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September 23, 2004

Host: Michael Grant
Topics:
· City of Phoenix approves purchase of land for downtown ASU campus;
· Proposition 300;
· ASU preparations for upcoming presidential debates
In-Studio Guests:
· Phoenix mayor Phil Gordon;
· Lonnie Williams, a member of the commission on salaries for elective state officers;
· Brooks Simpson, Arizona State University history professor

>> Michael Grant:
Tonight on Horizon, the City of Phoenix approves the purchase of land for a downtown ASU campus. We'll talk to Mayor Phil Gordon about that. Learn more about proposition 300. Would it give state lawmakers a raise if okayed. And find out about ASU preparations for the upcoming presidential debates. That's up next on "Horizon."

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>> Michael Grant:
Good evening. Welcome to "Horizon." I'm Michael Grant. Last night Phoenix city council approved a $30 million land purchase for a downtown ASU campus. Here now to talk about that is the Phoenix Mayor. He is Phil Gordon. Phil, good to see you again.

>> Phil Gordon:
Thanks a lot, Mike.

>> Michael Grant: What precisely did the city council approve last night? I'm not sure I had a good fix on it.

>> Phil Gordon:
Last night with an 8-0 vote, unanimously the city council approved the acquisition of various parcels, primarily centered around central and Van Buren, the gateway to downtown Phoenix, the purchase of those properties to begin the planning and the construction of the ASU downtown Phoenix campus.

>> Michael Grant:
And we're calling up on the screen, a map. Maybe you can help us out. Are we down in purple?

>> Phil Gordon:
No, we're up in the yellow there to the west. The red is the Phoenix biomed area where T-GEN, the old Phoenix union buildings are and where the new hopefully medical school and hospitals will go. Purple is the cultural entertainment areas, the arenas, the basketball. The blue is the T-GEN building. So what you can see is ASU will be poised to be the gateway into both the scientific, education centers, and also the heart of our downtown where government and law is everyone is located.

>> Michael Grant:
If it helps to further geographically orient here, certainly I think probably a parcel that would be most familiar to people would be the old APS headquarter building which is about a block north of Van Buren?

>> Phil Gordon:
About 411 North Central, beautiful old building that has been renovated, has congressman pastor's office in it and a number of other occupants. That's kind of the beginning of the heartway. A little further north, which we haven't acquired, though we're talking with the federal government, is the old post office building. A couple other parcels we have acquired in between. So you're talking about a major open campus that will have a grand space that will actually set the tone for the new knowledge economy, education, 15,000 students and faculty that will be working and studying and hopefully living in the downtown area.

>> Michael Grant:
Now, the city actually made this purchase. How does the city pay for it before, I assume the ultimate plan is a deed to the Board of Regents/ASU.

>> Phil Gordon:
What is so creative is that the City of Phoenix and ASU isn't waiting until the future when these opportunities for both downtown and the state and the community be lost. We're moving forward. This all began January of this year. So within a short eight months, nine months, we now have worked together with ASU and other partners to create this planning and begin the acquisition. Dr. Crow, as you know, announced a number of schools will be coming to the downtown Phoenix area, including this great station, nursing, public administration, a new university college, that will actually begin the future of downtown as we know it now. The payment is actually -- our first acquisition was $30 million from the City of Phoenix, which will actually be interest payments toward that $30 million and then pay for that with a future bond election that the residents or citizens will hopefully pass. If not, we will continue to amortize the debt out through other resources.

>> Michael Grant: So you would cash flow it for the time being with the ultimate objective to be able to bond it at some time in the future.

>> Phil Gordon: Right.

>> Michael Grant:
Am I incorrect that the title to the property remains in the City of Phoenix?

>> Phil Gordon:
Actually the properties that we'll be acquiring, title will probably remain in the City of Phoenix with an agreement with ASU -- in fact, ASU is going to help pay some of that debt service to begin with, and then when we take it out with the bond or whatever, we'll negotiate how we're going to pay the future debt revenue on that.

>> Michael Grant:
Obviously there are core campus buildings planned for the various schools and perhaps, as you indicated, KAET. But there is associated residential and other increments to this as well?

>> Phil Gordon:
I think the beauty of this and why we have to go forward, and this is really investing in the economy, is this is the -- the campus is 15,000 students and faculty, about the size of Notre Dame, just to put in that perspective. We're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars worth of revenue and development fees -- development costs that will occur, meaning new property value from the private sector, new businesses from housing for the students to new apartments and condos for the faculty, retail, restaurants, bookstores, flower shops, vendors that will help supply all the needs of a 15,000-student university. So the ripple effect in the private side will probably be at least twice the cost of the public side if not more.

>> Michael Grant:
I understand that Elliott Pollack did a study -- was it specifically focused on the ASU campus?

>> Phil Gordon:
Yes. If my memory is correct, over a billion dollars worth of construction impact, jobs and sales tax on the material and about a half a billion dollars a year in direct revenue benefits to the city, the county, the state through jobs, sales tax, et cetera, ongoing. So that's a phenomenal investment. Plus education. The global economy that we need to compete in, as Dr. Crow has said, is going to be set by world-class universities. This will be unlike any other university that's existed before. The partnerships, the integrated resources of Tempe, not just financial, but the different schools and all the brain power and all the high-tech equipment and the research that the university is doing will literally be in downtown as well as on the Tempe campus.

>> Michael Grant:
Time line?

>> Phil Gordon:
Time line, the goal of Dr. Crow is to have programs up and operating beginning in 2006. Not too far away.

>> Michael Grant:
Well, obviously you've got the existing APS structure there. Would that be the first -- that's pretty aggressive time frame.

>> Phil Gordon:
Pretty aggressive but no one thought we could do this within nine months. You also have the Mercado campus which is owned by ASU now with some programs. So that could house some interim programs, expand it, move people around. We're looking at leases within some of the property for ASU, depending on what programs they move in right away. A lot of things are tied to --

>> Michael Grant:
I assume different colleges probably could move at different speeds?

>> Phil Gordon:
Exactly.

>> Michael Grant:
Some take a longer period of time.

>> Phil Gordon:
Exactly. That's the interim planning that ASU has been doing in terms of what programs, what colleges, what components of colleges could come sooner than later, what is starting a new class, what program should stay in one place versus could be split. So that is really an amazing accomplishment on ASU's part, not only setting what college are coming but now the internal planning literally again to build between 2006 and 10 years thereafter a 15,000-student campus. So it's not a vision, but this is a reality that ASU and the city is committed to that has to happen because ASU needs the space here in Tempe, so it can expand its existing programs, too.

>> Michael Grant:
Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, thank you very much.

>> Phil Gordon:
Thank you very, very much.

>> Michael Grant:
For the third time in four years voters will be asked to approve a raise for state lawmakers. Four years ago voters turned down a smaller raise proposal. Two years ago they turned down the same raise proposal. I'll talk to a member of the commission that recommended the raises but first here's more about proposition 300.

>> Mike Sauceda:
Proposition 300 would give state lawmakers a 50% raise from $24,000 a year to $36,000 a year. The commission on salaries for elected state officers made the recommendation citing greater demands on lawmakers' time because of state population growth and the need to attract capable competent individuals to run for the legislature. In 2000 voters rejected another proposition 300, ski .9% to 36.1%. That proposition 300 would have given law make ears smaller raise from 24,000 dollars a year to $30,000 a year.

>> Michael Grant:
Here now to tell us more about the proposed raise for lawmakers is Lonnie Williams, a member of the commission on salaries for elective state officers. Lonnie, it's good to see you again.

>> Lonnie Williams:
Thank you.

>> Michael Grant:
Voters canned this thing in 2000-2002. Is there any reason to believe they won't duty same in 2004?

>> Lonnie Williams:
I'm not sure. In 1998 for some reason they passed the recommendations, but they canned it many years before that. So it's hard to predict. But quite frankly, that's not the function of the commission. That question was raised. There was one person who wanted to lower the recommendation to 30,000 for one reason, because it might be more palatable to pass. The commission voted that that's not our function, and we decided to live with our legislative mandate, which is to review, to analyze and to recommend and not to decide what may or may not be palatable.

>> Michael Grant:
Lonnie, give us some idea of what sort of data, what comparison, what exactly the analytical method is the commission follows to arrive at $36,000 for a state legislator.

>> Lonnie Williams:
We get data for every position we look at from every state in the nation. We get trending data, historical data. What raises are people getting around country? We get data on growth of states in terms of comparing a state that's not growing to a state that is growing, because usually there's more issues for legislature. We get data on the number of days our legislature is in session versus other states. We get data on everything you can believe for every legislature. Now there's, I think, 36 or 38 legislatures. Some states don't have them. They're voluntary. Just a few.

>> Michael Grant:
I see. They have a legislature --

>> Lonnie Williams:
They do, but it's different. It's really different. But we looked at all of that, and it's very time consuming, and we look at that in terms of analyzing the fact that whatever we do or recommend is it for at least two years because the commission only meets for two years. Based on that we try to determine what is a reasonable salary for that given position. We're not really looking just at static, because by the time this goes through, if it were to go through, and you look at what's happening, other states are pretty much raising salaries much more often than Arizona.

>> Michael Grant:
Give me some indication of where Arizona sits compared to other states in relation to some of the categories you just mentioned.

>> Lonnie Williams:
Right now depending -- if you want to look at straight dollars, forgetting about the number of days the legislature sits, the Arizona ranks about 21st out of about 36, 37 states in terms of salary. Many of those states above it have raises in place already that will take place over the next two years because either it's been passed, it's in the budget or they have a system that makes it somewhat automatic. So when we looked at the situation in 2002, we were even a little higher than 21st. When you look at states with the type of growth that we have, we're toward the bottom. Nevada and other states who have a lot of growth --

>> Michael Grant:
The concept being here that states with rapid growth obviously pose larger public policy challenges, a broader range of areas for the legislature to look at, a heavier job burden?

>> Lonnie Williams:
I think just like any company, if you are in a growth mode, if you are trying to do things based on an increase in population, you might need a higher expertise. You might want maybe some -- a bigger pool to choose from in selecting someone for that job. And we looked at the same thing, that we have a lot of issues in this state because of our growth, and maybe the salary for those people making the decision should be more competitive. We also talked about, although it wasn't a major factor, the fact that we don't have a lot of people running for the legislature. And whether or not the salary and the lack of movement of that salary might be a factor. Who knows. There's not a study on that. But the fact is, if we look at all the uncontested races this year, a lot of people aren't clamoring for that job. Maybe there's other reasons.

>> Michael Grant:
I'm curious... does the commission get any sort of -- it would have to be qualitative data on whether or not there is a correlation between higher pay and better legislative result?

>> Lonnie Williams:
No. I don't think you could do that study because it would depend on who is deciding whether the results are positive or not. You can look at some of the states that are above us and make, I guess, decisions on how well they're run. You think of states like Wisconsin, Oklahoma, who pay a lot more than we do for the legislature, whether they're better run, who knows. That's a judgment call.

>> Michael Grant:
What about the governor's argument that, hold it, the average citizen is certainly not getting a 50% pay raise, the average citizen is getting perhaps BUPKUS. Why in the world should the legislature get 50%?

>> Lonnie Williams:
If you want to change the legislation and indicate that that's what our commission should look at in terms of what state workers are getting, in terms of what other people are getting, that's fine, and we would do that. But that is not the mandate the legislature gives us. Our mandate is directly from the law that they passed, and it's not to consider that. However, if you do consider that, because we did look at that, they would still get a raise. Not the kind of raise we're talking about because if you use 99 '99, the last raise, as a base year, state employee salaries have gone up. Not a great amount, but they have gone up. So if you want to look at that, I believe the raise would have been something in the range of 28,000 dollars in terms of that because there hasn't been one --

>> Michael Grant:
Nerd, about four grand or so.

>> Lonnie Williams:
Yeah.

>> Michael Grant:
Sound about right, maybe 15 or 16% --

>> Lonnie Williams:
But took place make them whole because the major raises happened a number of years ago, and they didn't get one. So if you want to give them the same dollars that those increases -- it would be in that range. And we discussed whether or not that should be a factor, and it was, but if you take that factor by itself, then you have to ignore the rest of the legislation, which says do a comparative analysis, and that's the case for all of the various positions, and what we're trying to do is make the positions competitive, but the legislature is the one that goes to the voters.

>> Michael Grant:
All right. Lonnie Williams, thank you very much for the information.

>> Lonnie Williams:
My pleasure.

>> Michael Grant:
For months now preparations have been going on for the presidential debate to be held at Gammage auditorium at Arizona State University. We will talk to an ASU professor involved in some pre-debate events but first here's more about the event.

>> Mike Sauceda: Construction of a media center has already started at Gammage auditorium as Arizona State University in Tempe. That as the university continues to get ready for the third debate between presidential candidates George Bush and John Kerry. It will be held at Gammage auditorium on October 13th at 6:00 p.m. Some 1,000 media representatives are expected to cover the event. The debate will focus on domestic issues with the topic having been switched from foreign policy. Planning and preparations for the debate have been going on for months. The sitting president and the senator coming to debate at Gammage, security is a big concern. There will be two perimeter fences set up around Gammage. Classes will Staat being held in Gammage October 8th until after the debate and there will be street closures around the odd tore annual. A simulcast will be held at Wells Fargo arena at ASU and tickets for that are free. Before the debate a series of panel discussions and lectures will be held discussing everything from presidential elections and foreign policy to Arizona and presidential elections. The pre-debate events will be held off campus.

>> Michael Grant
: Joining me to talk about the debate and the preparations for sit ASU history professor Brooks Simpson. Brooks, challenging, obviously this is a major deal, and I don't think we've done this before.

>> Brooks Simpson:
No, Arizona has never done this.

>> Michael Grant:
A pretty clean blackboard upon which you had to write, I would assume.

>> Brooks Simpson:
Certainly this is a chance for the area to shine, for the two major candidates to address issues concerning the southwest, especially now that the third debate, the one we host, will concern domestic policy issues.

>> Michael Grant:
And I was wondering, of course, for a long time, for an enormously long time we thought it was foreign policy and it only became domestic issues this week. Did that throw any kind of wrench into this pre-debate planning that had been ongoing for a number of months?

>> Brooks Simpson:
I don't think so. Basically the university knew that there was some flexibility involved and some uncertainty and we reacted well to the card we've been dealt.

>> Michael Grant:
For example, I easily could have seen, if you thought that the debate was going to be foreign policy, I could have seen a number of, well, foreign policy oriented things loaded up. That was not the case?

>> Brooks Simpson:
No, what we've done in this case is that there's a spread and there's domestic policy discussion on campus, discussions, for example, about the relationship between science and government, and then we have the history department, the Arizona humanities council co-sponsoring series of discussions across the Valley over the next couple weeks first of all focussed on various issues and terms of presidential elections in the past and present, establish a historical context for these current events, and then a discussion about the impact of presidential debates themselves on the election process.

>> Michael Grant:
Is debate history specifically one of the programs that go --

>> Brooks Simpson:
Yeah, the last one a presentation at the Arizona historical society the day before the debate October 12th at 7:00 at the historical society museum in north Tempe. We're going to talk about the presidential debates in historical context and talk about the ways in which they've shaped voter attitude and election outcomes.

>> Michael Grant:
How far back are we going?

>> Brooks Simpson:
We'll go all way back to 1960, which is the debate people point to, the Kennedy --

>> Michael Grant:
Talking the modern era?

>> Brooks Simpson:
That's right. There were no presidential debates prior to 1960, so the Kennedy-Nixon debates in 1960 are really the first presidential debates, and then there was a hiatus and it was until 1976 when Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter faced off. In that year Walter Mondale and Bob dole had the first vice-presidential debate.

>> Michael Grant:
Now, was that tied to the popular funding of the presidential -- did that series of debates match with the public monies going to presidential campaigns?

>> Brooks Simpson:
The public financing begins during that period but the league of women voters really took the lead in this in the 1970s, and Gerald Ford actually challenged Jimmy Carter in 1976 to a series of debates because at that time even though he was the incumbent, Ford was behind in the polls and he was looking for someway desperately to catch up, and he thought a debate would be a good way because Carter was at that point still just somewhat of an unknown, a governor from Georgia, and Ford thought that put the two on the stage and Ford would come off as a better candidate. That proved not to be the case in '76.

>> Michael Grant:
You obviously are a student of debate history. Do you have a view on whether or not it was a make-up problem that cost Richard Nixon the election in 1960?

>> Brooks Simpson:
Richard Nixon's makeup was one of several problems he had in 1960, but one of the things that helped John Kennedy that year was not only his demeanor and the way in which he answered questions, but the fact that he got equal footing with somebody who had been vice-president of the United States for the preceding eight years, someone who was not exactly well treated by his boss, Dwight David Eisenhower. Eisenhower was asked in a press conference what Nixon did as vice-president, he responded if you give me a week, I might think of something. That was not exactly helpful to the vice-president.

>> Michael Grant:
Did he make that comment on the golf course? I can't recall. ?

>> Brooks Simpson:
No, he made it as a priest conference. He would have probably liked to have held most press conferences on a golf course.

>> Michael Grant:
People tend to think he had a putting green installed at the White House. One of the criticism leveled against the presidential debate process is that it's really not debate. It's sort of press conferences running in tandem as opposed to what we would think of as two people squaring off against each other on whatever the subject DEJOUR may be. Fair criticism?

>> Brooks Simpson:
I think that's a fair criticism. What's happened over time, though, is we've changed from a panel of reporters to now a moderator for two of the debates, the first debate down in Miami on the 30th, and the debate here. The second debate will be a town meeting format and that will take place October 8th at Washington university in St. Louis. In between on October 5th we'll probably have Dick Cheney at Cleveland at case western reserve university in the vice-presidential debate will take place there between he and John Edwards.

>> Michael Grant:
I'm not sure how you could maybe sharpen up the format a little bit to get more exchange between the candidates, although I think less staging perhaps, less prepared questions, more opportunity certainly for them to talk directly to each other and perhaps fewer stopwatches would help quite a bit.

>> Brooks Simpson:
I think would it open up. I think that the people have gone through the process do think that it privileges certain aspects of communication and presentation and argue mentation, but that being a good debater, performing well in that context, does not necessarily make you a good presidential choice.

>> Michael Grant:
Fair point. Listen, let's go back to the debate events. I think we have some screens here that we can throw up just to kind of walk through. You can see that. Give us some idea what these events will concern.

>> Brooks Simpson:
October September 28th in Tempe there will be a discussion on presidential election and foreign policy led by Kyl locally of the history department at ASU. The following day there will be another session at Phoenix main library on race-gender in presidential elections. That will be he had headed by Dr. Matthew Whitaker. On September 30th there are two presentations one on Arizona and presidential elections at the Chandler library and at the Scottsdale main library at the same time there will be one on presidential elections and domestic policies headed by Dr. Wendy POTKIN.

>> Michael Grant:
Oklahoma of course October 12 is the historical society one we talked about. That's right, I will speak on the history of presidential debates on elections at that time.

>> Michael Grant:
Free to the public?

>> Brooks Simpson:
Wide open.

>> Michael Grant:
No need to call, get tickets, those kind of things?

>> Brooks Simpson:
No, first come, first serve.

>> Michael Grant:
I imagine it's been a challenging assignment and we very much appreciate you showing up and talking to us about it.

>> Brooks Simpson:
Thank you, Michael.

>> Michael Grant:
You can visit our website at www.azpbs.org once you get to the homepage, you can click on the word "Horizon" on the left side of the page. It's going to take you to "Horizon" links, transcripts and the ever-important information on upcoming shows.

>> Larry Lemmons:
Work is already under way on the ASU campus, preparation for the presidential debate in less than three weeks. The wife of democratic nominee John Kerry paid a visit to the Valley to talk about healthcare on the same day her husband's campaign announced it's pulling ads in our state. The journalist roundtable Friday at 7:00 on "Horizon."

>> Michael Grant:
That an more tomorrow on "Horizon." Thank you very much for joining us on this Thursday evening. I'm Michael Grant. Have a great one. Good night.

 

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