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September 4, 2003

Host: Michael Grant
Topics:
· First Thursday: The Governor on HORIZON
In-Studio Guests:
Governor Janet Napolitano

>> Michael: Tonight on "Horizon" are we still haven't recovered from our gas crisis hangover. Prices are higher than they have ever been. A court overturn the sentences of nearly 90 death row inmates in Arizona. And should Arizona become a pilot state for a guest worker program? Those are some of the topics we'll talk about tonight with Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano. Good evening, I'm' Michael Grant. It is time for our monthly visit with Arizona governor Janet Napolitano. First Thursday, the governor on "Horizon." Tonight we will talk to the governor about the topics I just mentioned plus many more. We'll also include questions from our audience. Here now is Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano. Our first viewer question relates to the gas crisis. I recently heard on the news that the Arizona gas pipeline issue is under control and Governor Napolitano mentioned there was even an oversupply of gasoline for the area. If this is so, I am wondering why the gas prices keep going up. Governor, good to see you. Why -- I guess actually we should say, why do they stay high?

>> Governor Janet Napolitano: You know, this is a mystery. It's a mystery to everyone I have spoken with. It's a mystery nationally. Prices when they spike always seem to go up very quickly and come down very slowly. You know, under the law of supply and demand you would think if we had an oversupply in the Valley, and we have about -- last week we had about a million barrels of gasoline here that were sitting in the terminal that we would see diminution of price but we really didn't. A lot of it has to do with factors that are international, some factors that are national. It's not just related to the kinder Morgan pipeline. But it remains a mystery to me and many of us why gasoline prices are so volatile and stay so high.

>> Michael: Can you get to the bottom of it? I know that grant woods when he was Attorney General took a pretty thorough look at the situation. If memory serves, I think your office when you were Attorney General also took a pretty thorough look at it. Reached the conclusion that, well, something may not -- something may not be quite functioning correctly but we're not certain what it is.

>> Governor Napolitano: That's right. When I was Attorney General we constantly monitored gasoline prices. We constantly tried to see whether there was collusion or price fixing or things going on the marketplace that would be a violation of the law, and those are very difficult things to find and to prove. But it all starts with you've got a commodity. It comes into refineries. Nobody can tell you with precision what is the cost of refining and what kind of profit are the refiners making. Then you've got these pipeline companies that make a lot of money simply by transporting gasoline from point A to point B. Then you've got the distributor, the jobbers and the retailers, and they all take a chunk out of this thing and before you know it the consumer is paying $$2.19, $2.29 a gallon.

>> Michael: I noticed in the newspaper that Kinder Morgan was cooperating with federal and state officials in trying to nail down pipeline price information. Would that information be new? Is that a body of data that perhaps neither you nor grant woods as Attorney General possessed in relation to the data you looked at?

>>Governor Napolitano: Yes, it is new. One of the things, I think the state is looking at is kinder Morgan was making representations to us when the pipeline broke, the east pipeline broke, as to what amount of fuel was flowing through the western pipeline to supply Maricopa County. We never actually saw the inventory and who had ordered that fuel and was it accurate in terms of the representations, when they were made and I think those are the kinds of things the Attorney General's office is looking into now.

>> Michael: Let me back up to on Monday I think about three weeks ago or so, I think it was your first press conference on the subject, you said, we don't have a crisis; we have a problem. That irritated a lot of people.

>>Governor Napolitano: Yeah, it really did and I think it got a line taken totally out of context. What I was communicating was, look, we have had a disruption in the gasoline supply. There is gasoline in the Valley. That was a true statement. There was gasoline in the Valley. The problem was we didn't have the trucks and drivers to get it to the retailers and nobody had the information that retailers' tanks had run dry, but to react in a panic mode would not help the situation. What we needed to do was to keep demand to a reasonable level until we could get the supply back up and redistributed to the tanks. But, yeah, I heard from a lot of people, they weren't happy with how I articulated that, and I appreciated that because I was as outraged and unhappy as anybody else when I sought line and heard what was going on.

>> Michael: But you were in Indianapolis. Did you know what you were walking back into truly at that -- at that point in time?

>>Governor Napalitano: Well, let me give you the time sequence. The week before we knew the pipeline was shut down, but we had repeated assurances that there would be gasoline in the Valley and that other than perhaps a few spot shortages we wouldn't see the kind of total disruption we saw that Sunday. Based on that, I went to the national governor's association meeting in Indianapolis on Friday. Sunday I came out of a meeting and the phone is Ringing off the hook and, of course, what it is is all of a sudden these lines have appeared in the Valley and there's total disruption in the market. So I grabbed the first plane home. I was actually in Phoenix by 9:00 Monday morning.

>> Michael: I know you had gotten telephone calls but you hadn't actually been --

>> Governor Napolitano: I hadn't been here. I didn't see the lines myself until -- and the extent of the closings, closures, until Monday. I didn't fully appreciate how angry people were on Sunday. And they had a right to be angry. When you go to a gas station you have a right to expect to buy gas at a reasonable price and people weren't able to do that. We got that restored fairly quickly, really, by Tuesday and Wednesday, most stations were open, they reported having gas, and we had brought people into the office and made some adjustments and got an EPA waiver on the type of gasoline we could sell in the Valley to help us through the crunch. So -- but it was that Sunday, Monday period where everything went haywire.

>> Michael: When did you request that waiver? Because that has been another criticism that the waiver should have been made to EPA earlier than it was made.

>> Governor Napolitano: Yeah, I think Monday morning quarterback is a favorite sport on this issue. The plain fact of the matter is we requested the waiver on Monday, that Monday when I got back. We had not requested in the prior week for two reasons. One was, we had assurances that there was enough fuel in the Valley of the kind of fuel that we normally use that we wouldn't need a waiver. And secondly, the EPA indicated to the department of environmental quality, who had made some preliminary inquiries, they would not grant a waiver. And it wasn't until they, in fact, in fact one of the EPA people told our department of environmental quality that the only reason they granted the waiver was they turned on CNN and saw the lines and when they saw the lines, they realized that this was an emergency situation. This wasn't simply kind of an administrative problem. This was something they had to act on.

>> Michael: From a political science standpoint, is that an indictment of government, that you have to -- that you've got to see on it CNN that they're all stacked up as opposed to saying, I think in 48 hours they're all going to be stacked up, so why don't we act right now?

>> Governor Napolitano: I think if we at the state level -- and we have to examine ourselves as to why we didn't have this information. We need to accept some of that responsibility, too. Should we have known earlier? Should we have done things differently so we would have more information? But had we known the week prior that 80% of the gas stations in Maricopa County would be out of fuel by Sunday, you could have, I think, made that case to the EPA. But nobody had that information. So the case really could not be made. And the EPA as I said only grants waivers extraordinarily rarely and I don't think they have ever granted a 30-day waiver like they did in this instance. The only other waiver I know about was in Detroit, and that was for a week.

>> Michael: Let me go back to the information that your office had. There have been reports that retail fuel industry executives reported to your office, not kinder Morgan, but I mean the people who actually were delivering the things, the prior week that, governor, I don't care what information you're getting from kinder Morgan, we had a supply disruption a couple of weeks ago and we are going to have a supply problem. Did they do that?

>>Governor Napolitano: No. I never heard from anybody in the retail part of the industry. Quite frankly, when I got back on that Monday and started pulling people in, one of the most difficult things to do was to get information from the retail association, from the truckers, where were the trucks, where were the drivers, and from the major brand petroleum companies. So one of the things that I've learned in this is that this is an industry that keeps its information very compartmentalized and close to the vest. One of the things I've done is formed a committee chaired by Bob LAVINIA, former CEO of Tosco and I've asked them to look at gasoline supply related issues for us, because we need to look not only at what happened two weeks ago and why and how we prevent that from going on, but where do we stand in terms of gasoline infrastructure? We are for better, for worse, we are a state that runs on an automobile and we need to make sure that we have an adequate supply of gasoline available to consumers.

>> Michael: I want to get to some of those forward looking things in a minute but I want to go to a fewer question here and bear with me, this is the world's longest question. Our second viewer question also pertains to the gas crisis. Recently Republican national committee man Mike Hellon claimed in a Tribune letter to the editor that congressman J.D. Hayworth faxed the governor's office an explanation of her powers in the gas crisis and how to use them. After that, Hellon claims the governor held a press conference incorporating two of the three ideas Hayworth had fax to do her. So the question is, so, governor, is it true that J.D. Hayworth deserves the credit for your responses to the broken pipeline? Is he brilliant and so very helpful?

>> Governor Napolitano: Let me just say this... I did get a communication from representative Hayworth that was well after we had already received the EPA waiver and had taken all the other actions and I'll leave it at that. Let's just say a little politics may be entering into that particular correspondence from the Republican national committeeman.

>> Michael: Do you wish congressman hay worth the best of luck on his recent surgery?

>> Governor Napolitano: I do. I read about that in the paper today. I was with him at a parade for the Chandler little league all-stars on Saturday.

>> Michael: Wasn't that cool?

>>Governor Napolitano: Actually it was very hot, but the whole event and team was just great. Just a great thing. I do wish him well.

>> Michael: Let's go back to the infrastructure issues be and longer term issues. The chairman of the Corporation Commission, Marc Spitzer, stressed infrastructure issues as part of this. First off, the proposed refinery in Mobile, do you support that? Is that a good idea?

>> Governor Napolitano: Well, I think it's something that needs to be considered, but it's not a fix. I mean, nobody should confuse refinery in Mobile with an immediate fix to our gasoline supply issues. Refineries take years to be permitted and years to build and be put into operation. These are major sources of pollution, and so it has to be done in the right way because they're going to be there for a long time.

>> Michael: Mobile has been plugging at it form several years --

>> Governor Napolitano: Not Mobile. The refinery. There is actually a quite a bit of community resistance, in part because it would be near an elementary school. So what the department of environmental quality has told the fellows that want to build this thing is, you got to get your ducks in a row. You got to be able to show that this refinery will meet environmental standards which are necessary for the maintenance of the public health and you'll get your permit. So I think the ball's in their court.

>> Michael: Let me ask you to make this assumption. They're there with the proper set of environmental controls -- I've got to think we can construct a refinery can that pass environmental muster and the permitting process at some point, I don't know if this group can, but I have to assume that can be done. If that can be done, do you support that proposal as one of the longer-term basket of solutions.

>> Governor Napolitano: I support looking at that as part of a universe of proposals, but I think that we should not be deluded into thinking that one company's proposal for one refinery is the overall solution to the long-term gasoline supply issues in Arizona. We need to be looking, is that the right location? We need to be looking at, should we have more than one pipeline company that's bringing gasoline into our state? We're really at the mercy of one company because both the east line and the west line are owned by one. Do we have the right kind of gasoline blend? Are we -- do we need to rethink environmentally whether we should use a different blend of gasoline which would allow us to purchase non-boutique gas from other types of refineries, say, in California or in Texas? So I think simply focusing on one refinery is myopic. You have to look at the whole universe of issues.

>> Michael: I understand, but should that be in the bundle of sticks? I want to move --

>> Governor Napolitano: No, it absolutely should be in the bundle.

>> Michael: Let me move to one of the other things that you mentioned, the MTBE, the Phoenix summer blend. There's already health concerns about MTBE and I think California is phasing it out.

>> Governor Napolitano: They're phasing it out.

>> Michael: Do we need to take a second look and can we for that matter, environmentally, at unhitching ourselves from that blend and at least going to a blend of gasoline that isn't so peculiarly targeted only to the Phoenix market and all the supply problems it poses.

>> Governor Napolitano: I have been advised by the department of environmental quality they are indeed looking at that, but that there's a lot of science that goes into this, and the kind of pollute others they are chasing in Southern California are not the same as the kind of pollutants that we have problem with in our Valley. So it's not necessarily true that what is good for L.A. actually works in the Phoenix area because there are different pollution problems, but the department is actively looking at that issue as they should.

>> Michael: Where do we get to a point where we say, let's pull that trigger, if you'll pardon that expression --

>> Governor Napolitano: Pull the trigger on...

>> Michael: And go with a different kind of blend in the summer to avoid this -- the supply issue.

>> Governor Napolitano: Well, that will be governed ultimately by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. All we can do is make recommendations to what kind of blend we would want to have. Ultimately it will be the EPA, and they'll make their decisions based on their evaluation of the science and the scientific studies and what they see as the growth patterns in the Valley.

>> Michael: Just based on what you know at this point in time, are you prepared to make that recommendation to EPA?

>> Governor Napolitano: I'm prepared to ask and have asked that we look into making a recommendation. What the recommendation would be and what kind of fuel is open to research.

>> Michael: I'm a little confused about kinder Morgan's plans in relation to enlarging the capacity of the existing pipeline. I thought --

>> Governor Napolitano: Eastern pipeline.

>> Michael: Right. Yeah. I thought that I had read about a week or ten days ago that they were accelerating that expansion and improvement program, and then I think I read a few days ago that, no, we're not really accelerating it from the 2006, I think, timetable. Do you know what the answer is?

>> Governor Napolitano: I think there are two different things. One is the implementation of a 12-inch pipeline which they received federal approval to put in on August 1st of this year, ironically. And the timetable for is that to be done for the whole stretch of pipeline either by the end of 2005 or the beginning of 2006. The other issue is the replacement of basically a 12-mile section of the pipeline where currently they have what's called the bypass, where they took a 6-inch bit of pipe and reversed the flow to get gasoline coming back into Phoenix. That timetable I'm a little uncertain of as to how long the bypass will be up.

>> Michael: All right. Let's shift to some other issues here. You discussed on your trip last week to Mexico, you discussed the possibility of a pilot guest worker program for Arizona, and I was taken by the word "pilot." What are you -- I think a lot of us understand the guest worker concept. Why the pilot aspect of it?

>> Governor Napolitano: Well, this is something that actually has been proposed in the Arizona-Mexico commission, is that if the countries want to in a way experiment to see how a guest worker program would actually work and what are some of the up sides and down sides, what are some of the technical things that need to happen to really have a workable program, maybe rather than it be all of the United States, you would pick one of the border states in which Arizona would be ideally situated where not as populace as Texas or California but we have certainly self of the largest ports of entry and we have a huge stream of traffic in people who are undocumented who are crossing into the United States through Arizona in order to work. That's why in part we have such a high rate of deaths in the desert, people who are crossing even in the summer. I think we've now found 126 or 127 people who have actually died in Arizona trying to cross the border. So that's kind of the idea.

>> Michael: Any political realities in the strategy there, given seeming opposition in Congress to a broader guest worker program? Is there a political advantage to saying, well, okay, if you don't want to bite off the whole bite, why don't you go with a pilot program, and incidentally, it could be the Grand Canyon state.

>> Governor Napolitano: Right. I think it's always good for legislators to have a plan B and to have a fallback position, and so I wanted members of our federal delegation to know that I think Arizona is ripe for a guest worker program. I think it would help match the reality that if the relationship economically, cultural and socially between Arizona and northern Mexico, and that we would be willing to participate in such a thing. Now, obviously we have the various bills that have been introduced in the Congress by Senator McCain and others, and you know, those have been -- one of them has been set for a hearing. It will be interesting to see how those move through the system.

>> Michael: Follow-up question on that from a viewer. The final question relates to the ongoing problem of illegal immigration. What do you plan to do on both sides of the border to make the guest worker program more attractive than illegal entry?

>> Governor Napolitano: Well, I think just the difficulty of crossing illegally makes it attractive, if you can cross legally through the ports of entry and go back and forth through the ports and have some basic protections if you are coming here to work. I also think from a homeland security standpoint we're a lot better off if we know who is coming into our state and how long they're staying and where they're going to be finance we don't, which is the situation we have right now.

>> Michael: I think what the viewer, though, was trying to drive at is, given the patterns that have developed, how do you shift the thought process --

>> Governor Napolitano: Part of it is just economics. I mean, right now people have to pay a coyote or PULLETO, depending what you call them, a lot of money to bring them across the border and maybe abandon you in the desert to die. If instead you could go to an office and apply for a temporary worker's permit, get that permit, we would know who you are, the Mexican government would know who you are, you would be able to cross through the port of entry, right then and there you have a savings in terms of money, you have a savings in terms of safety and we have a better sense of who is in our country.

>> Michael: Okay. 9th circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday, I think it was, handed down a ruling that theoretically could commute 90 or so sentences on death row to life in prison. You had argued the Ring case last year.

>> Governor Napolitano: The first Ring case, right.

>> Michael: What's your reaction to that ruling?

>> Governor Napolitano: Well, I was surprised. I think it deviates from the court's precedence on retroactivity. The category of cases we're talking about are cases that have been through the direct appeal process. These are very old cases. Now that the 9th circuit basically said these all have to be reopened. Other circuits that have looked at the same issue in the context of jury versus judge sentencing on death penalty cases have ruled the other way. So I think the Attorney General is absolutely right to say, this needs to be decided by the United States Supreme Court. How can you have one group of death row inmates in one part of the United States have to be retried and others not?

>> Michael: Will the resources be there -- let's assume that the Supreme Court does not allow that ruling to stand and/or says, well, no, you can go back and you can resentence these inmates. Tremendous burden on the court system.

>> Governor Napolitano: On the court system. A tremendous burden on the victims. And this is, I think, my key regret in this whole matter, which is to say that every time these cases reopen for this legal matter or that legal matter, and the evidence has to be re-presented and testimony has to be retaken, the survivors have to relive what happened to their loved ones and these are horrific crimes. There is no one that's going to tell you these are nice guys on death row. These are the most horrific crimes. That's where the real pain is being felt.

>> Michael: I know I asked you this question during the debates during the campaign, but you do not support abolition of the death penalty?

>> Governor Napolitano: I do not.

>> Michael: Want to touch on child protective services. It seems like we get one bad story after another. The most recent story being the twins in cages. When are you going to make a decision on the package of recommendations that have been made to you by the commission?

>> Governor Napolitano: Soon. We had a public hearing on the recommendations last night in Prescott. The last one will be Monday night in Tucson. I would anticipate very shortly thereafter we will be enrolling a series of things that we want to do with child protective services to increase the level of protection that we can offer children. We have a new director of the Department of Economic Security, David burns, nationally known as someone who can integrate systems to improve the level of child welfare and that's exactly why we brought him to Arizona, to help us through this.

>> Michael: County attorney Rick Romley says the time has come to make CPS a cabinet level position.

>> Governor Napolitano: In a way it already is. I have a children's cabinet, and CPS is there, and there's probably no agency of government that gets more of my individual direct attention than CPS. So whether you change the stationary and the location of the office is the point. The point is have you put a laser beam on CPS. Are you empowering the caseworkers to do the best job they can do in a very difficult set of circumstances? And are you properly resourcing those caseworkers so you can provide services to families who need services, provide protection to children who need protection and find permanency for children who need new homes?

>> Michael: Almost out of time. Sounds like you're leaning against breaking CPS from DES?

>>Governor Napolitano: Haven't made my final decision but I am leaning against that.

>> Michael: Okay. Governor Janet Napolitano, thank you very much.

>>Governor Napolitano: Thank you.

>> Michael: See you next month. If wow would like to see a transcript of tonight's show or see what's coming up on "Horizon," please visit our website at www.kaet.asu.edu, click on "Horizon" in the lower left of the screen. That will lead you to all you need to know about the show. Let's take a look at what's happening tomorrow on "Horizon."

>> The 9th circuit court throws out 89 Arizona death penalty cases. Find out what awaits those condemned prisoners. Next Tuesday, Phoenix will go to the polls to elect a new Mayor. And the democratic presidential hopefuls are about to make their mark in Arizona. These topics and more Friday at 7:00 on the Journalists Roundtable.

>> Michael: I can hardly wait. Thanks for joining us on Thursday. Hope you will join us for the Fred edition. I'm Michael Grant. Have a great one. Good night.

 

 

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