PHOENIX — A Southern Arizona lawmaker is unilaterally blocking a state funding measure to help build a memorial in Tucson to victims of the Jan. 8, 2011, mass shooting.
Six people were killed in the shooting and 13 wounded, including then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
House Bill 2436, which sets aside $2.5 million cleared the House two months ago on a bipartisan 49-11 vote. Senate President Steve Yarbrough then assigned it to the Appropriations Committee as well as the Committee on Natural Resources, Energy and Water. Sen. Debbie Lesko, who chairs the Appropriations panel, said she would hear it only after it cleared the other committee.
But Sen. Gail Griffin, R-Hereford, who is in charge of the Natural Resources committee, has refused to even schedule it for a hearing, said Tucson Rep. Todd Clodfelter, the bill’s sponsor.
He said efforts to get an answer from Griffin about her reasoning have proven fruitless, leaving Clodfelter with little basis to question the action other than speculation.
“I don’t know if it’s a partisan thing,” he said.
Whereas Clodfelter is a Republican, like Griffin, the event to be memorialized was a meeting that Giffords, a Democrat, was having with constituents when a gunman opened fire. But Clodfelter said he believes the event and the benefit to Tucson of having a memorial transcend party politics.
“I think it would be good for our community,” he said.
Griffin did not immediately return repeated messages seeking comment.
Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, are spearheading efforts to get Arizona and other states to require background checks any time a weapon is sold, including person-to-person sales and sales at gun shows, which are not regulated under federal firearms laws. Both have vowed to work to defeat legislators who are opposed to such checks.
By contrast, Griffin is sponsoring SB 1122, which would specifically bar state and local governments from requiring background checks for the sale of any personal property, including guns. That measure was approved 16-14 by the Senate and awaits House floor action.
Clodfelter acknowledged that anything with a price tag gets a lot of scrutiny, especially for a project that has nothing directly to do with state government. But he said his legislation for the Tucson memorial was crafted to have minimal impact.
“It’s not asking for $2.5 million all at once,” he said, but instead would divide up the funding over five years. “It’s a half million here, a half million there.”
The legislation also required a dollar-for-dollar match of private donations.
“It puts the monkey on the back of the community to raise the extra funding,” Clodfelter said.
Moreover, the state would be on the financial hook only if Congress approves legislation designating the memorial site in El Presidio Park in downtown Tucson as a national memorial.
The congressional measure, HR 362, is sponsored by U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, a Republican who represents the same district as did Giffords.
“This was the first time in the history of the United States that an assassination attempt was made upon a congressional member while she was meeting with constituents,” McSally’s measure reads.
McSally’s federal legislation, awaiting its own hearing, has no direct financial commitment, appropriating no funds for construction, operation or maintenance. But it does authorize the National Parks Service to use funds to promote the Tucson site.
It is within the power of those who chair a committee to decide what measures to consider. But Clodfelter said his legislation did not get a fair chance.
“If it failed in the hearings or failed on the floor, that’s one thing,” he said. But Griffin’s action denied it those opportunities.
There are no future hearings scheduled for Griffin’s committee. But there is a chance the funding could be inserted into the nearly $9.8 billion spending plan being negotiated between Republican legislative leaders and Gov. Doug Ducey, a move that would bypass the entire committee process.
Clodfelter said there have been calls made to the governor’s office from some community members interested in the memorial, asking him to make the dollars a priority.
“The governor cares deeply about remembering and memorializing the tragic events of Jan. 8,” Ducey spokesman Daniel Scarpinato said in a written statement Friday. “We are currently negotiating the budget with legislative leadership, and always have an open mind to ideas that can work.”
Clodfelter said state lawmakers should see the financing as an investment, as there are people who travel the country to visit national monuments, spending money in the local communities they visit.
Crystal Kasnoff, executive director of the Tucson memorial foundation, said last fall the group had raised about $1.7 million, including $500,000 from selling the naming rights to a garden pathway outside the memorial to a yet-to-be-disclosed private company.
Plans include carved symbols to represent the victims as well as incorporating items left as makeshift memorials at the shooting site.
Killed in the 2011 mass shooting were U.S. District Judge John Roll, Giffords aide Gabe Zimmerman, 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green, Dorothy Morris, Phyllis Schneck and Dorwan Stoddard.
Shooter Jared Lee Loughner pleaded guilty in federal court to multiple charges to escape the death penalty, and as part of that agreement, is to never be released from prison.
