Daily Star’s investigative reporting on Benson housing development gets kudos from Rachel Maddow
The Arizona Daily Star received several shoutouts from Rachel Maddow on her Thursday MSNBC show.
The topic in question: The Villages at Vigneto project, a planned 28,000-home development in Benson.
Maddow said the project has been "pieced together by some really brilliant journalism, starting with the Arizona Daily Star."
Watch the segment here.
Read reporter Tony Davis' most recent coverage of the project — which started in 2015 — below.
A U.S. Interior Department attorney met twice with then-Deputy Interior Secretary David Bernhardt the same day the meddling allegedly occurred.
Then-Deputy Interior Secretary David Bernhardt is facing a probe into handling of 28,000-home Villages at Vigneto permitting issue in 2017.
Reinstatement of a Phoenix developer’s permit to build a 28,000-home project in Benson is likely now that federal agencies have stood by an ea…
El Dorado Holdings' view that it could build Vigneto without a permit is one reason the federal government limited how broadly it analyzed the project's impacts.
A longtime federal official told the Star he was pressured politically to reverse a key scientific decision on 28,000-home development.
Ex-Fish and Wildlife Service Supervisor Steve Spangle said he succumbed to political pressure from above in reversing a decision to require a thorough review of the 28,000-home, Benson development.
The Justice Department acknowledged in court records that Interior Secretary David Bernhardt was involved in a decision that overturned a finding that the 28,000-home Benson project needed a thorough environmental review.
