child has options with which to help the family stay together. Right now basically a case worker has two choices. She can leave the child or take the child. We don't have the kind of immediate or intensive at-home or support services that some of these families really need. We want to build that in so that many times the child can be left and should be left with the family, but with supervision, with oversight to make sure that it truly is safe.

>> Michael Grant: We talked about $27 million of the $35 million request. What's the other roughly $8 million or so?

>> Janet Napolitano: The $27 million is simply so that we don't have to lay off case workers between now and the end of the fiscal year, because DES and Child Protective Services were underfunded in the '04 budget. So the $27 million simply allows us to stay at status quo.

>> Michael: Okay.

>> The $8.5 million allows us to add personnel to get caseloads down to Child Welfare League of America standards, and allows us to increase the rates by which we reimburse foster families.

>> Michael: Does this have to be done in a special session? The legislature is saying, hey, you're jammin' us, we have our own review underway.

>> Janet Napolitano: Yeah, I heard that.

>> Michael: We promise we'll make it a priority in the regular session.

>> Janet Napolitano: Yeah, I heard that, too. All I can say is look, the legislature has talked about CPS for 20 years and nothing ever happens. The problem with leaving it to the general session, I think, is it gets lost in the mob of everything else that's going on, and it somehow never actually gets done. We've studied it, we've come out with a thorough plan, an action plan on how to reform it. We've come up with a funding request and ways to meet the funding request. It's time to shine the light of day on CPS, focus the legislature on it, and that's what I intend to do with the special session. And I think the legislators I've spoken with agree.

>> Michael Grant: Before we leave, I want to get an update on Kinder Morgan. First just the status of the pipeline. Are we well along in terms of the repairs?

>> Janet Napolitano: My understanding is that the schedule for repair and replacement is being adhered to, yes.

>> Michael: Larger issue. The Department of Environmental Quality, of course, has indicated perhaps a $25,000 fine. Kinder Morgan has responded with a variety of different proposals, adequate response in your opinion at this point?

>> Janet Napolitano: Yeah, I have not reviewed their response to the DEQ proposal, but I know Steve Owens, the director of DEQ, is looking at it very thoroughly.

>> Michael Grant: Most of the emphasis there being the remediation of the site.

>> Janet Napolitano: It's the fix-up of where the rupture occurred near a new housing subdivision in Tucson, really literally right behind the houses. And they spewed 10,000 gallons of gasoline into the ground soil and buildings. So that has to be cleaned up.

>> Michael Grant: Governor Janet Napolitano, we appreciate the input.

>> Janet Napolitano: Thank you a lot.

>> Michael Grant: Tonight we wrap up of the coverage of forest health with a look towards the future. We start with what the forest will look like after bark beetle devastation. After that, we repeat an interview I conducted this summer with Forest Fire expert Stephen Pyne.

>> Larry Lemmons: As far as the eyes can see, millions of trees that have been killed by the bark beetle infestation. Before it's over, most of the pines in places like the Prescott basin could die, and the consequences of the devastation will transform Arizona's forests forever.

>> Steve Sams: Unfortunately, with an epidemic of this magnitude, we're talking about a landscape scale change on the forest. We're talking about major shifts in the predominant vegetation, and all of the things that that creates once the upper canopy is dead, and either falls down or is consumed by fire.

>> Larry Lemmons: The Arizona forests to which we are accustomed are unique to the last century. Before human activity suppressed the frequent occurrence of natural wildfires, these areas had far fewer trees, making them less susceptible to drought and insect damage. But in the forests of today, those impacts have resulted in the deaths of millions of trees. Altering the forest environment in ways that are unprecedented in the State's recorded history. Similar changes have occurred, however on different scales and at different times and places throughout the past, allowing resource managers to anticipate what will come next.

>> Steve Sams: What will happen is that as the trees die, then the natural process is that first we'll have grasses that comes in and then brush species or in some cases where there is brush species in the understory now, they will bypass that stage and go to brush, and those will become the dominant plants. The shading will be different, the moisture regime will be different. We'll see with a reduction in the number of plants on the landscape, one of the things we're likely to see is an actual increase of production of water in our springs and our riparian areas because there is fewer plants and trees to take that water out of the soil.

>> Larry Lemmons: As the forest evolves into a new habitat type, there also will be significant impacts on wildlife.

>> Stan Cummingham: It's going to be a slow change. Obviously a lot of dead trees could provide some excellent habitat for some species. Woodpeckers are going to love it. I suspect the mule deer will do real well as it opens up a little bit and we have a lot more brush. I would anticipate a few more elk down here, if not a lot more. Turkeys would do well with that, if they have a place to roost. I would anticipate riparian areas flourishing and actually doing better. That, of course, is so important stow many of our breeding bird species.

>> Larry Lemmons: A glimpse of the future landscape can be found on the outskirts of Prescott in part of the forest that burned two decades ago.

>> Steve Sams: This is an area that's representative of what we can expect the Prescott National Forest to look like after the beetle epidemic runs its course and we lose the Ponderosa pine overstory.

>> Larry Lemmons: A number of brush species like manzanita will dominate the ground and although the pines will be few and far between, other trees will take their place.

>> Steve Sams: As we move into sites that are covered with taller vegetation, like the Junipers, the Ponderosa pine that are coming back in, and the oak species, you start to get that arrangement of vegetation that forms the habitat for a multitude of species.

>> Larry Lemmons: Because of the vast amounts of dead vegetation in areas affected by the bark beetles, wildfire poses an especially significant threat.

>> Stan Cunningham: The short term, our biggest concern is going to be the fire threat. Once these trees die, the amount of fuel loading that is going to occur on the forest is going to be tremendous. We're going to be looking at 60 to 80 tons of fuel per acre and when a fire occurs in that, it will burn with incredible intensity. What may do well when there is dead timber standing may not do near as well after a forest fire comes through and removes that fuel. Black bears don't do well. Some species will do real well. Lizards will do real well. If you have a catastrophic burn, it could be a whole new show.

>> Larry Lemmons: Catastrophic wildfires leave in their wake large tracts of land that are resistant to restoration efforts. Dramatic evidence of this can be found in the mountains north of Flagstaff.

>> Wally Covington: We don't know entirely what's going to happen, but in the severely burned areas, many of them, thousands of years of soil building are wiped out in a matter of months. And we see this here in Flagstaff. A classic example is the Mount Eldon burn that occurred in 1977. Severe erosion occurred on that site. It was replanted repeatedly with trees, but most of that area is in shrub lands, and it's not going to come back to forest in many generations of human beings.

>> Larry Lemmons: The potential loss of such substantial amounts of forest is an alarming prospect, and yet because it is the essence of nature to change, life continues, even in places visited by such enormous upheaval.

>> Steve Sams: We'll have less Ponderosa pine, we'll have more brush, more Chaparral vegetation. We're going to see more diversity in the structure of the canopy of the forest, and that will result in the forest not only looking different but functioning in a different way in terms of the things it provides. It's going to look different than it does today, but it's still going to be an attractive setting.

>> Michael Grant: Joining me to talk about the role of fire and forest health is wildfire expert and ASU professor Stephen Pyne. Professor Pyne, thanks for joining us.

>> Stephen Pyne: My pleasure.

>> Michael Grant: Do we really know what we need to do to restore forest health?

>> Stephen Pyne: Well, there are two issues here, one is fire and one is forest health. They are not identical, but they clearly converge. I think we know quite a lot about what we can do for fire. There are certain options you've got, just general options in a fire prone public lands. You can leave it alone, leave it to nature. You can try to suppress it. You can try to do the burning yourself. Or you can try to change the landscape so that whatever kind of fire occurs, it burns with certain properties. I think what we've learned is that none of those work by itself. You have to have mixtures of those adjusted to particular sites. So what works at 3,000 feet, doesn't work necessarily at 8 thousand. What works on the south-facing slope may be different from a north-facing slope. Those are really the options you've got, and some kind of cocktail of those treatments.

>> Michael Grant: There has been the big emphasis, understandably, on the so-called urban interface, the area where the forest -- well development has crashed into the forest, really. Is that an appropriate focus for your cocktail?

>> Stephen Pyne: Yes, it is. It requires its own mixtures. So I think in that, you're not going to walk away from it, and you're going have a hard time doing much burning. So you're left with landscaping and the scale of the landscaping will vary on the con tech, and you're left with suppression. You're not going to allow wildfires to rampage through. If you move away from that zone, then you may be allowed to, you know, let -- give fire some extra space, not try to crowd it so much. You may be able to do some burning. We know, though, that we can't suppress it. We can't keep fire out. I mean, it's just -- it's like a declaration of martial law. When there is an emergency and you send in the troops, you quell it and put it down, but you can't govern a landscape that way. It doesn't work over the long-term and the fire agencies will tell you that. We know that. We've also learned that you can't simply reverse the process. Since part of the problem was taking fire out, when we put it back in it all goes away like ecological pixie dust, and we sprinkle it out there and all of the bad stuff dissolves and we have a good forest. We've learned those fires don't burn as they would have burned 100 or 200 years ago. It's like reintroducing a lost species. You've got to create a habitat for it.

>> Michael: Do you create that habitat with a mixture of controlled burn and forest thinning?

>> Stephen Pyne: Yeah. I think -- I mean, those are the options. If not forest thinning, some kind of landscape cultivation. It may be by grazing. It may be by crushing brush in patches. It may be by thinning out overgrown forests. Maybe by creating gap canopies. Maybe by raking needles around the house. I mean, there are lots of ways to do this. It may be getting grass back in. I mean, in some ways in the southwest the whole obsession with trees is misplaced. What's gone is the grass. That's what allowed the old fire regime. So maybe instead of talking about forest thinning, we're talking about grass restoration. There are certain grasses you've got to keep out. So it gets complicated, but those mixtures of things on a site specific basis. anything else is just theology.

>> Michael Grant: Why is this seemingly one of life's great mysteries? I wouldn't think it would be, you're dealing with fairly natural stuff here.

>> Stephen Pyne: Well, I think part of it is that we have not been serious about fire as a fire problem. We see this even now. We have been in a really interesting era. For almost a decade we've had celebrity fire seasons. They've been coming every two years, sort of diabolically cunning time for political years. So fire has been politicized. So it's gotten on the political agenda. But people aren't solving it as fire. They are using it as for another purpose. So everybody is standing with a big fire behind them, but they are talking out. They want to use it to enforce an environmental message. Or they want to use this to reintroduce logging. Or we'll do some other message. Instead, if they would turn around and look at that, talk to one another across the fire that they share, we could begin solving the fire component. But any time you want to deal with something with the fire, you're dealing with -- you're talking about changing the landscape. That triggers all kinds of other concerns.

>> Michael Grant: Almost out of time.

>> Stephen Pyne: Sorry.

>> Michael Grant: No problem, but look ahead for me five years. Are we going to continue to be wiped out by wildfire?

>> Stephen Pyne: It depends entirely on the drought. If the drought continues at the level it has been for the last five years, there is no other future but fire and beetles and the forest will be obliterated and what will come back is anybody's guess.

>> Michael Grant: So we pray for rain.

>> Stephen Pyne: Yeah.

>> Michael Grant: Professor Pyne, thanks very much.

>>> Stephen Pyne: Thank you, Michael.

>> Michael Grant: Let's take a look at what's happening tomorrow on "Horizon."

>> Larry Lemmons: Governor Janet Napolitano names her press secretary Kris Mayes to replace Jim Irvin on the Corporation Commission. Also the Governor asks legislators for $35.5 million to reform CPS, and she wants more funds to deal with prison overcrowding. We'll discuss it on the Journalists' Roundtable Friday night at 7:00.

>> Michael Grant: Those subjects and probably more tomorrow on the Friday edition of "Horizon." Thank you very much for joining us on a Thursday evening. I'm Michael Grant. Have a great one. Good night.

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