Goldwater takes on costly union business at Phx City Hall

Valley unions pay police millions to lobby while removing officers from duty

Superior Court Judge Katherine Cooper is expected to issue an opinion late next week regarding whether the city of Phoenix should temporarily suspend the practice of funding “release time” for police officers to conduct union business. Phoenix and other Arizona cities spend millions of dollars every year to pay employees to perform union work on city time. The case is Cheatham and Marcus Huey v. City of Phoenix.

The request for a preliminary injunction is part of a lawsuit brought by the Goldwater Institute (GI) against the city of Phoenix and the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association union (PLEA). Goldwater attorney Clint Bolick’s take on the unsavory and costly practice can be read here.

The GI case challenges the city’s contract with the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, which provides an estimated $900,000 in annual release time for police union work, including lobbying. The provisions take six full-time officers off the streets — giving them full pay, benefits, and overtime for union work — in addition to providing thousands of additional release-time hours for the union to dole out at its discretion. Altogether, more than 40 police officers can be released from some or all of their law-enforcement duties by the union.

The Goldwater Institute contends that beyond endangering public safety, the release time is an unconstitutional subsidy, violating the gift clause of the Arizona Constitution by using taxpayer money to fund salaries of union and labor association leaders who represent city employees. Goldwater filed the complaint in December 2011.

During the hearing Friday, Bolick pointed out that the city couldn’t quantify the direct benefits it receives for what it spends on release time for the officers who conduct union business. The gift clause requires the city to prove it receives direct, tangible benefits from money it gives to a private entity, he said. Bolick also said the city didn’t have a clear way of tracking how union officers spend their release time.

“The union has hijacked the city’s treasury to fulfill its responsibilities,” Bolick said.

Despite the pending lawsuit, earlier this month the Phoenix City Council approved a new two-year labor contract for PLEA. The contract, set to begin July 1, continues the indefensible “release time” practice.

Did you feel the pang of a sharp thumb in your eye from your council member?  If not, it’s because the council aims to keep such information under wraps.

Meet Phoenix’s new police chief: Daniel Garcia

Former Dallas Police Assistant Chief takes reins of nation’s 6th largest city

Phoenix City Manager David Cavazos has named Daniel V. Garcia to head the Phoenix Police Deparment.

Other finalists included acting Phoenix Police Chief Joe Yahner, Phoenix Assistant Police Chief Kevin Robinson and to former San Jose Police Chief Robert Davis.

The Phoenix Police Department has approximately 3,055 sworn officers and a budget of over $500 million. Garcia is expected to begin his new assignment in May.

Here is Garcia’s 13-page redacted résumé, courtesy of the daily newspaper.

AZ AG Horne: Quartzsite council violated open meeting law

Numerous violations cited

Attorney General Tom Horne has found evidence that the Quartzsite Town Council has violated Arizona’s Open Meeting Laws (A.R.S. §§ 38-431 et. seq.) in connection with the conduct of Town Council meetings and dealings with a member of the public.

In this letter to Quartzsite Town Attorney Martin Brannan, Horne notes that on June 28, 2011, while addressing the Council, Quartzsite resident Jennifer Jones was removed from the meeting by a vote of the council. She had turned her back on the council and was addressing the audience, which the council reasonably could object to. Public bodies can eject members of the public for disruptive conduct, but they must first give a warning, which the council failed to do.

The second violation occurred on July 10, 2011 in which the Council convened an emergency meeting on at the Town Hall to discuss disruptions during previous meetings. The Council locked the doors to the meeting room and did not allow any member of the public to attend its meeting. Excluding the public from this meeting violated the Open Meeting Law.

In the third and related violation, Attorney General Horne notes that the Council did not fully comply with the posting requirements for emergency meetings. As of December 9, 2011, the minutes of the emergency meeting were not posted on the Town website.

The final violation involves the failure to comply with posting requirements for Notices and Minutes.

The Council did not post minutes for the July 10, 2011 emergency meeting. In addition, the Council failed to post minutes for a number of its meetings labeled as “work sessions.”

As a remedy, Horne has made the following recommendations:

– The Council will discuss the concerns listed in this letter with its legal counsel in open session during a properly noticed public meeting.
– Each member of the Council and staff will participate in a training session with counsel from the League of Arizona Cities and Towns regarding the requirements of the Open Meeting Laws.
– The Council will be subject to oversight by the Attorney General’s Office for a period of twelve months.

AG Horne defends election law to AZ Supreme Court today

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne  presents Arizonans with a rare opportunity this afternoon. Horne will argue Tucson v. Arizona before the Arizona Supreme Court at 2:00 p.m., Tuesday, December 6, at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, 1 Global Place, Glendale, AZ 85306 (Map)

The case centers on a 2009 state law, A.R.S. 9-821.01, a law requiring cities to have non-partisan elections and prohibit some at-large elections.

The prohibited system, now used in Tucson (but this statute would also prevent other cities from adopting that system) tends to disenfranchise voters in districts where the majority is different than the overall majority in that city. In a number of districts, the voters have been represented by someone who lost in their district.

Earlier, the state Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Tucson’s argument that this was purely a local matter and the Legislature had no right to pass laws on the subject. The Arizona Supreme Court granted review, and Horne will argue that the State does have a legitimate interest and that the statute is valid.

You can also watch the proceedings live at http://azcourts.gov/AZSupremeCourt/LiveArchivedVideo.aspx

Note: After accessing the page, scroll down and you will see the Tucson v. Arizona case under “Upcoming Events.” Next to the case you will see “case summary.” Once the argument goes live at 2:00 p.m. “oral argument” will appear next to “case summary.” Select the “oral argument” text and the feed will appear.

Two high paid county officials denied raises

The five-member Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has voted 3-2 to reject pay increases for two top-level county administrators already making six-figure salaries.

Supervisors Fulton Brock, Andy Kunasek and Max Wilson opposed the pay raises for Steve Wetzel, director of the county’s Office of Enterprise Technology and Risk Management Director Rocky Armfield.

Tone-deaf Supervisors Don Stapley and Mary Rose Wilcox actually voted in favor of the increases. Had the raises gone through, Wetzel’s annual salary would have increased to $213,803, from $194,480. Armfield’s would have risen to $132,018, from $125,362 a year.

The increases were proposed by the equally obtuse Maricopa County Office of Management and Budget.

The daily has more here. Pay particular attention that these two were singled out for raises during a merit-based pay freeze because they claimed to have received job offers outside of county government and County Manager David Smith recommended offering them salary increases to retain them. This practice of “counter offers” has resulted in hikes from 0.83 percent to 25.98 percent for 14 employees over the past five years.

Those privileged employees are with the Assessor’s Office, Human Services, County Manager’s Office, Recorder’s Office, Education Service Agency, Planning and Development, Office of Management and Budget, Elections and Public Health Departments.

Maricopa County appears to be in the mode of emulating the City of Phoenix. Earlier this year the shameless wizards known as city officials — such as the unelected City Manager David Cavazos – decided that it was appropriate for the cash-strapped city with a $59 million budget deficit to gift nearly $29 million in performance pay raises and longevity awards to employees. Cavazos was hired at a whopping $236,995. You’ll recall residents were told Phoenix was in such dire straits, it needed to impose a 2 percent tax on food to defray the impending fiscal disaster.

What the heck, it’s only taxpayer’s money.

Yuma AZ loses case against church: ADF victory

9^th Circuit: City of Yuma violated federal law against treating churches unequally in zoning matters

 It’s Sunday.

What better time for another accolade* to the Scottsdale-based Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) — a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith?

A church in Yuma, AZ, left paying the mortgage on a building the city would not allow it to occupy has won its legal battle on appeal and can now seek damages, including payment for the money it lost, thanks to the a lawsuit filed by ADF attorneys.

The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the city did not treat the church equally with similarly situated groups and businesses as required by federal law. The law, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act 0f 2000 (RLUIPA), protects religious institutions from discrimination in land use disputes with local governments.

ADF Senior Legal Counsel Byron Babione argued the case of Centro Familiar Cristiano Buenos Nuevas Christian Church v. City of Yuma.

Read the opinion here.

The court wrote, “It is hard to see how an express exclusion of ‘religious organizations’ from uses permitted as of right by other ‘membership organizations’ could be other than ‘less than equal terms’ for religious organizations.”

The city of Yuma requires religious organizations to obtain a conditional use permit to operate even though businesses and other “membership organizations” can build “as of right,” meaning they do not need a special permit. The city refused the church’s 2007 request for a permit on the basis that the church would “blight” an arts and entertainment district in the city’s Old Town District.

The court noted that “many of the uses permitted as of right would have the same practical effect as a church of blighting a potential block of bars and nightclubs. An apartment building taking up the whole block may be developed as of right, and so may a post office or prison. Prisons have bars, but not the kind promoting ‘entertainment.’ Thus the ordinance before us expressly treats religious organizations on a less than equal basis.”

* We’ve previously written about the good work of the Alliance Defense Fund here, here, here and here.

Mayor Hugh Hallman won’t seek reelection: Where to now?

Calls himself a “conservative”

Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman has announced he will not be seeking reelection to the post he’s held since 2004.  Prior to being elected mayor he served on the Tempe City Council from 1998 to 2002. Clearly he has a yen for the political arena.

He’s also a headmaster of a public preparatory academy and a business law attorney.  He’s a professor, an economist and an author, as well as a husband and father. His list of charitable and volunteer involvement is impressive.

Mayor Hallman must also have a degree in time management. Check out his complete bio here. His Facebook page reads like a resumé. And although he calls himself as a Republican, we couldn’t help noticing that he boldly lists his political views as “conservative.”

Nice touch, Mayor.

His current term expires this coming year.  Where might this accomplished whirlwind go next? We’d like to suggest the U.S. Senate.  The People of Arizona are looking to fill their seat in Washington, D.C.

Since when does snot belong in an editorial?

Regardless of where you stand on the issue of the taxpayer subsidized deal being brokered between the City of Glendale and the Phoenix Coyotes hockey franchise or the position taken by the Goldwater Institute’s CEO Darcy Olsen, it’s difficult not to be appalled by Doug MacEachern’s vulgar editorial in this morning’s Arizona Republic.

Editorialist MacEachern’s verbal buckshot veers far from civility — not even within range of what remnants still remain of journalistic standards — as he wildly flings the most base of adjectives. Calling the GI’s objections to the $100 million taxpayer subsidies to incentivize a Chicago mogul/purchaser “haughty obstructionism” was the least of it. Referring to Goldwater’s lawsuit as a “protection racket” is de rigueur for this flagging newspaper.  But then comes the “snotty” description of Olsen’s March 21 press release.

“Snotty?”

Could that be an indictor that those increasingly coarse folks at the newspaper didn’t like it?

Don’t mess with Miami

Phoenix’s Philly Gordon got off easy

Miami-Dade County voters are mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore.

After Mayor Carlos Alvarez hiked their property taxes by a staggering 14 percent to offset budget deficits, the people did what Phoenicians should have done with Mayor Philly Gordon when he implemented a tax on our food: They ousted their once-popular mayor, who is serving his second four-year term.

The tax increase was imposed despite record high — 12 percent — unemployment coupled with double-digit declines in real estate values as south Florida suffered through the housing and mortgage foreclosure crisis. The property tax increase was sold as an effort to fund vital services including police and public schools, but in the end, even strumming those popular chords hit a sour note.

Responding to the call for a special election, a whopping 88 percent of the voters decided they had had enough and sent Mayor Alvarez packing.

It was reported that this was the biggest such ouster, or recall, of an elected official before the end of his official term since California voters tossed out Democrat Governor Gray Davis in 2003.

Alvarez was first elected mayor in 2004 and re-elected in 2008. County commissioners now have the option of either appointing an official to serve out his term through late 2012 or calling a special election.

The vote, in which 9 out of 10 voters opted for ouster, shocked many observers. The success of the election signals an abrupt end for Republican Alvarez, who spent more than $1 million in a futile effort to avoid recall.

The complete report can be read in the Miami Herald.

What costs a $million that Jim Pederson doesn’t want to buy?

How about the Phoenix mayor’s office?

Developer Pederson is begging off, saying he owes too much to his employees and his business interests, and would be tapped out of time and energy, or something like that, if he were to run.  It’s akin to the old forced parting saw of wanting to “spend more time with the family.” His ability to self-finance would have made him a viable factor in the race.

Although he’s a Democrat, Pederson’s up front about his leanings.  With McCain confidant Wes Gullett, it’s more clandestine. He’s a registered Republican who was prominent on the list of Republicans for Janet *(Napolitano) and has never concealed his leftward bent.

Former City Councilman Greg Stanton, a Democrat,  is also in the supposedly non-partisan race.

Exploratory committees have been formed by council members Peggy Neely and Claude Mattox,  permitting them to dip their toes in the bigger pond without getting too wet.

* H/T to Dennis Durband, who captured these names from the original list, which has been removed, so as not to embarrass those who could benefit from a bit of shame.