Pima County employees can now run for office while retaining their jobs

Pima County employees can now run for public office while maintaining their county employment, but the change has caused concern among some of the county’s elected department heads.

The Board of Supervisors rescinded a policy last week that requires employees to take unpaid leave while running for a paid elective office seat. Previously, the unpaid leave went into effect as soon as employees submitted their petitions for candidacy.

Supervisor Matt Heinz first proposed the change on June 6, when supervisors asked for a legal review before voting on rescinding the policy. At the board’s next June 20 meeting, the Pima County Attorney’s Office provided supervisors legal advice in a closed-door executive session. The board finally approved the policy change on Tuesday, July 11.

Heinz said he’s long thought the personnel policy imposing unpaid leave is “profoundly unfair.” In “casual” conversations with county employees interested in running for varying levels of elected office at the county and state, he said many expressed concern about having to forgo pay.

“I think it’s a basic right that we should all be able to stand for elective office and seek that support from the populace,” Heinz said.

The board’s vote passed 3-2, with supervisors Rex Scott and Steve Christy opposing. Scott said he wanted to table the item to allow time to hear from the county’s elected row officers, as they had expressed concern about the change in an email to the board.

While the highly observed public races of board members are unlikely to see challengers among supervisors’ own limited staff members, the situation of employees becoming their bosses’ election challengers would be more likely in the county departments with 100-plus employees, such as the Sheriff’s Department and County Assessor’s Office.

Pima County Assessor Suzanne Droubie wrote in a July 10 email to the board, the day before its vote, requesting the personnel policy change “be tabled, and discussed at a future meeting” to allow time to discuss the policy’s effects and potential alternatives. Scott requested the item be delayed to a future meeting, but no other supervisors supported his motion.

Scott said if the board “had some time to hear from the row officers, maybe I would have ended up voting for it,” but he wanted to have the time to hear out other elected officials.

Droubie said her fellow row officers generally agree county employees running for office shouldn’t be required to go without pay. Still, concerns persist over creating tension in a workplace actively employing two opponents in an election.

“During elections, things get pretty heated … we’ve all seen where the candidates can be pretty aggressive with each other,” Droubie said. “When you have a situation where you have an employee that’s running against an incumbent, and they’re in the same office, it’s not hard to understand that it creates a potential for conflict.”

Pima County Superintendent of Schools Dustin Williams shared similar concerns, noting the new policy “has the potential to cause a culture and climate issue amongst the employees of an office” if “we were to have two people, an incumbent and then another employee, running at the same time and working in such close relations.”

Both Droubie and Williams are interested in an alternative policy that allows for temporary reassignment of employees running for office outside the department they’re seeking election for.

County Administrator Jan Lesher said that staff advising the board never considered this option with the rule change. Her only concern, she said, “is simply that people who work for Pima County are working for Pima County.”

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“Whether they’re running for a paid or an unpaid office or running against an employee or not, my concern and the monitoring is to ensure that people are never using county resources inappropriately, or paying less attention to their county-paid job.”

County policy holds those running for office can’t use county email systems or other privileged resources to benefit their campaigns or conduct campaign-related business on county property.

Maricopa County’s employee policy does not specify rules for employees seeking office but does say, “Employees are expected to behave in an unbiased manner and without favoritism for or against any political party or group” while on duty. However, “this guidance on political activity is being reviewed at this time,” Maricopa County Communications Director Fields Moseley said.

The city of Tucson does bar city employees from running for mayor or City Council positions, according to the city code. Employees can run for non-city offices unless their “principal employment” is connected to activities financed through federal money, in accordance with the federal Hatch Act.

It’s uncertain where the county policy requiring those running for any paid elected position to take unpaid leave came from. Lesher wrote in a memo to the board the policy was enacted “several years ago, in a response to an increasing number of Pima County employees desiring to run for elective office,” but later clarified she’s unaware of the year the measure went into place or the exact motivation for it.

Sheriff Chris Nanos said he can think of two employees who had to resign while running for county sheriff: Terry Staten, who lost to Mark Napier in the 2016 Republican primary, and Kevin Kubitskey, who ran against Nanos in the 2020 Democratic primary.

“I’m probably one of the only (elected officials) that actually went through that turmoil twice, and I saw it firsthand. Even though I might have agreed with (the policy) at the time, I look back on it and go, ‘That’s not the way to do it,’” Nanos said. “It’s wrong. It does create division, and it hurts your morale. But I think both sides do that.”

Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly supports the change allowing county employees to keep working while running, as it “supports working people being a part of our government and our government being more reflective of the community it serves,” she said.

Cázares-Kelly said she doesn’t “share the concerns” of toxicity in the workplace as much as other elected county officials but said temporarily reassigning candidates could be a viable alternative.

“They still have a paycheck, and they’re still utilizing their skills somewhere else within the county, and it reduces that friction between them and the incumbent … I think that’s a small bit of support that the county could formalize,” she said.

Those ideas were never considered by the board, however, as some row officers said they never heard back from supervisors after expressing their concerns. Supervisor Matt Heinz said he never spoke to the row officers but didn’t remember hearing from them, despite the email from Droubie sent to the entire board.

“We stand to be the ones that this policy affects the most,” Droubie said. “I don’t mean this in a controversial way, I’m just saying that we felt that our opinions should carry some weight in this because this is a policy that directly affects us and our offices, or it has the potential to.”