The groundbreaking establishment of an active management area in the Douglas basin seemed destined for a possible repeal last week.
Voters in the Cochise County groundwater basin had approved establishing the new groundwater management system in 2022, but last week county election officials reviewed petitions calling for a repeal election. They declared the petitions sufficient.
This week, though, that repeal effort ran into its own brick wall when the Environmental Defense Action Fund, a political action committee, filed suit against the repeal effort.
The suit alleged a variety of problems with the petition effort. Most broadly, it said under state law there simply is no provision for voters to rescind the establishment of an active management area and return it to the previous status, an irrigation non-expansion area. The suit also alleged various problems with the petitions themselves.
This week, the Cochise County Attorney’s Office reviewed the lawsuit and agreed with its allegations, elections director Bob Bartelsmeyer said. As a result, there will be no election this year, and those seeking one will have to try again from scratch.
Ann Waters, who led the initiative effort, said she did so to protect people’s grandfathered water rights, which she said are endangered by the active management area’s establishment.
“The AMA still has not defined what it actually is,” she said. “People voted on something without knowing what it was.”
The effort to establish the active management area was historic — the first time local people had used a provision of state law that allowed them to establish greater regulation over groundwater in their basin.
While the effort to establish an AMA in the Douglas basin was successful, a similar one in the Willcox basin failed.
Candidates late on finance filings
Two candidates for Tucson City Council failed to file on time this week the latest required campaign-finance disclosures.
Democrat Miguel Ortega and Republican Victoria Lem, both candidates in Ward 1, had not filed disclosures Thursday afternoon that were due on Monday.
The other candidates for city office, including incumbent Democrat Lane Santa Cruz, did file her disclosure on time.
Find out more on the candidates’ campaign spending in Sunday’s Arizona Daily Star.
PAC remains unofficial in Tucson
The political action committee that sent out mailers in the Ward 1 race opposing Democratic incumbent Santa Cruz still has not complied with city ordinances.
The Arizona Prosperity Initative PAC hasn’t filed paperwork establishing itself as an entity operating in Tucson elections. The other outside groups spending in the race have done so.
However, Arizona Corporation Commission records show the initiative was formed as a corporation April 6 by Timothy LaSota, a well-known Republican attorney in the Phoenix area.
The directors are Donald Justin Harris, Joel Rhoads and John Holden.
Finchem has flown the coop
It looks like the Tucson area will no longer have any responsibility for former state Rep. Mark Finchem.
Voter registration documents, reviewed by a Phoenix newsletter called 48th Estate, show that Finchem registered to vote from a Phoenix address in January. He has also filed his intent to challenge Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, in the 2024 election.
Finchem, then an Oro Valley resident, served in the Arizona House of Representatives from 2015 through 2022, winning four elections.
In 2022, he was the Republican nominee for secretary of state but lost that race to Democrat Adrian Fontes — though he has never accepted his 120,000-vote loss.
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