Way back in August, the Arizona Board of Regents requested a report.
They didn’t call it a secret report. They didn’t call it an attorney-client privileged report. It was just going to be a quick, deep evaluation of problems at the University of Arizona’s medical schools in Tucson and Phoenix.
“It’s going to be a broad look at what’s going on,” regents chairman Greg Patterson said then. “We’re doing a comprehensive evaluation, so it’s going to be full 360s of management style, structure, et cetera. Everybody is concerned with how public money was spent, and we have no reason to believe it was spent inappropriately.”
Move forward three months, and indeed public money was spent — $180,000 to be precise — on this report.
Now, though, the regents are calling the whole thing a work of attorney-client privilege, not subject to the Arizona Public Records Law. They are fighting even the idea of blacking out the attorney-client privileged areas of the report and releasing the rest.
In other words, they’re saying — “Shoosh, nosy reporters. Go away.”
This should not be surprising to people who are familiar with Patterson’s body of work. From 2008 until August this year, Patterson maintained a blog called Espresso Pundit, some of which is still available online. It was an Arizona political blog that took special relish in zinging the press, especially the Arizona Republic but also the Star — and me specifically a couple of times.
I’ve criticized Patterson repeatedly for being vociferous in his public indictments of the press but clamming up when it came to his public role as a member of the regents.
Suffice it to say Patterson, an attorney and accountant, has documented through the years his disrespect for Arizona’s journalists, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he is willing to indulge in hiding public records requested by reporters. It is shortsighted, though, since ultimately it’s the public who loses out.
But clearly Patterson understands that public records should actually be available to ... you know ... the public. In fact, that’s the exact phrase he used in 2009 when writing about a johns list kept by a busted prostitution business in the Phoenix area. Patterson struggled to get the list and turned to Phoenix council member Sal DiCiccio for help, as he described in September that year.
“Councilman DiCiccio thinks that if information is public that it should actually be available to ... you know ... the public.”
Seems sensible, doesn’t it? Then and now.
O’odham casino kerfuffle
The news came out piecemeal this week. First, it appeared, in what would be a big win for Southern Arizona, that the lawsuit over the Tohono O’odham casino in Glendale had been settled. Then it turned out that’s what the governor’s office wanted us to think.
As it turned out, what really happened was that Gov. Doug Ducey’s office put pressure on the O’odham to agree to a settlement and new terms in the state-tribal gaming compact. Representatives of 10 other tribes signed on to the proposal in a ceremony Monday, but O’odham representatives weren’t there.
A glaring omission, no?
Not if the idea was actually to put pressure on the O’odham to go along with the governor’s settlement proposal. The message was really “Come along or get left behind.”
This is how Ducey’s spokesman, Daniel Scarpinato, explained the situation to me: “The governor believes it’s time to move forward and that there could be a positive outcome for everyone involved here, so it’s a win-win-win for the tribes, the state and the taxpayers. Let’s move past the litigation and find some common ground.”
He’s right that the deal looks good. It allows the O’odham to have full-scale gambling at their casino in exchange for additional gaming at other tribes’ casinos until 2026, when a new compact will have to go into effect.
But it would be crazy for the O’odham to rush into the agreement. They know that better than anyone, having found a loophole in the existing voter-approved compact that allowed them to build the casino in Glendale in the first place. So no wonder they’re taking their time before agreeing to end hostilities with the state.
Tucson’s rotating Republicans
If three is a trend, Tucson has a new one: The rotating Republican seat.
For the third straight election, voters in a Democratic-leaning district have voted in a single Republican state representative from the Tucson area. These have been three different candidates in three different districts.
This year’s winner is Todd Clodfelter, who took the most votes of all three candidates in Legislative District 10, edging out fellow winner Democrat Kirsten Engel by 97 votes and defeating incumbent Democrat Stefanie Mach by 857 votes.
The bad news for Clodfelter: Each of the previous two rotating Republicans have lost their first attempt at re-election. Ethan Orr won a seat in LD9 in 2012 but lost re-election in 2014. That same year, Republican Chris Ackerley won in heavily Democratic LD2. This year, though, Ackerley lost his LD2 seat at the same time Clodfelter won.
Clodfelter will have a chance to break the rotating Republican jinx in 2018.
Friese joins leadership
Three Southern Arizona legislators have been elected to leadership positions for next session.
In the House, Rep. Randy Friese, a Democrat from Tucson-area Legislative District 9, will be assistant minority leader. That’s a position held by former state Rep. Bruce Wheeler last session.
Sen. Gail Griffin, a Republican from LD14 who lives in the Sierra Vista area, will return as majority whip in the Senate.
Sen. Steve Farley, a Democrat from LD9, will return as assistant minority leader in that chamber.
