Homeless in Arizona

Phoenix, Tucson elections "rigged" for special interest groups???

In Phoenix 40 percent of the budget goes to the police and 20 percent to the fire department.

Source

Phoenix, Tucson fight change in election calendar

By Dustin Gardiner The Republic | azcentral.com Thu May 16, 2013 10:42 PM

Tucson and Phoenix are waging a legal fight to overturn a state law that would require local governments to move their elections to even-numbered years to coincide with statewide contests for president and governor.

If the law takes effect in 2014, Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton and other municipal elected officials could have their terms extended by several months or even a year.

A Pima County Superior Court judge on Monday denied the cities’ request for summary judgment in the case, saying that he needs to get more information than already submitted in court filings. A hearing will likely be scheduled in the next month, so the parties can debate the facts further.

City leaders had sought a decision on the law’s validity and an injunction to prevent it from taking effect while they argue the issue in court. They said the law interferes with a matter of purely local concern: their authority to determine how to conduct elections.

Cities and towns across Arizona have objected to the law and cite a long list of potential consequences, including that local elections would become fiercely partisan or draw little attention at the bottom of a more crowded ballot. The law, signed by Gov. Jan Brewer in 2012, will impact roughly half of the state’s 70 municipalities.

Supporters of the move have said it will increase voter turnout and help some cities and towns save money because they could utilize county elections resources, instead of paying the cost of printing ballots and staffing elections on their own.

In Phoenix, Stanton and four council members — Bill Gates, Thelda Williams, Michael Nowakowski and Daniel Valenzuela — could potentially serve a year beyond their elected terms, which expire in 2015, assuming they stay in office for that long. Each council member represents about 180,000 residents who would have to wait longer to elect their representative.

Tucson filed its lawsuit against the state in October after several months of cities grappling over how they might respond. A few months later, Phoenix joined the case as an intervenor, meaning the city can argue the case, which will impact all Arizona charter municipalities.

Phoenix City Clerk Cris Meyer said the law would require sweeping changes to the city’s election system and do away with the city-focused process voters have requested over the years, particularly the emphasis on a nonpartisan election cycle.

“Commingling of the state’s and Phoenix’s processes, including potentially commingled ballots, diminishes Phoenix’s ability to ensure a pristine process, free of party politics and state or federal issues typically associated with party platforms,” attorneys for Phoenix argued in court documents.

Phoenix voters decided in the 1970s to permanently hold their elections on the opposite years as presidential and gubernatorial contests. Changing that would require voters to approve amendments to the City Charter. The new law also conflicts with charter language that governs the mayor and council’s term limits and salary changes, among other issues.

The city would likely have to abandon its voting-center system, which allows residents to cast an in-person ballot at more than 20 locations starting several days before the election. Arizona holds elections on a single day, and voters have assigned precincts.

However, attorneys for the state have argued the law seeks to preserve democracy, suggesting off-year elections depress voter turnout and make the process vulnerable to special-interest influence. They said any burdens to Phoenix or Tucson are “slight and incidental.”

The state Attorney General’s Office contends election alignment has led to a massive increase in voter turnout in Chandler, Scottsdale and Gilbert, which moved their elections from the spring to fall of even-numbered years. For example, 14 percent of Scottsdale registered voters turned out for the city’s March 2006 election, compared with 85 percent in fall 2008, according to court documents.

“The record is clear that election alignment causes dramatic increases in voter turnout and dramatic reductions in overall election costs and cost per vote,” the Attorney General’s Office wrote.

Pima County Superior Court Judge James Marner also denied a motion by the state for a summary judgment to dismiss the case. But Marner said conflicting evidence presented by the state and cities regarding voter turnout and cost savings needs to be heard in court.

Politicians and cops are addicted to Federal pork???

Posted on May 17, 2013 11:27 am

First responders face cutbacks as federal funds dry up

My Turn by SCOTT SOMERS

Once again an American city has been the target of the brutality of terrorism. Our hearts go out to the victims and families affected by the Boston Marathon bombing. [If you ask me the police who flushed the Constitution rights of the people of Boston down the toilet to catch the two Boston bombers were bigger terrorists then the Boston Bombers were.]

Watching the news, we were witness to the value of a unified response by federal, state and local authorities. Videos document Boston firefighters, emergency medical personnel and local hospitals working together to treat the wounded. Pictures show FBI and ATF agents standing with Boston police to investigate the crime and apprehend those responsible.

Homeland security continues to be a highly visible, core responsibility for frontline first responders. [The only good thing about all this "homeland security" is that it make most people realized that America has turned into a police state!!!]

Federal, state and local agencies in the Valley have worked diligently to integrate communications and build regional preparedness capabilities. An example is the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center. ACTIC was one of the first fusion centers to go into operation and is able to tie together intelligence agencies statewide. This partnership prepares the region to better respond to natural or human-caused disasters or terrorist events.

But critical programs face cuts amid a decline in federal preparedness efforts. [I disagree with that 100 percent. We don't need these wasteful police state pork programs any more then we need a hole in the head!!!]

Urban Area Security Initiative grants have been used by fire departments to improve capabilities to respond to hazardous-materials incidents. Some of these resources were used recently to respond to a suspicious letter containing an oily substance at the Phoenix office of Sen. Jeff Flake. [Yea, and I don't ever remember the cops using these megabucks of Federal pork to ever respond to any real threats. They usually end up blowing up a bag of dirty clothing that somebody forgot at a bus stop. And then claiming that they protected us from some imaginary terrorists]

Police have used UASI grants to increase explosive-ordinance disposal and SWAT and intelligence-analyzing capabilities. This equipment was on display when officers investigated a backpack left near 44th Street and McDowell Road. [I don't remember that incident, but if it was like all the others the cops probably ended up blowing up the backpack only to find out it wasn't a bomb, but a bag of dirty clothing.]

But Phoenix UASI decreased more than 50 percent between fiscal 2010 and 2012. [Thank God!!! We need a lot less of this wasteful government pork that has turned American into a police state]

The region is in jeopardy of losing its funding altogether as Congress continues to call for reductions in the number of regions receiving UASI grants. The president’s 2014 budget proposed consolidating state and local preparedness grants without adequate stakeholder input. [Yea, and lets hope they lose 100 percent of this wasteful police state pork!!!]

The Metropolitan Medical Response System grant was all but eliminated last year. MMRS helped strengthen medical surge capacity, mass vaccinations and treatment, decontamination capabilities and regional collaboration. [Translation, like the insane unconstitutional war on drugs, it's a jobs program for cops!!!]

In March, Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, Tempe Mayor Mark Mitchell, along with council members Daniel Valenzuela of Phoenix and Sammy Chavira of Glendale and myself, met with representatives of the Department of Homeland Security to express concern about the decline in the region’s grant allocation. The issue is under review by DHS. [So it sounds like the author [Scott Sommers], along with Greg Stanton, Mark Mitchell, Daniel Valenzuela, and Sammy Chavira are part of the problem of this wasteful government spending on police state pork and all need to be booted out of office by the voters]

Homeland Security grants are needed to sustain critical capabilities, training and exercises for our first responders and community partners and to continue such successful programs as Terrorism Liaison Officers and Community Emergency Response Teams. These Phoenix regional programs were identified as “innovative best practices” in a 2009 DHS review. [Of course they were. The DHS wants as much government pork as it can get!!!]

Be assured that Valley first responders remain ever vigilant and prepared to prevent and respond to emergencies. But local responders need a committed federal partner to protect our homeland. [That's 100 percent BS. What we need to do is boot the police state politicians who are responsible for this wasteful government spending out of office!!!]

Scott Somers is a Mesa City Council member.

Mayor Lewis and Barney sound like tax and spend terrorists.

In most city governments the salaries of the police account for about 40 percent of the budget, while the fire department accounts for about the next 20 percent, with police and fire departments salaries accounting for about 60 percent of the budget.

Gilbert Mayor John Lewis and Queen Creek Mayor Gail Barney seem to want you to think they are not going to spend your hard earned tax dollars on cops and firemen, but rather on roads and sewers, which is a lie.

Sadly America is the worlds biggest police state and we jail a higher percentage of our population then any other country in the world.

And the number one reason most of these people in American prisons are their for victimless drug war crimes.

If Gilbert Mayor John Lewis and Queen Creek Mayor Gail Barney really wanted to save your tax dollars they would order their police to stop arresting people for victimless crimes and concentrate on real criminals that hurt people, like robbers, burglars, muggers and rapists, not harmless pot smokers.

Source

Sales-tax simplification shouldn’t kill cities, towns

Our Turn by John Lewis and Gail Barney

The Southeast Valley’s explosive growth has municipalities such as Gilbert and Queen Creek scrambling to keep up with such fundamental needs as roads, sewers and public-safety services as developers and home builders erect waves of new homes.

To fund this critical growth-related infrastructure, Arizona cities and towns rely heavily on the construction sales tax, a key component of overall sales-tax revenues. Local sales tax represents approximately 50 percent of general-fund revenues in Gilbert and more than 47 percent in Queen Creek. [And of course almost all of those taxes goes to pay for the cops and firemen, not roads and sewers as Mayors John Lewis and Gail Barney want you to think]

With numbers like these, we are alarmed over the continued push in the state Legislature to eliminate the construction sales tax. Special-interest groups are attempting to use Gov. Jan Brewer’s important legislation on tax simplification as the means to achieve this financial windfall no matter the devastation to the state budget or that it will force many development-related costs onto our existing residents and businesses. [Yes, the problem here is SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS, but it's not the unnamed special interest groups mention by Mayors John Lewis and Gail Barney. It's the special interest groups called the police union and the fireman union. The police and fire department unions LOVE taxes, because they get about 60 percent of the taxes that most cities collect to pay their salaries]

Gov. Brewer has made tax simplification a top priority and worked tirelessly to develop business-friendly tax reforms to aid economic development and job-creation efforts.

As the mayors of Gilbert and Queen Creek, we are fully supportive. If anyone in the state knows the importance of job creation, it is the leadership of cities and towns. These efforts should not be lost in a legislative battle over special-interest tax breaks.

While the Arizona system of taxation is far from perfect, it does honor the axiom “growth must pay for itself.” The cost of putting in new roads and infrastructure should be shouldered by developments incurring the cost, not by existing homeowners and businesses that already paid their way.

But does tax simplification need to occur? We say yes.

Is eliminating the construction sales tax the best way to achieve this simplification? The answer is clearly no.

We share the objectives behind Gov. Brewer’s tax-simplification legislation but have differing thoughts on how to get there. For this reason, we have been actively engaged in providing feedback, communicating concerns over devastating financial impacts while also spending countless months researching and crafting alternative solutions.

We are almost there.

After months of hard work, with continued guidance from the governor’s office, leaders of cities and towns developed a modified proposal streamlining sales-tax reporting, collection and auditing. We drafted legislative language making Arizona compliant with the federally proposed Marketplace Fairness Act (Internet taxation). [Translation Mayors John Lewis and Queen Creek Mayor Gail Barney want to shake us down for even more taxes with an internet tax!!!]

We are working diligently to find a solution on the construction sales tax that is common-sense, benefits Arizona businesses and taxpayers and doesn’t blow an enormous hole in state or local budgets. And we are almost there. [Translation - Mayors John Lewis and Gail Barney are working diligently to shake you down for as many taxes as they can!!!]

No one is certain when this legislative session will end. But we do know it can end abruptly, without notice. When it does end, tax simplification should not get lost in the shuffle, nor should legislation get pushed through that harms communities like Gilbert and Queen Creek. [Sorry guys, taxes don't harm the government, taxes feed government bureaucracies. Taxes harm the people that Mayors John Lewis and Gail Barney pretend to be looking out for]

Municipalities are the very economic engines of Arizona. Providing infrastructure is vital to economic development and job creation. We ask for continued partnership and transparency to ensure the ultimate outcome on tax simplification is a win for taxpayers, a win for the state and a win for cities and towns. [Translation - Mayors John Lewis and Gail Barney want to shake you down for as much of your hard earned money as they can get away with]

John Lewis is the mayor of Gilbert and Gail Barney is the mayor of Queen Creek.

The rise of the fourth branch of government

And at the same time these members of Congress who are doling out pork and cash can deny giving special treatment to the people who gave them campaign contributions by saying "I didn't write those laws. Those laws were created by some unnamed federal bureaucrat in some unnamed federal agency. I am shocked at how those unnamed, unaccountable bureaucrats are wasting out tax dollars [but of course they never will pass any laws to stop it, because they agree with those unnamed, unaccountable bureaucrats who are helping them rob us taxpayers blind]"

Government also frequently works like this at the state, county and city levels too. When elected officials can blame unelected bureaucrats for their decisions it makes it a lot easier for them to rob us blind and get reelected at the same time.

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The rise of the fourth branch of government

By Jonathan Turley, Published: May 24 E-mail the writer

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University.

There were times this past week when it seemed like the 19th-century Know-Nothing Party had returned to Washington. President Obama insisted he knew nothing about major decisions in the State Department, or the Justice Department, or the Internal Revenue Service. The heads of those agencies, in turn, insisted they knew nothing about major decisions by their subordinates. It was as if the government functioned by some hidden hand.

Clearly, there was a degree of willful blindness in these claims. However, the suggestion that someone, even the president, is in control of today’s government may be an illusion.

The growing dominance of the federal government over the states has obscured more fundamental changes within the federal government itself: It is not just bigger, it is dangerously off kilter. Our carefully constructed system of checks and balances is being negated by the rise of a fourth branch, an administrative state of sprawling departments and agencies that govern with increasing autonomy and decreasing transparency.

For much of our nation’s history, the federal government was quite small. In 1790, it had just 1,000 nonmilitary workers. In 1962, there were 2,515,000 federal employees. Today, we have 2,840,000 federal workers in 15 departments, 69 agencies and 383 nonmilitary sub-agencies.

This exponential growth has led to increasing power and independence for agencies. The shift of authority has been staggering. The fourth branch now has a larger practical impact on the lives of citizens than all the other branches combined.

The rise of the fourth branch has been at the expense of Congress’s lawmaking authority. In fact, the vast majority of “laws” governing the United States are not passed by Congress but are issued as regulations, crafted largely by thousands of unnamed, unreachable bureaucrats. One study found that in 2007, Congress enacted 138 public laws, while federal agencies finalized 2,926 rules, including 61 major regulations.

This rulemaking comes with little accountability. It’s often impossible to know, absent a major scandal, whom to blame for rules that are abusive or nonsensical. Of course, agencies owe their creation and underlying legal authority to Congress, and Congress holds the purse strings. But Capitol Hill’s relatively small staff is incapable of exerting oversight on more than a small percentage of agency actions. And the threat of cutting funds is a blunt instrument to control a massive administrative state — like running a locomotive with an on/off switch.

The autonomy was magnified when the Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that agencies are entitled to heavy deference in their interpretations of laws. The court went even further this past week, ruling that agencies should get the same heavy deference in determining their own jurisdictions — a power that was previously believed to rest with Congress. In his dissent in Arlington v. FCC, Chief Justice John Roberts warned: “It would be a bit much to describe the result as ‘the very definition of tyranny,’ but the danger posed by the growing power of the administrative state cannot be dismissed.”

The judiciary, too, has seen its authority diminished by the rise of the fourth branch. Under Article III of the Constitution, citizens facing charges and fines are entitled to due process in our court system. As the number of federal regulations increased, however, Congress decided to relieve the judiciary of most regulatory cases and create administrative courts tied to individual agencies. The result is that a citizen is 10 times more likely to be tried by an agency than by an actual court. In a given year, federal judges conduct roughly 95,000 adjudicatory proceedings, including trials, while federal agencies complete more than 939,000.

These agency proceedings are often mockeries of due process, with one-sided presumptions and procedural rules favoring the agency. And agencies increasingly seem to chafe at being denied their judicial authority. Just ask John E. Brennan. Brennan, a 50-year-old technology consultant, was charged with disorderly conduct and indecent exposure when he stripped at Portland International Airport last year in protest of invasive security measures by the Transportation Security Administration. He was cleared by a federal judge, who ruled that his stripping was a form of free speech. The TSA was undeterred. After the ruling, it pulled Brennan into its own agency courts under administrative charges.

The rise of the fourth branch has occurred alongside an unprecedented increase in presidential powers — from the power to determine when to go to war to the power to decide when it’s reasonable to vaporize a U.S. citizen in a drone strike. In this new order, information is jealously guarded and transparency has declined sharply. That trend, in turn, has given the fourth branch even greater insularity and independence. When Congress tries to respond to cases of agency abuse, it often finds officials walled off by claims of expanding executive privilege.

Of course, federal agencies officially report to the White House under the umbrella of the executive branch. But in practice, the agencies have evolved into largely independent entities over which the president has very limited control. Only 1 percent of federal positions are filled by political appointees, as opposed to career officials, and on average appointees serve only two years. At an individual level, career officials are insulated from political pressure by civil service rules. There are also entire agencies — including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission — that are protected from White House interference.

Some agencies have gone so far as to refuse to comply with presidential orders. For example, in 1992 President George H.W. Bush ordered the U.S. Postal Service to withdraw a lawsuit against the Postal Rate Commission, and he threatened to sack members of the Postal Service’s Board of Governors who denied him. The courts ruled in favor of the independence of the agency.

It’s a small percentage of agency matters that rise to the level of presidential notice. The rest remain the sole concern of agency discretion.

As the power of the fourth branch has grown, conflicts between the other branches have become more acute. There is no better example than the fights over presidential appointments.

Wielding its power to confirm, block or deny nominees is one of the few remaining ways Congress can influence agency policy and get a window into agency activity. Nominations now commonly trigger congressional demands for explanations of agencies’ decisions and disclosures of their documents. And that commonly leads to standoffs with the White House.

Take the fight over Richard Cordray, nominated to serve as the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cordray is highly qualified, but Republican senators oppose the independence of the new bureau and have questions about its jurisdiction and funding. After those senators repeatedly blocked the nomination, Obama used a congressional break in January to make a recess appointment. Since then, two federal appeals courts have ruled that Obama’s recess appointments violated the Constitution and usurped congressional authority. While the fight continues in the Senate, the Obama administration has appealed to the Supreme Court.

It would be a mistake to dismiss such conflicts as products of our dysfunctional, partisan times. Today’s political divisions are mild compared with those in the early republic, as when President Thomas Jefferson described his predecessor’s tenure as “the reign of the witches.” Rather, today’s confrontations reflect the serious imbalance in the system.

The marginalization Congress feels is magnified for citizens, who are routinely pulled into the vortex of an administrative state that allows little challenge or appeal. The IRS scandal is the rare case in which internal agency priorities are forced into the public eye. Most of the time, such internal policies are hidden from public view and congressional oversight. While public participation in the promulgation of new regulations is allowed, and often required, the process is generally perfunctory and dismissive.

In the new regulatory age, presidents and Congress can still change the government’s priorities, but the agencies effectively run the show based on their interpretations and discretion. The rise of this fourth branch represents perhaps the single greatest change in our system of government since the founding.

We cannot long protect liberty if our leaders continue to act like mere bystanders to the work of government.

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Goldwater Institute threatens suit over Phoenix practice of ‘spiking’ pensions

From this article it sure sounds like Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton is a liar who will say anything to get elected.

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton Stanton lied to the public when he had campaigned and said he would end this practice in this article.

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton also lied to the public when he campaigned and said he would end the temporary Phoenix sales tax, which mostly goes to the Phoenix police and fire departments.

It sure looks like Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton doesn't support the people that elected him, but rather is owned by the special interest groups in the Phoenix Police and Phoenix Fire Department unions.

I suspect those 2,400 retired Phoenix cops and firefighters vote for Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton because he supports their government pork.

Source

Goldwater Institute threatens suit over Phoenix practice of ‘spiking’ pensions

By Craig Harris The Republic | azcentral.com Tue May 28, 2013 11:23 PM

The Goldwater Institute has threatened to sue Phoenix if the city does not end a legally questionable policy that allows police officers and firefighters to increase the amount of their pensions by cashing in unused sick leave, vacation and other benefits.

The Phoenix-based conservative watchdog group, which has a history of winning suits against municipalities, sent a letter late last week to Mayor Greg Stanton, saying state law is clear that the practice of “spiking” pensions is illegal. The letter also said “attempts to evade the obvious meaning of this law are, at best, erroneous, at worst, dishonest.”

Stanton, who had campaigned on pension reform but has taken no action to end pension spiking by public-safety officers, declined an interview request. [Just like he also campaigned and promised to remove the temporary sales tax which he didn't.]

His spokeswoman, Sarah Muench, issued a statement saying Stanton “will ask for a meeting to bring together the Goldwater Institute and our City Attorney.” [Sounds like Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton is just shoveling the BS to keep the reporters and public at bay for a little bit longer]

“He looks forward to discussing it. He has no further comment at this time,” Muench said.

One Fire Department captain, meanwhile, said Goldwater would be wasting taxpayer funds if it forced Phoenix to defend itself in court. [Of course the only people that benefit from this practice are members of the Phoenix Fire Department and Phoenix Police Department]

If a lawsuit is filed, Goldwater likely will seek a judgment declaring the practice illegal.

In the face of such a judgment, the statewide Public Safety Personnel Retirement System would have no choice but to seek refunds from retired police officers and firefighters who received enhanced pension benefits because of pay spiking, system administrator Jared Smout said.

“We would have to figure out what their pension should have been, and any overpayment, and collect that,” Smout said. “The way we typically collect is by reducing pensions. ... This potentially would affect a large amount of people.”

The city could avoid a legal judgment by voluntarily agreeing to change its policy.

In that case, it is unclear whether the retirement system would try to recoup past overpayments, because it could face a lawsuit by retirees. [Who have been stealing our tax dollars and want to keep the stolen loot]

Smout said the retirement system would prefer to have a court ruling in advance so that whatever steps it takes to recoup overpayments are legally binding and less vulnerable to litigation.

It is unknown how many Phoenix retirees could be affected, but such repayments could be significant.

For example, in one instance, a former assistant fire chief increased his lump-sum retirement check by roughly a quarter of a million dollars, to $795,983, and he increased his annual pension benefits by more than $40,000 — to $130,046 a year.

There are approximately 2,400 Phoenix retirees receiving benefits from the Public Safety Personnel Retirement System. Rank-and-file officers say they have been unfairly criticized by the public as greedy because a few high-ranking executives have significantly enhanced their pensions through spiking. [Have to disagree with that. The retired rank and file police officers and firemen screw the taxpayers just as much as the high ranking ones]

However, there has been no organized movement to curb abuses in the pension system.

Smout said the Public Safety Personnel Retirement System, of which Phoenix is the largest member, has requested information from the city on its justification for allowing police officers and firefighters to spike their pensions.

The pension fund has taken no action against the city and has stated that pension spiking by Phoenix only hurts the city because it results in a larger bill the city must pay to the state pension trust for retirement benefits.

Phoenix budgeted $109 million this fiscal year for public-safety pension costs, and that figure will increase by $20 million for the fiscal year that begins July 1. In fiscal 2003, the city paid $7.2 million.

Pension spiking accounts for only a portion of the increased payment. Substantial investment losses by the pension trust, and other factors such as highly paid and experienced public-safety officers, account for the city’s increased payments.

An inquiry by the state pension system, and Goldwater’s legal threat, come after The Arizona Republic earlier this month reported the city’s pension-spiking policy, which has allowed a few retirees to become millionaires shortly after retirement.

The newspaper also found that the spiking policy allowed a few police officers and firefighters to make more in retirement than when they worked.

The average public-safety pension for a Phoenix retiree is $59,341, about $10,000 more than the statewide average. There are 153 Phoenix public-safety retirees who receive pensions greater than $88,000 — more than two times the average income in Arizona.

The Republic initially reported that pension spiking occurs because the city allows public-safety officers to cash in unused sick leave, vacation and deferred compensation to calculate their pensions.

The Republic has since learned that the city also counts compensation paid for emergency shifts, bonuses and vehicle and cellphone allowances to be calculated into salary totals that determine pension benefits.

State law says “unused sick leave, payment in lieu of vacation, payment for unused compensatory time or payment for any fringe benefits” cannot be used as compensation to compute retirement benefits.

State law also says that only “base salary, overtime pay, shift differential pay, military differential wage pay, compensatory time used by an employee in lieu of overtime not otherwise paid by an employer and holiday pay” may be used to calculate pension benefits.

Final compensation and length of service are the key components in determining the amount of a public pension in Arizona. The more a person makes at the end of a career, the higher the lifetime pension. Salary spiking, therefore, increases pensions and the long-term costs for taxpayers.

The city issued a statement Tuesday saying that its public-safety employees have bargained for fewer vacation and sick days in exchange for a higher salary. It also said that, in certain circumstances, an employee can quit accruing sick and vacation leave in return for additional salary.

The statement also said “whether a public- safety employee’s compensation is pensionable under state statute is a decision to be made by the PSPRS administrators.”

Smout and other public-safety administrators said they do not have the resources to determine whether an employee’s compensation is “pensionable.” Instead, they say, they rely upon the accuracy and honesty of governments that are part of the system to report the accurate compensation of public-safety officers.

Jon Riches, an attorney from Goldwater, said the demand letter was intended to put the city on notice.

“Hopefully, they will take action to change these policies. If the policy remains as it is, it’s difficult to imagine a situation where a lawsuit wouldn’t occur,” Riches said. “Hopefully, Phoenix does the right thing and changes a policy that is abusive and illegal.”

City Councilman Sal DiCiccio, an outspoken critic of the costs of public pensions, agreed.

“Under the best case scenario, the city of Phoenix is purposely circumventing the law. In the worst case, which is the current situation, the city is breaking the law,” he said.

But John Teffy, a Phoenix Fire Department captain, said Goldwater should stand down.

“It seems to me that if the Goldwater Institute took the time to understand how the city works and how contracts work, they would know there is a much simpler way to address this than with (threats of) frivolous lawsuits,” Teffy said.

Will Phoenix City Council call a halt to (illegal?) pension padding?

Source

Will Phoenix City Council call a halt to (illegal?) pension padding?

The Phoenix City Council will huddle privately on Wednesday to puzzle out what to do about those perennial pests over at the Goldwater Institute.

The conservative think tank has long been a thorn in the city’s side, having twice sued to stop illegal giveaways of taxpayer money.

Now it’s threatening to do it again – this time to end an obviously illegal scheme that allows some high-level police and fire officials to not just feather their retirement nests but to gild the things.

“It seems to me the state law is pretty clear on this,” Goldwater attorney Jon Riches told me. “It’s fascinating to me that the practice has happened at all.”

Clearly, Riches hasn’t spent much time hanging around Phoenix city hall. This is the city that sent City Manager Frank Fairbanks into retirement a few years ago with a pension larger than that of any U.S. president. This is the City Council that quietly handed City Manager David Cavazos a 33 percent pay raise last year – a move that boosted his base pay by $78,000 and his deferred compensation by another $8,580 a year.

This, even as Phoenix residents continue paying a 2 percent “emergency” tax on food that once upon a time the mayor promised to repeal.

Then again Mayor Greg Stanton also called for an end to pension spiking during his 2011 campaign.

Sweet maneuver, the spike.

City workers get a generous amount of leave time – 40.5 days a year for entry-level employees – and if they don’t use it all, they are paid for a portion of it when they retire. That cash-out, along with deferred compensation and other fringe benefits, is then counted as “salary” in order to boost their pensions with a little – no, a LOT – of help from taxpayers.

Phoenix cut back on spiking by civilian employees last year though it still allows them to artificially inflate their pensions with unused vacation as well as sick leave accrued before July 2012.

But city leaders have been unwilling to touch spiking by police and firefighters.

State law says members of the Public Safety Personnel Retirement System can’t boost their pensions using “payment for unused sick leave, payment in lieu of vacation, payment for unused compensatory time or payment for any fringe benefits.”

So the city struck a deal with police and fire unions to allow “monthly pay in lieu of sick or vacation accrual” in the final years before retirement.

“These are not payments for sick leave or vacation earned but not taken,” the city’s legal department reasoned, in an e-mail explaining the policy. “Rather, they are bargained-for salary increases in exchange for accepting a lessened benefit package.”

Nicely danced, don’t you think?

The Goldwater Institute, in a letter warning the city to cut it out, calls such reasoning “at best erroneous, at worst dishonest.”

And certainly painful for Phoenix taxpayers, who have seen public-safety pension costs rise from $7.2 million in fiscal 2003 to $129 million in the coming year.

To be fair, much of that is due to sizable investment losses in recent years. And most rank-and-file police and firefighters see only a modest increase in their pensions due to spiking.

But some in the top echelons have turned the spike into the fine-art of a slam dunk, earning more in retirement than while actually doing the job. Republic reporter Craig Harris reports that one former fire captain padded his pension by $40,000 a year by spiking his “salary” with an array of fringe benefits.

Stanton wasn’t available to answer questions about why the spiking continues given his call to end it, or what he plans to do now that the practice has landed on the newspaper’s front page.

Shocking, I know.

He’s called an executive session on Wednesday to discuss the Goldwater threat.

His PR flack did e-mail me a statement, noting that the city has passed “sweeping pension reform” on Stanton’s watch and curtailed future civilian sick leave spiking.

“We also have to make sure the abuses in the system do not continue and that is what we will deliver,” she quoted Stanton as saying. “To the extreme cases where people have taken advantage of the system, we have to stop that. But any changes to the system must ensure that police officers and firefighters who risk their lives every day for us are compensated in a competitive manner that allows us to attract and retain top talent.”

Surely, you can do that, mayor, without breaking the law – not to mention the public’s trust.

Go to jail for feeding Fido hamburger instead of steak????

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Phoenix animal-cruelty law strengthened

By Dustin Gardiner The Arizona Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jun 5, 2013 10:23 PM

Phoenix City Council members voted unanimously Wednesday to toughen the city’s animal-cruelty law and provide more tools to deal with animal hoarders.

The move expands the definitions of what constitutes animal cruelty and what food, water and shelter is appropriate for animals. Under current law, there is no clear definition of suitable drinking water and food.

City leaders said unclear definitions regarding proper care are letting too many abusers off the hook because judges have a hard time interpreting “cruel neglect.”

For example, a neglectful owner can often get away with providing unsuitable food for the breed or dirty water.

The changes are the result of the Phoenix Animal Cruelty Task Force, which spent the past year looking at animal-welfare laws and raising awareness. Council members Thelda Williams and Michael Nowakowski led the group.

“The judge will allow you to feed them slop as long as it’s edible,” said Williams, who witnessed animal-abuse cases as an administrator in the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. “It happens all too frequently.”

Mayor Greg Stanton created the task force last year after city workers discovered the bodies of nine animals, mostly dogs, at a south Phoenix lot. Investigators determined they had died of disease, neglect or abandonment.

Williams said she is pushing the proposal now because a similar bill died in the state Legislature this year. She hopes lawmakers will use Phoenix’s example as a state template.

She said some lawmakers from rural areas had rejected the bill because they were concerned limitations meant to target animal hoarding by outlawing “cruel confinement” of an animal were too broad.

Phoenix’s ordinance takes a different approach: Someone convicted of animal cruelty who keeps 10 or more animals must undergo a court-ordered psychological evaluation.

Mayor Greg Stanton loves gifts

Source

Phoenix supports ethics overhaul

By Dustin Gardiner The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Jun 11, 2013 10:27 PM

Three months after a group of legal experts raised red flags about Phoenix’s ethics rules, the City Council voted Tuesday to move forward with reforms aimed at strengthening the policies.

The council accepted the bulk of the changes recommended by the Phoenix Ethics Review Task Force, a group of mostly attorneys and judges who spent months reviewing the rules. Task-force members found that rules for elected officials significantly lagged the best practices of large U.S. cities.

Topping the task force’s list of concerns was Phoenix’s lack of a legal mechanism to investigate or sanction the mayor or council members who violate its conflict-of-interest or gift policies.

On Tuesday, council members agreed there needs to be a process to handle complaints against them. They approved the creation of an independent commission, which would screen allegations and recommend a penalty, including censure or removal from office.

“This is a major change in the way that the city of Phoenix does business,” said former Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley, who chaired the task force.

The changes approved Tuesday were a broad policy statement, but city staff will need to do more work before new rules can take effect. Staff will spend the next few months writing detailed ethical procedures to bring back to the council for a final vote and implementation.

Voters must approve some of the reforms, such as the independent commission, because it requires an amendment to the city charter.

Some council members were initially apprehensive about the creation of an ethics commission. Councilman Daniel Valenzuela said he fears that it could be abused, saying, “I would not like to see something like this that’s pure in nature used as a political tool.”

Romley said that while there’s always a risk complaints will be filed for political reasons, the commission gives the accused a chance to clear their names. He said safeguards have been built into the process to discourage false reporting, including a provision that could require frivolous or non-cooperative accusers to pay the costs of an investigation.

Ultimately, the council voted unanimously to support a list of reforms proposed by Mayor Greg Stanton, which included minor changes to the task force’s recommendations.

But the council disagreed over a series of amendments to Stanton’s plan, including a potential ban on gifts above $50 as well as the process for removing elected officials from office if they are found guilty of serious ethical breaches. [Why on earth only SERIOUS??? Any violation should result in them being thrown out of office. While the royal rulers of Phoenix expect the serfs they rule over to obey the laws even if they are too complex to understand, even if they don't have lawyers to guilde them. On the other hand the royal rulers of Phoenix who have free lawyers, paid by the taxpayers think it's too tough to expect them to obey the law to the letter like they expect the serfs they rule over to obey. ]

Stanton asked the council to approve a rule requiring any gift over $50 be reported on a disclosure form within a month. Currently, the council must report only gifts larger than $500. State law already prohibits council members from accepting gifts of entertainment, such as tickets to concerts and sports games.

However, Vice Mayor Bill Gates and several other council members want to examine an outright ban on gifts over $50, with exceptions for trips involving city business, such as trade missions. They argue it’s just simpler for the council to not accept gifts. [Why not just a ban on ALL gifts. Us serfs think that if a gift looks like a bribe, the gift is a bribe. But our royal Phoenix City Councilmen wouldn't want to have to obey a silly rule like that]

“Transparency is great, but the public demands bans,” Councilman Sal DiCiccio said. “They don’t want to see politicians getting gifts.”

Stanton and Romley said an outright ban could be impractical because council members routinely attend community events and dinners that would be considered gifts under state law. [Translation - we need a way to accept bribes and gifts are an ideal way which doesn't seem like a bribe. ]

In the end, the council supported the $50 gift-reporting requirement but accepted Gates’ amendment asking staff to explore how the city might implement a ban on gifts above that amount.

Another area that divided the council was its process for removing members found to have committed a major ethical violation. [Again any city councilman that breaks the law should be thrown out of office. These jerks expect us serfs to obey the law to the letter, but then turn around and say the laws are just too complicated and cumbersome for them to obey]

They approved an amendment that would allow the council to refer the decision to voters through a type of recall election.

PGP - Pretty Good Privacy - Use it to encrypt your data

Personally I suspect that if you can encrypt it the government can decrypt it. The only question is how long will it take for the government to decrypt it and how much will it cost the government to decrypt it.

When Phil Zimmermann first invented PGP the US government threatened to put him in jail if he gave people outside of the USA copies of the software. The government says PGP is a munition and therefor subject to the governments control.

Phil Zimmermann got around that problem and put the source code on the internet and the cat has been out of the bag since then. The government didn't carry out it's threat to put him in jail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a data encryption and decryption computer program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is often used for signing, encrypting and decrypting texts, e-mails, files, directories and whole disk partitions to increase the security of e-mail communications. It was created by Phil Zimmermann in 1991.

http://www.gnupg.org/

The free version of PGP

http://www.pgpi.org/

More free PGP software

http://www.symantec.com/encryption

The commercial version of PGP

http://cryptography.org/getpgp.htm

Where to get PGP

http://www.openpgp.org/

http://philzimmermann.com/EN/findpgp/

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton shovels the BS on government accountability

Source

Mayor: Time to let sunshine into City Hall

By Greg Stanton My Turn Mon Jun 24, 2013 7:40 AM

Over the past several months, we’ve made important strides to make Phoenix a more modern city. [Yea, and one of them wasn't repealing the 2 percent sales tax Mayor Stanton promised to repeal when he ran for Mayor in 2011]

We’ve made the Phoenix economy more attractive by ending discrimination against those with disabilities and on the basis of sexual orientation. And we’ve done the simple things, too, such as streamline the process for securing a city permit.

In my view, a modern city must also guarantee City Hall will never be in the pockets of special interests and lobbyists — but always in the hands of the people. [Well expect for the police union which seem to own Greg Stanton because he broke his promise to repeal the 2 percent sales tax, which mostly goes to the police]

To do that, we need safeguards to make sure our elected officials can never break the public’s trust. [Well lets forget about silly lies made when running for office, like the promise to repeal the 2 percent sales tax Mayor Stanton made when running for office in 2011] Unfortunately, Arizona’s ethics rules are among the weakest in the nation — and according to one national expert, score a grade of “laughable.” [Yea, that's true, and I suspect the only thing we will get from you is lip service on promising to improve things]

We deserve better — and we can do better. The hard truth is that far too much influence peddling takes place under the cover of darkness. It is time to let the sunshine in. [Yea, like your refusal to repeal the 2 percent sales tax which you promised to repeal when running for mayor in 2011]

Some at the Legislature have tried to fix the problem, but the Center for Public Integrity recently got it right when it said the recent Fiesta Bowl scandal produced big headlines, but it did not lead to change. [And I suspect all we will get from you Mayor Stanton is empty promises, just like we got from the Legislator, which didn't fix the problem]

I can’t change the rules across Arizona, but, as mayor, I am committed to creating real change in Phoenix and holding our city to a higher standard. [Yea, and we can believe that like we believed your promise to repeal the 2 percent sales tax when you ran for mayor in 2011] And that’s what we’ve done. With the help of a bipartisan Ethics Reform Task Force — led by former Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley [Yea, he was the worst Maricopa County Attorney until we got that sleaze bag Andrew Thomas who was kicked out of the bar for his unethical conduct] — we put forward the toughest ethics package in Arizona history. [I am sure we can believe that promise Mayor Stanton like we believed your lie to repeal the 2 percent sales tax]

There are many components, but two are especially important: greater disclosure and real penalties. [Which we won't get, other then the BS and hot air that is coming out of your mouth when you talk about it.]

Significantly increasing disclosure requirements will help ensure that elected officials don’t accept special favors offered to influence their actions in office. [You mean like breaking your promise to repeal the 2 percent sales tax that mostly goes to the police, in exchange for the support of the police union and it's 3,000 Phoenix Police officers????]

Those who resist greater disclosure say that, as a result of the new rule, elected officials might stop going to the kind of community events they should attend. I disagree. Voters are wise enough to discern the difference between a Kiwanis luncheon and a lobbyist-paid vacation getaway to the Bahamas. I’ve even asked city staff to explore what we can do to enact a complete ban on all gifts. [And I suspect when the hot air stops leaving your mouth all we will get out of it is the empty promises you made]

Skirting the rules — failing to report a gift with the hope that nobody finds out — will come with a harsh penalty. [I bet. Probably a gentle slap on the wrist. Maybe even TWO slaps on the wrist for really outrageous corruption] There’s a simple reason for that: For ethics rules to be worth the paper they’re printed on, there must be real penalties for violations. [Yea, just like your promise to repeal the 2 percent sales tax, which was nothing more then a bunch of hot air and BS]

An independent ethics commission — made up of five judges — will review potential violations. To help safeguard against the commission becoming politically motivated, commissioners will need a three-quarters vote of approval from the City Council — a near guarantee of bipartisan support. [But you crooks will find a way around that like you always do. Assuming this stuff gets pass, which it probably won't be.] In the case of wrongdoing, commissioners will be able to slap a financial penalty on a guilty party and recommend censure or even removal from office. [OK, so it's a toothless law, administered by political hacks who probably won't enforce it]

We can’t pretend these new rules are a cure-all that will rid the world of those determined to break them. [I agree with that. If they are passed, and that's a BIG if. They will probably be toothless laws which you and your politician buddies will ignore.] But they’re an incredibly important step — the most significant in state history — toward creating a more open and transparent government the people deserve.

Greg Stanton is mayor of Phoenix.

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton piece was hot air

Source

Stanton piece was hot air

Mon Jun 24, 2013 7:54 PM

Regarding “It’s time to let the sunshine into City Hall” (Opinions, Monday):

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton’s guest column seems to have taken the place of the haboobs we haven’t had to deal with so far this summer. We get that kind of wind from Washington; it has needlessly blown into Phoenix City Hall.

— Jim Rogers, Phoenix

Into the mind of ... Kyrsten Sinema

Kyrsten Sinema shovels the BS???

Remember Kyrsten Sinema is the Arizona Senator who introduced a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana. Kyrsten Sinema is now a US Congresswoman.

I guess the title of this article should have been "Vote for me and I will give you free stuff"

Source

Into the mind of ... Kyrsten Sinema

The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jul 5, 2013 6:27 PM

The first-term congresswoman reflects on her first six months in Washington.

After six months in Congress, what’s the No. 1 thing you’ve learned about the place?

I’ve learned I can still get a lot done for Congressional District 9 even though leaders in Congress aren’t accomplishing much. [I suspect Kyrsten Sinema means that she has accomplished tons of stuff while her fellow slackers have accomplished nothing. Of course if you ask me I would have said none of them have accomplished anything - well other then robbing us blind and micro-managing our lives]

In our district office, social workers help constituents solve problems every day. In our D.C. office, we help businesses access federal agencies, support local groups seeking federal grant funding, and advocate for the issues important to CD9 residents and businesses. [Translation - vote for ME and I will give you free stuff - lots of free government pork!!!!!]

What’s the biggest difference between the Legislature and Congress?

I’ve always believed that relationships are key to solving problems.

In the Legislature, my relationships with Republicans and Democrats alike helped me serve my constituents well. In Congress, I’m working to build bipartisan relationships as well, though it’ll take a bit longer to make friends with all 537 of my colleagues! [Kyrsten, you didn't answer the question. It was "What’s the biggest difference between the Legislature and Congress?" - But I guess the main purpose of this article is to tell the voters that if they vote for you, you will give them free stuff, so who cares if you answer the question]

What’s the biggest frustration? The biggest satisfaction?

Unfortunately, issues that shouldn’t be partisan, like military sexual trauma and college affordability, have been stymied by political posturing in Congress. Leaders in Congress should stop playing games and get to work solving our country’s challenges.

However, our office has been able to make a tremendous difference in the lives of CD9 residents.

For example, we recently helped Glen in Phoenix, who has a brain tumor. Last month, Glen had to choose to either buy expensive medicine to treat his tumor or buy a replacement bed for his home.

We worked with local charities and the pharmaceutical company to help him get both a bed and his life-saving medication. [Again - vote for ME and I will give you free stuff - lots of free government pork!!!!!]

As a member of the minority party, it’s hard to get a bill passed. What have you been able to accomplish?

Congress is pretty divided right now and sadly, they’re not getting much done.

I’m proud to be one of the founding members of the United Solutions Caucus. We’re a group of 38 freshmen, Democrats and Republicans, working together to solve our fiscal crisis and reduce our debt and deficit. [Don't make me laugh Kyrsten, when it comes to taxing and spending in the Arizona legislator you were number #1. I am sure that in the US Congress you are also the #1 Congresswoman when it comes to taxing and spending. You reduce our debt??? Again don't make me laugh!!! Kyrsten, as the debt goes up you will probably cause it to increase more then any other Congressperson!!!!]

We’ve introduced the SAVE Act, which cuts $200 billion in wasteful spending. Earlier this year, I helped pass the Violence Against Women Act.

Are there any issues you’re working on with other Arizona members? [Well other then that "vote for ME and I will give you free stuff" nonsense]

I’m working with Reps. Matt Salmon and Raul Grijalva on a bill to prevent the NSA from gathering innocent civilians’ private data. [Give me a break Kyrsten, on every election sign of your you have the fact that you are supported by the police unions on the signs. I find it hard to believe that you are trying to reduce the police state, when the police unions helped you get elected!!!] Reps. Ron Barber, Ann Kirkpatrick and I are working on legislation to help veterans get quicker and better access to VA services. [More of the old "vote for ME and I will give you free stuff" nonsense]

You and Salmon, a Republican, have made several joint appearances. What’s the connection?

Our offices work closely together on constituent cases, and Matt and I share similar views on issues like global competitiveness, increasing foreign investment in Arizona companies, and increasing trade and exports. Plus, he’s a good guy and we get along.

What will immigration reform look like when the House is finished with it?

It’s too early to predict, but I’m committed to a bill that secures our border [so you do support the police state - 20,000 new Border Patrol cops???], creates a workable plan for a future flow of workers into the United States, and settles the status of “dreamers” and hard-working families living in the U.S. Compromise must be a part of any viable solution, and I hope the House is ready to get to “yes.” I certainly am! [Kyrsten, when a politician like you says "compromise" it means "if you vote for my pork, I will vote for your pork". Kyrsten with that in mind, I suspect you know how to compromise better then any other Congressman or Senator in Washington D.C.]

Mayor Greg Stanton shovels the BS???

Source

Metro economy rests on Stanton’s shoulders

From the political notebook:

* Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton can be an irritating political figure, frequently too earnest by half. Sometimes he reminds me of the Eddie Haskell character in the old “Leave It to Beaver” series.

The latest irritation is a breathless press release he sent out taking credit for Phoenix ranking first in a Brooking Institution report on gross metropolitan product growth in the most recent quarter.

Now, that’s a highly shaky stat to be crowing about. Snapshots of GMP aren’t particularly reliable and a single quarter does not a trend make.

But here’s the larger grate. The stat was for the Phoenix metro area, not the City of Phoenix over which Stanton rules. In terms of population, the city is just around a third of the metro area. And … how to put this delicately? … not always the most robust part.

According to Stanton, city policies promoting bioscience, business incubators, recruiting trips in Mexico and California, and bidding preferences for local businesses turned the tide for the whole damn region. That kind of thing is apparently what Stanton believes drives a $200 billion economy.

So, how did the Phoenix metro area fare economically before Stanton rode to our rescue as mayor? From 1990 to 2011, Phoenix ranked first among major metro areas with more than 2 million population in percentage job growth. During that period, jobs in Phoenix increased 65 percent. The major metro area average, excluding Phoenix, was 24 percent.

Stanton recently said that more bike path lanes were a key to economic growth. Just think of how our economy will soar when those get added.

* Over the years, I’ve become extraordinarily jaded about political campaigns. They are all dirty and idiotic.

Nevertheless, the campaign being conducted by the firefighters against Phoenix Councilman Sal DiCiccio gave me a jolt.

A group of DiCiccio opponents filed a lawsuit and administrative complaints alleging that he violated the law by transferring money he had raised to fight a recall campaign to a nonprofit he chairs, which has sent out political messages by him. A judge recently dismissed the lawsuit, saying those who filed it didn’t have standing to bring it.

The firefighters are using the allegations to depict DiCiccio as a crook. Moreover, the mailings the firefighters are sending out make it appear the allegations are the result of investigations by the Arizona Republic and conservative talk-radio station KFYI, even though all the two news organizations have done is to report on the activities of DiCiccio’s political opponents.

So, one group of political opponents accuses DiCiccio of breaking the law. Another, the firefighters, use those accusations to try to create the impression that DiCiccio is a crook. Meanwhile, no one in an official capacity has alleged or concluded that DiCiccio did anything wrong.

That’s beyond dirty.

* Comprehensive immigration reform advocates thought that the support of evangelicals would make a big difference in getting Republican support in Congress.

It hasn’t. The support of evangelicals didn’t really expand Republican support for comprehensive immigration reform in the Senate. And it hasn’t broken the rock-solid opposition to it in the House GOP caucus. Nor is it likely to.

There’s no questioning the importance of evangelicals in Republican politics. That, however, isn’t changing votes because GOP lawmakers know that immigration reform isn’t going to be a voting issue for evangelicals. If they are pro-life and pro-family, evangelicals aren’t going to hold a disagreement on immigration reform against them.

* Mesa Mayor Scott Smith becoming president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors may be good for Mesa and even Arizona. But it’s likely to be bad for Smith’s prospects of winning the Republican nomination for governor in 2014.

The conference is a gimme-lobby trying to wheedle money from the federal government for cities. That won’t play well with Republican primary voters.

One of Smith’s first press releases as president was in support of a failed Democratic amendment in Congress to increase funding for Community Development Block Grants, a program that should have been abolished long ago.

If Smith runs, expect to hear a lot about his involvement in the conference … from his opponents.

Mayor Stanton wants Arizona taxpayers to bail out the Phoenix Convention Center

Phoenix Convention Center continues to lose money????

Sadly the article doesn't mention a word about how much money the Phoenix Convention Center has lost or made. But from the tone of the article I suspect the Phoenix Convention Center continues to lose money as it always has.

Source

Phoenix Convention Center showdown may loom

As facility struggles, state may withhold tax revenue from city

By Dustin Gardiner The Republic | azcentral.com Sun Jul 14, 2013 11:39 PM

When plans for Phoenix’s massive glass-and-stone convention center took shape a decade ago, the city narrowly persuaded state lawmakers to pay for half of the $600 million expansion project. [This type of con game is called "I'll vote for your pork if you vote for my pork"]

At the time, city and tourism officials told legislators that building one of the largest convention facilities in the country would make downtown Phoenix a destination for business travel and would fill state and local government coffers with sales-tax dollars from visitors who would eat, shop and stay in hotels. [That's the same line of BS we have always heard when the royal rulers of Phoenix want more money for their money losing Phoenix Convention Center]

But state lawmakers were skeptical and pushed for a safeguard: If Phoenix’s projections fell short, the state could withhold sales-tax revenue from the city to reimburse itself for the bad investment. [Did they really expect the Phoenix Convention Center to make a profit after years of loses???]

Now, Phoenix officials worry that provision may come back to haunt them.

Although the meeting hall has brought more than a million convention delegates to the state, Phoenix and tourism officials are quietly fretting over its performance, given a sharp drop in event bookings. [Oddly the article doesn't say a word about all the money the Phoenix Convention Center has lost!!!!!]

Those concerns led the Greater Phoenix Convention and Visitors Bureau, the city’s major convention-marketing and sales partner, to lobby the Legislature last session to remove a requirement designed to ensure that the state sees a return on its investment. [Translation - we want more money, even if this turkey isn't making any money like we claimed it would]

What has city officials so concerned is a provision requiring an economic-impact study next year, five years after the expanded center opened its doors. The study would determine whether the Phoenix Convention Center has generated enough revenue for the state tooutweigh its annual debt payments — about $20.5 million next year. [I guess that means an audit has never been done to see if the Phoenix Convention Center is making or losing money.]

Millions of dollars in sales-tax revenue from the state could be at stake. If revenue tied to the expansion of the convention center does not exceed the state’s investment, the state could withhold sales-tax distributions to the city until that loss is recouped.

Every year, the state returns to the cities a portion of the sales tax it collects. Phoenix depends on the money, known as “state shared” revenue, to help pay for everyday expenses such as police and fire protection and parks.

Senate President Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert, fought efforts to remove oversight of the convention center and the provision to withhold revenue, citing the state’s massive investment: $20 million to $30 million annually for roughly the next 25 years.

He said the visitors bureau raised eyebrows at the Capitol when its lobbyist requested a repeal of the provision.

“We ought to know how well that penciled out,” Biggs said. “There were some premises, and we just need accountability.”

A state budget bill initially included an amendment to remove the study and revenue-withholding provisions, and Biggs tried unsuccessfully to block it. The amendment ended up being removed in the final days of the session when Gov. Jan Brewer succeeded in passing her budget with bipartisan allies.

Phoenix leaders worry that the study will not give a full picture, given that the convention center opened just as the Great Recession hit. They said the bad economy and boycotts spurred by Senate Bill 1070, the controversial Arizona immigration law, have hampered business at the convention center. [Translation - the Phoenix Convention Center is losing money like a drunken sailor and City of Phoenix rulers want more cash from the state of Arizona so they can continue their drunken binge using Arizona tax dollars]

Bookings for the fiscal year that ended June 30 were down about 30 percent from four years earlier. The city had roughly 189,000 convention guests, down from a high of about 275,400 in the 2009 budget year — a difference of about $125 million in direct spending, according to the city.

And the visitors bureau isn’t projecting this year will be any better. It estimates bringing in 158,000 convention delegates, though officials say bookings for subsequent years are picking up.

“We don’t want to do a study if it’s not reflective of an apples-to-apples comparison,” Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton said, adding that the center cannot be judged by its recession performance alone. “That wouldn’t be fair or productive.” [Translation - We don't want any study that shows the royal rulers of Phoenix are idiots when it comes to business skills. Nor do we want any studies that show what we already know, that the Phoenix Conventions Center never has made money and never will make money]

Officials from the city and the visitors bureau were unsure if they would still seek to delay or remove the requirement for a study next legislative session. They said it’s unclear if it could impact tax distributions the city receives from the state.

State Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said Phoenix should be held to the deal it made. He said lawmakers who objected to funding for the convention center did so because they knew there could be financial drawbacks, including the possibility of an economic downturn.

“If the critics were correct and it was risky, they (Phoenix officials) need to shoulder at least part of the downside,” Kavanagh said. “They can’t have their cake and eat it, too.”

But lawmakers could face strong resistance if they try to remove funding to the city, said House Minority Leader Chad Campbell, D-Phoenix.

Campbell and others have suggested a middle-of-the-road approach that allows for oversight but doesn’t punish Phoenix or hurt the convention business. [Translation - the Arizona Legislator will probably give Phoenix the money they want so they can continue their drinking binge using Arizona taxpayer money]

“The last thing we want to do is impact what’s a major draw for us,” Campbell said of the convention center. “I see both sides of the issue, actually.”

Aside from the recession and SB 1070, the convention business has faced challenges nationwide from tightening budgets for government and corporate travel.

Also, competition is growing among convention centers, particularly in the West, with several cities and companies opening giant, elaborate facilities. But Phoenix has fared worse than other cities with comparable convention facilities, including San Diego, Denver, San Antonio and Salt Lake City. In those cities, guest counts are slowly rebounding or are relatively flat.

Barry Aarons, a lobbyist who represents the visitors bureau, said he worries a negative economic-impact study could exacerbate the city’s problems by giving competing destinations something to use to portray Phoenix in a bad light. He said he asked lawmakers to delay the study for five years if they would not remove the requirement outright.

However, Phoenix Councilman Bill Gates said he supports oversight from the state as long as the study takes into account the headwinds Phoenix’s convention organizers have faced in recent years. [Translation - We f*cked up royal, and we think that that the taxpayers of Arizona should bail us out]

“I understand the desire of the state to have accountability,” Gates said. “Hold us accountable, but be fair about it.” [Translation - we f*cked up, but please give us more cash any how!!!!]

Wow Sky Train is a big time ripoff - Each ride costs $22

The article says each one way ride on Sky Train costs $22 for the lousy half mile ride from Terminal 4, thru a parking garage and then to the light rail station on Washington & 44th Street.

A couple of weeks ago I took a round trip on Sky Train from the Light Rail Station to Terminal 4 and then back. According to this article each one way half mile trip cost $22 for a total of $44 for the 1 mile round trip.

The royal rulers of Phoenix say there is not tax to pay for the Sky Train, but that is misleading at best and a lie at the worst. I think the Sky Train is paid for with a TAX or mandatory surcharge on all plane tickets that fly thru Sky Harbor Airport.

Source

PHX Sky Train expensive but getting used

Our View: People mover does what light rail couldn't

By Editorial board The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Jul 15, 2013 5:29 PM

Ridership of the PHX Sky Train is well ahead of projections. This is welcome news considering how much the thing cost.

The automated people mover is averaging 70,000 riders a week on its route from Terminal 4 to the East Economy parking lot and the 44th Street light-rail stop. That puts it on track to reach 3.6 million riders in its first year, well above the projected 2.5 million. [Yea, when the government subsidizes stupidity, you get lots of stupidity!!!!]

If you spread the $1.58 billion cost over 20 years, that works out to nearly $22 per ride. [What a rip off!!! $22 for a stinking half mile trip!!!!]

Still, that’s two-thirds of what it would have been under the projections. [So plane travelers are not getting screwed as badly as initially predicted]

We still believe it would have made more sense to run light rail to the airport. [Yea, if you believe in $1000 toilet seats like the Feds do that's a fantastic idea. But the old fashioned way using buses is much cheaper] But once the bypass was designed, this people mover became necessary. Visitors expect a convenient link to public transportation. [And with a price of $22 they expect somebody ELSE to pay for it]

And it provides a benefit light rail couldn’t. Some number of people who would otherwise have been dropped off or picked up at the curb are using the 44th Street station, reducing, however modestly, congestion at Terminal 4.

The next time you’re caught in that traffic jam, consider whether you would give the people in front of you $22 to get out of your way.

Rigging elections in Arizona cities

Source

Phoenix, Tucson fight change in election calendar

By Dustin Gardiner The Republic | azcentral.com Thu May 16, 2013 10:42 PM

Tucson and Phoenix are waging a legal fight to overturn a state law that would require local governments to move their elections to even-numbered years to coincide with statewide contests for president and governor.

If the law takes effect in 2014, Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton and other municipal elected officials could have their terms extended by several months or even a year.

A Pima County Superior Court judge on Monday denied the cities’ request for summary judgment in the case, saying that he needs to get more information than already submitted in court filings. A hearing will likely be scheduled in the next month, so the parties can debate the facts further.

City leaders had sought a decision on the law’s validity and an injunction to prevent it from taking effect while they argue the issue in court. They said the law interferes with a matter of purely local concern: their authority to determine how to conduct elections.

Cities and towns across Arizona have objected to the law and cite a long list of potential consequences, including that local elections would become fiercely partisan or draw little attention at the bottom of a more crowded ballot. The law, signed by Gov. Jan Brewer in 2012, will impact roughly half of the state’s 70 municipalities.

Supporters of the move have said it will increase voter turnout and help some cities and towns save money because they could utilize county elections resources, instead of paying the cost of printing ballots and staffing elections on their own.

In Phoenix, Stanton and four council members — Bill Gates, Thelda Williams, Michael Nowakowski and Daniel Valenzuela — could potentially serve a year beyond their elected terms, which expire in 2015, assuming they stay in office for that long. Each council member represents about 180,000 residents who would have to wait longer to elect their representative.

Tucson filed its lawsuit against the state in October after several months of cities grappling over how they might respond. A few months later, Phoenix joined the case as an intervenor, meaning the city can argue the case, which will impact all Arizona charter municipalities.

Phoenix City Clerk Cris Meyer said the law would require sweeping changes to the city’s election system and do away with the city-focused process voters have requested over the years, particularly the emphasis on a nonpartisan election cycle.

“Commingling of the state’s and Phoenix’s processes, including potentially commingled ballots, diminishes Phoenix’s ability to ensure a pristine process, free of party politics and state or federal issues typically associated with party platforms,” attorneys for Phoenix argued in court documents.

Phoenix voters decided in the 1970s to permanently hold their elections on the opposite years as presidential and gubernatorial contests. Changing that would require voters to approve amendments to the City Charter. The new law also conflicts with charter language that governs the mayor and council’s term limits and salary changes, among other issues.

The city would likely have to abandon its voting-center system, which allows residents to cast an in-person ballot at more than 20 locations starting several days before the election. Arizona holds elections on a single day, and voters have assigned precincts.

However, attorneys for the state have argued the law seeks to preserve democracy, suggesting off-year elections depress voter turnout and make the process vulnerable to special-interest influence. They said any burdens to Phoenix or Tucson are “slight and incidental.”

The state Attorney General’s Office contends election alignment has led to a massive increase in voter turnout in Chandler, Scottsdale and Gilbert, which moved their elections from the spring to fall of even-numbered years. For example, 14 percent of Scottsdale registered voters turned out for the city’s March 2006 election, compared with 85 percent in fall 2008, according to court documents.

“The record is clear that election alignment causes dramatic increases in voter turnout and dramatic reductions in overall election costs and cost per vote,” the Attorney General’s Office wrote.

Pima County Superior Court Judge James Marner also denied a motion by the state for a summary judgment to dismiss the case. But Marner said conflicting evidence presented by the state and cities regarding voter turnout and cost savings needs to be heard in court.

Phoenix Police, Firemen have violated campaign-finance laws????

I believe many of these ads were put up by the Phoenix Police Union and the Phoenix Firemen Union which want to run Phoenix Councilman Sal DiCiccio out office because he isn't a big time supporter of pork for cops and firemen.

While I am making fun of these groups for breaking the laws, I suspect all of these laws are unconstitutional per the First Amendment because they infringe on free speech.

Source

Election officials: Group behind anti-DiCiccio ads may have violated campaign-finance laws

By Dustin Gardiner PHX Beat Mon Jul 15, 2013 5:47 PM

State elections officials have determined there is “reasonable cause” to suspect that a left-leaning advocacy group behind a series of attack ads directed at Phoenix Councilman Sal DiCiccio is violating campaign-finance laws.

The Campaign for Better Neighborhoods, a non-profit corporation created by Democratic operatives, has sent mailers and launched a website roasting the outspoken councilman. It has not registered as a political committee or independent-expenditure group, and those behind the group will not disclose its donors.

In a letter late last week, the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office raised concerns about the group’s activity, suggesting it appears to have violated laws regarding reporting requirements for independent expenditures in elections. The case was forwarded to the attorney general for further investigation and enforcement.

DiCiccio, a Republican, filed a complaint with city elections officials in May, accusing the group of violating the law because it had not filed with the city. His attorney said their smears are expressly advocating the councilman’s defeat in the Aug. 27 primary election for City Council.

State law requires corporations to register with the city if they spend $1,000 or more to attempt to influence the outcome of a candidate election. Violators who do not register can face a fine of up to three times the amount of the expenditure.

Ken Chapman, chairman of the group and former director of the Maricopa County Democratic Party, has said they’re following the law. He contends his group’s issue-advocacy efforts are not aimed at influencing the council election — their mailers don’t directly mention the race or urge residents to vote against DiCiccio — and therefore not subject to campaign-finance reporting laws.

But the letter written by State Election Director Amy Chan suggests the group’s efforts are clearly aimed at ousting DiCiccio in the election. He is facing a spirited challenge from insurance executive Karlene Keogh Parks.

“Each of the examples of the literature issued by (the group), from the mailers to its website, saldliar.com, make a general public communication referring to a clearly identified candidate that in context has no reasonable meaning other than to advocate the defeat of the candidate,” Chan wrote.

Phoenix government cause of hotel market being saturated????

Source

Phoenix market saturated with hotel rooms, experts say

By Betty Reid The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Jul 18, 2013 8:15 AM

Phoenix issued fewer building permits for hotels during the past four years combined than in 2008 alone.

Travel experts say the area is still saturated with plenty of rooms, and they predict it may take years before the industry recovers fully.

The industry bottomed out in 2008, creating an excess of rooms because of fewer travelers.

There is low demand in the Phoenix market for hotels, said Cindy Stotler, Phoenix’s assistant planning director.

However, some developers have begun to talk to city officials about new projects, including restoring the Hotel Monroe in downtown Phoenix.

“People keep showing an interest, but it’s very expensive to renovate that old historic building,” Stotler said. “I think the money is not there for financing right now.”

Stagnant growth

Phoenix issued five building permits for new hotel projects in 2008. Since then, it has issued two others.

Smith Travel Research Inc. in Hendersonville, Tenn., tracks global hotel numbers.

The company shows Phoenix had 156 hotels in 2012, up from 148 in 2008.

The numbers show “very few hotels are being built right now in the city,” said Jan D. Freitag, Smith Travel’s senior vice president.

Phoenix had 25,880 hotel rooms in the market in 2012, up from 22,492 in 2007, according to Smith Travel.

The hotel occupancy rate — rooms occupied per year — remains low at 56.4 percent in 2012, down from 66.6 percent occupancy in 2007, according to Smith Travel numbers.

“We are at a point of saturation,” said Kristin Jarnagin, Arizona Lodging and Tourism Association’s vice president of communications. “When you reach that point, you start to compete with yourself and that brings the rates lower.”

The association represents more than 38,000 guest rooms statewide. The group also represents about 500 hotels, resorts, attractions, destination marketing organizations, bed and breakfast, and related industry partners.

Despite the stagnation in Phoenix, other Valley municipalities have seen an uptick in hotels. Gilbert, for example, welcomed five new hotels in the past five years.

Struggling industry

Room rates have plummeted because of the strained economy.

Experts say the reasons vary: New rooms saturated the market before 2009, many groups boycotted the state after immigration law Senate Bill 1070 passed, and budget cuts to convention and visitors bureaus and the Arizona Office of Tourism led to decreased marketing and promotion.

“Tight budgets resulted in changing corporate travel policy, coupled with technology that allows more effective communications,” said Mark Stapp, W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University’s master of real-estate development program director. “This helped cause a drop in business travel. Financial stress made people less willing or unable to travel for leisure.”

Online sites like Kayak and Expedia also allow people to find rooms at discounts and increase competition, Stapp said. That drove down room rates.

Stapp also said overbuilding in some places created issues for the industry.

“All of this meant finance folks were less willing to finance or (are) much more conservative in lending practices, requiring lots more equity,” he said.

The Phoenix economy depends on vacationers, business travelers and conventioneers, who spend millions at resorts, restaurants, spas and golf courses. Experts said Phoenix hotels and resorts suffered in 2009 more than most during the recession.

The Greater Phoenix Convention and Visitors Bureau released a study in 2009 that showed the industry generated tens of thousands of jobs and $166 million in sales and property taxes.

Industry copes

When bankers don’t want to finance new construction, some hotel owners instead invest in their existing product.

Many existing hotels obtained permits to add features, including ballroom additions at Westin Kierland Resort and Spa and the Phoenician Resort. Other hotels such La Quinta Inn, 4727 E. Thomas Road, remodeled rooms and added kitchenettes and hot tubs. Mainstay Suite, 9455 N. Black Canyon Highway, had a near complete makeover.

The Westin Kierland Resort and Spa also added a FlowRider, a new water feature, in fall 2012.

The Renaissance Downtown remodeled rooms. A renovation of the restaurant and the bar are under way at the Royal Palms Resort and Spa this summer.

Many resorts offer deep discounts in the summer to fill their rooms.

“Some of the world-class resorts have huge pools, big water slides for you and your kids,” said Whitney Murrey, Greater Phoenix Cahmber of Commerce spokeswoman. “You can beat the heat while staying here in Arizona at resorts; you can stay a couple of nights. They have great spas and restaurants. Some offer fantastic packages, dinners and all the other stuff.”

Future plan

Despite a stabilization in occupancy rates over the past two years, the Phoenix hotel industry may only be halfway in a decadelong slump.

Phoenix’s average room rate was $116 during the first fivemonths of 2013, down from the average room rate of $138.40 in the early months of 2008 before the Great Recession started, according to Smith Travel.

“In order for us to make up the $22 ... it could take some five years,” Freitag said. “The point is, this (recovery) will take a while.”

Stapp said in order for the banks to finance new projects, they need to see growth, especially in business and leisure travel.

RELATED INFO

Number of Phoenix hotels per year

2008: 148.
2009: 153.
2010: 153.
2011: 155.
2012: 156.

Occupancy rate per year

2008: 58.7.
2009: 51.8.
2010: 55.9.
2011: 56.6.
2012: 56.4.

Average daily rate

2008: $116.94.
2009: $101.89.
2010: $94.78.
2011: $97.45.
2012: $100.44.

Revenue (gross) for hotels

2008: $585.1.
2009: $484.
2010: $492.2.
2011: $517.2.
2012: $533.

Source: Travel Smith Research

Phoenix motels/hotels that opened since 2007

Holiday Inn Express Phoenix North/Scottsdale, 4575 E. Irma Lane, is pending an opening.

Hotel Palomar, 2 E. Jefferson St., opened April 16, 2012.

Drury Inn & Suites Happy Valley, 2335 Pinnacle Peak Road, opened Aug. 6, 2009.

The Aloft Phoenix Airport, 4450 E. Washington St., opened June 5, 2009.

Value Place, 8808 N. Black Canyon Highway, opened Sept. 18, 2010.

Holiday Inn Hotel & Suites, 3220 S. 48th St., opened June 17, 2010.

The Homewood Suites by Hilton Phoenix Airport South, 4750 E. Cotton Center Blvd, opened Jan. 15, 2008.

Source: Phoenix

Phoenix elected officials are liars or idiots??? Probably both.

Reach Robert Robb at robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8472.

Posted on July 21, 2013 7:40 pm by Robert Robb

Primaries are for fighting

>SNIP<

* City of Phoenix leaders told voters that, if they approved a bond to expand and improve the convention center, private investors would build a new downtown hotel to support it. That turned out not to be the case, and Phoenix taxpayers had to build the hotel as well.

When Phoenix leaders conned legislators into picking up half the cost of the expansion, they promised that it wouldn’t actually cost the state anything. Extra revenue generated by the expansion would produce significantly more than the state’s share. If not, Phoenix would make up the difference from its state-shared revenues.

Now that time has come for an accounting, Phoenix wants to renege or renegotiate. The excuse is that it’s been a hard economy and the Legislature contributed to the convention center’s underperformance by passing SB 1070.

So, in addition to paying for half the cost, the state was to allow the convention business to control the state’s immigration enforcement policies?

The state had no business making such a special deal with a single city in the first place. It certainly shouldn’t agree to let Phoenix off the hook for its false promises.

Proof elected officials can't be trusted???

State attorney argues legislators can ignore voter-mandated education funding law

Last this is a damn good example of why we need the Second Amendment, which is our right to keep and bear arms. The politicians and government bureaucrats can't be trusted to obey the Constitution and the "people" need to have some means to force them to.

Source

State attorney argues legislators can ignore voter-mandated education funding law

Posted: Tuesday, July 23, 2013 1:26 pm | Updated: 2:16 pm, Tue Jul 23, 2013.

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services | 0 comments

PHOENIX — Legislators are free to ignore a voter mandate to boost education funding each year to account for inflation, an attorney for the state told the Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday.

Kathleen Sweeney, an assistant attorney general, conceded voters did approve the inflation adjustment in 2000, and she also did not dispute that the Arizona Constitution prohibits legislators from repealing or altering voter-approved laws.

But Sweeney, seeking to allow the Legislature to disregard the 2000 law, told the justices voters had no constitutional right to enact the funding mandate in the first place.

That brought a somewhat surprised reaction from Chief Justice Rebecca Berch. She pointed out it was the Legislature that put the inflation adjustment provision on the ballot in the first place.

"They got the voters to vote on their bad language,'' she said. “And now they're trying to disavow their bad language.''

Sweeney did not exactly contest the question of whether lawmakers essentially had pulled a fast one on voters, getting them to approve a law that had no legal standing.

"Perhaps, your honor,'' she replied to Berch.

And Sweeney gave essentially the same response to a query by Justice John Pelander, who asked if she was arguing that the 2000 vote was "a fruitless, useless act.''

The fight most immediately affects whether lawmakers are required to annually adjust education funding.

That 2000 ballot measure boosted the state's 5-percent sales tax by six-tenths of a cent. It also requires the Legislature to increase funding for schools by 2 percent or the change in the gross domestic price deflator, whichever is less.

Lawmakers did that until the 2010 when, facing a budget deficit, they reinterpreted what the law requires. The result is that, since then, schools have lost anywhere from $189 million to $240 million, depending on whose figures are used. Don Peters, representing several school districts, filed suit.

Legislators did add $82 million in inflation funding for the new fiscal year that began July 1 after the state Court of Appeals sided with challengers. But they are hoping the Supreme Court concludes that mandate is legally unenforceable.

The outcome of this fight has larger implications — and not only for future education funding. It also could set the precedent for what voters have the right to tell the Legislature to do.

Sweeney argued there are limits, despite the constitutional right of voters to approve their own laws and despite the Voter Protection Act that shields these laws from legislative tinkering.

She said the 2000 measure sets the formula for increasing state aid — and then tells the Legislature to find the money from somewhere. Sweeney argued that infringes on the constitutional right of lawmakers to decide funding priorities.

Justice Scott Bales pointed out the inflation formula is a statute. He said while it was enacted by voters, it should have the same legal status as a law approved by legislators themselves.

"Do you think the Legislature can simply ignore statutes providing that it shall do certain things?'' he asked.

"Yes,'' Sweeney responded.

Peters disagreed.

"The statute that requires inflation adjustments is the law,'' he told the justices. “The Legislature has to obey the law like all the rest of us.''

And Peters said the constitutional Voter Protection Act precludes the Legislature from altering that law without first asking voter permission.

"Therefore, it must do what the statute required unless the people change it,'' he said.

Pelander questioned whether there are limits on what voters can tell the Legislature to do. Peters responded that the Arizona Constitution gives voters broad powers to make their own laws as long as those measures do not "offend'' other state or federal constitutional provisions.

"So they can do pretty much anything they want to,'' Peters told the justices. “And that includes giving instructions to the Legislature.''

Peters acknowledged the Supreme Court has previously said a law approved by one Legislature cannot bind future lawmakers.

But he argued that, as far as voter-approved laws, all that changed in 1998 with enactment of the Voter Protection Act.

"That balance of power is different,'' Peters said.

The justices gave no indication when they will rule.

Peters acknowledged after Tuesday's hearing that he could win his legal argument and still have a problem.

The high court could rule that lawmakers cannot ignore the 2000 law. But the justices have consistently refused to actually order the Legislature to find the additional dollars to fully fund the formula.

That could result in a situation where schools get the higher per-student funding as the formula requires, at least until the cash appropriated by the Legislature runs out. But Peters said he doubts lawmakers are willing to endure the wrath of voters if schools need to shut their doors before the end of the school year.

Is it time to end the war on drugs????

Greg Stanton seeks to end pension ‘spiking’ - Yea, sure!!!!!! - Trust me!!!!!

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton seems to be owned by the police and fire department unions.

When Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton was running for Mayor he promised to end a sales tax which goes mostly for public safety, or the police. That promise was a LIE.

I suspect that Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton claim that he wants to end spiking is just another lie designed to help him get reelected.

Source

Mayor seeks to end pension ‘spiking’

By Craig Harris The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jul 24, 2013 10:15 PM

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton and two City Council members have asked the city manager to end a policy that allows pension “spiking” by police officers and firefighters, but no changes are imminent because the city must honor its labor-contract obligations until next fiscal year.

The practice of pension spiking in Phoenix, disclosed by The Arizona Republic in 2010 and earlier this year, has allowed a few senior public-safety retirees to become millionaires by adding the value of some unused benefits into final salary calculations, substantially elevating their annual pension payments. The practice is prohibited for most other city employees.

“We want to end any of the abuses in the system,” Stanton said in an interview this week with The Republic.

The mayor said he wants to change the practice, put in place at least a decade ago by city management, through labor negotiations that will begin later this year between City Manager David Cavazos and public-safety unions.

A police-union official said if the city takes away pension benefits, then Phoenix must increase other forms of compensation for public-safety officers. The firefighters’ union president said upper-level managers are typically receiving the large pensions, which puts rank-and-file employees in a negative light with the public.

The city allows public-safety officers at the end of their careers to cash in unused sick leave and vacation, deferred compensation, payment for emergency shifts, bonuses, and vehicle and cellphone allowances, counting all as compensation. The inflated compensation significantly increases or “spikes” annual retirement benefits — and the cost to taxpayers. All public-safety employees are allowed to spike, though the most costly cases have been top managers at the high end of the pay range.

The Republic in early May reported that the spiking, which may violate state law, allowed 10 retirees to boost their lump-sum retirement benefits to more than $700,000 each through the Deferred Retirement Option Plan. All also receive annual pensions greater than $114,000 a year, and some also cashed out additional unused sick leave and vacation for more than $100,000 each.

Stanton spoke to The Republic about ending the practice after he sent a memo to Cavazos last week calling for a handful of fiscal reforms and compensation enhancements for some exceptional city employees.

The memo took to task “executive level” employees who, it said, have abused the pension system and “given a bad name to all employees.” But the City Council and City Manager’s Office until now have allowed the pay spiking to occur for all other public-safety employees as well through contract negotiations with labor groups.

Councilman Sal DiCiccio, a vocal critic of spiking, said the city could immediately end the practice for upper-level public-safety managers because they are not subject to union contracts.

“The people at the top are the beneficiaries of spiking, and they’re winning,” he said. “Everyone on the bottom doesn’t win and it’s taking their money away.”

The memo to Cavazos said spiking “inflates costs, harms the city’s long-term financial health and seriously undermines public confidence that the city’s compensation for employees is fair.” It was signed by Stanton and council members Thelda Williams and Daniel Valenzuela.

The letter is the most aggressive public stance Stanton and the two council members have taken on pension reform for public-safety officers, many of whom supported Stanton’s 2011 mayoral campaign. It also comes after the Goldwater Institute, a Phoenix-based conservative watchdog group, in late May threatened to sue the city if Phoenix did not end the legally questionable policy allowing pension spiking.

“We are very glad to see that the mayor is asserting that pension spiking is unacceptable,” said Jon Riches, an attorney for Goldwater. “But it is still our position that the practice of pension spiking is illegal.”

Riches said his organization continues to do research on a potential lawsuit against the city.

State law says “unused sick leave, payment in lieu of vacation, payment for unused compensatory time or payment for any fringe benefits” cannot be used as compensation to compute retirement benefits.

State law also says that only “base salary, overtime pay, shift differential pay, military differential wage pay, compensatory time used by an employee in lieu of overtime not otherwise paid by an employer and holiday pay” may be used to calculate pension benefits.

A prospective Arizona retiree’s ending pay and length of service are key components in determining the amount of the public pension. Salary spiking, therefore, increases pensions.

Cavazos said he does not believe the city is breaking the law by allowing pension spiking, but he added, “That does not mean it’s the best practice.

“What we need to do is focus on the relationships we have with collective bargaining — we have contracts in place,” Cavazos said.

Cavazos cited an opinion by the city’s legal department that employees are receiving a higher salary in exchange for a “lessened benefit package,” and therefore that counts as the “definition of compensation” by state law.

However, public records obtained by The Republic show Phoenix has calculated pension benefits for public-safety officers by counting pay in lieu of vacation accrual and pay in lieu of sick accrual (unused sick leave), and other fringe benefits such as vehicle and cell-phone allowances.

DiCiccio believes state law is clear and that what the city is doing is illegal.

“What the city of Phoenix is doing in allowing pension spiking is robbing taxpayers,” DiCiccio said. “It needs to stop altogether.”

The city’s public-safety retirement cost is budgeted at roughly $129 million this fiscal year. In fiscal 2003, the city paid $7.2 million. Investment losses have been one of the biggest reasons for the increased cost, though pension spiking also has contributed.

Joe Clure, president of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, said the union of more than 2,000 members never would have agreed to the practice of pension spiking had officers thought it was illegal.

Clure said if city managers do not like the way public-safety officers receive pension benefits, they should find other ways to compensate officers.

“Unless you are willing to talk about an alternative pay and benefits package, then you fundamentally believe police officers make too much money,” Clure said. “I don’t think they do.”

Pete Gorraiz, president of the United Phoenix Fire Fighters Association, said it was curious that Stanton would send out a letter six months before labor negotiations started. But, he added, firefighters will come to a “reasonable agreement” with the city.

Even police pay has limits

Even police pay has limits

By Editorial board The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Jul 25, 2013 6:43 PM

Police officers — indeed, all first responders — perform dangerous, difficult work for which they justifiably should earn fair, even generous, compensation from the citizens they protect and serve.

But there are limits. Or should be.

In fiscal 2003, taxpayers in Phoenix spent $7.2 million toward public-safety pension plans. This fiscal year, the tab is $129 million. It is expected to grow further, and fast. Should taxpayers simply accept whatever costs they are instructed to shoulder? Or should there be limits?

The limits question gains still more clarity when a couple of related issues are thrown in:

Pension “spiking” is one. The practice allows soon-to-retire officers, especially supervisory officers, to add the value of unused benefits to their base salary to spike their retirement income. As reported by The Arizona Republic’s Craig Harris, pension spiking has allowed a handful of retired police and fire officials to become millionaires.

It scarcely seems wrong for taxpayers to wish to limit that practice, which on its face appears to violate Arizona law prohibiting “unused sick leave, payment in lieu of vacation, payment for unused compensatory time or payment for any fringe benefits” to be used to compute retirement benefits.

Yet it has taken years for City Hall to take pension-spiking reform seriously. And, even now, Mayor Greg Stanton has declared his intent to end spiking ... when the current contract expires in another year. If it’s illegal, a contract doesn’t protect it.

The other cost issue is union-negotiated “release time” for union activities, which allows sworn officers to conduct union business on city time.

However dubious or unjustified, release-time clauses in union contracts are fairly common, although evidence shows that Phoenix’s primary police union has thoroughly abused it by lobbying the Legislature in opposition to City Council-set policies, campaigning for candidates and urging unrest against the police chief, according to Goldwater Institute litigator Clint Bolick, who sued to stop the practice.

If they want to do that on their own time, the First Amendment protects them. But doing it on the taxpayers’ dime? That’s an affront.

In April, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge found that using taxpayer money to fund union activity was not in the public interest and ordered an end to release-time activity on the part of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, or PLEA.

According to Judge Katherine Cooper, the practice cost taxpayers $852,000 a year, thus diverting “resources away from the mission of the Phoenix Police Department.”

The union is appealing.

Pension spiking and release time for PLEA officers are, obviously, related issues. They involve contracts between public-sector unions and city officials that raise troubling questions about who, if anyone, represented the interests of taxpayers during negotiations.

If PLEA had not so obnoxiously abused the release-time benefit, it is possible it may have escaped the scrutiny of critics, even the spending hawks at Goldwater.

Which brings us back to the question of limits. Do taxpayers have a right to ask for reasonable limits on what they pay their first responders? The line-of-duty officers who risk their lives on their behalf?

It is not an easy question to ask, considering the jeopardy public-safety officers face every day.

But here is the part of the equation that union officials and their abettors at City Hall are missing: By defending the indefensible, they are making the answer to that question easier for taxpayers every day.

Judge to decide if Phoenix Police have to obey the law

Of course if we were to do the same thing and say we didn't have to obey the drug laws because they are unconstitutional we would be instantly thrown in jail for breaking the law.

Sadly Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton who by his acts seems like he is owned lock, stock and barrel by the Phoenix Police unions seems to think it is OK for the Phoenix Police to break the law in this matter.

Source

Judge to rule on pay for Phoenix officers’ union work

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Jul 27, 2013 9:03 AM

The long-running dispute about whether Phoenix police employees should be compensated for work they do on behalf of a labor union is finally in the hands of a Maricopa County Superior Court judge.

Those involved, including two competing conservative think tanks and one representing the police union and Phoenix, presented their final arguments Friday before Superior Court Judge Katherine Cooper, who cut off several of the attorneys during their presentations to ask the same question: Why should I rule in your clients’ favor?

The city’s agreement with the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, approved on a split council vote last year, authorizes the labor group to place six police officers in full-time roles with the union and allows a bank of hours those union officials can offer to other officers to perform union work.

The bank of hours includes more than 1,800 for training and conferences, and the contract authorizes full-time union employees to receive straight-time pay when they work overtime. Estimates put the cost of the practice at about $850,000 each year.

Cooper enjoined the practice before the union’s contract expired last year, following a lawsuit from the Goldwater Institute, and she again halted “release time” after a new contract was approved in 2012 that reauthorized the practice.

Goldwater sued the city and the union, arguing that the practice violated the state Constitution’s gift clause. The gift clause requires that public entities receive substantial benefit from any public money they spend.

The trio of attorneys representing the city, police union and conservative-advocacy group Judicial Watch argued that the City Council has the authority to approve such agreements. The attorneys told the judge that the release-time payments are a pittance compared to the entire labor agreement and that release time is part of the union members’ overall compensation package, like an insurance policy, which they should control.

The Goldwater Institute has invoked the gift clause in the past five years to oppose shopping developments, financing for a professional hockey team and tax incentives for an aquarium in Tempe.

State law prohibits public entities from making donations, grants or subsidies to private corporations or associations. But the Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that public bodies do not violate the clause if the expenditure has a public purpose and does not amount to an abuse of the government’s discretion.

Putting payments to police officers in the same category as tax incentives to real-estate moguls seems odd to supporters of the union’s position, but Goldwater Institute attorney Clint Bolick told Cooper on Friday that release time clearly fits the clause’s definition.

“Release time is a gratuity for PLEA,” Bolick said. “Release time is owned by PLEA, controlled by PLEA and used for the benefit of PLEA. As a result, it must be analyzed under the gift clause.”

The Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, the labor union that represents the majority of Phoenix officers and negotiates the contract with the city, has had the agreement allowing release time in place for 37 years, Mike Napier, the group’s attorney, told Cooper.

Other jurisdictions around the nation take different approaches to allow officers time off to represent one another during grievance proceedings, to respond to emergencies such as an officer-involved shooting and to conduct negotiations with city officials.

Some cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles, allow labor groups to reimburse the city for the union release time, according to court documents the Goldwater Institute filed. Houston and Fort Worth, Texas, have a bank of release-time hours to which officers can donate vacation time.

In Dallas, where Phoenix Police Chief Daniel V. Garcia rose to the rank of assistant chief in a 33-year career, the leaders of the largest labor group request “business leave” from their supervisors to conduct union business and are paid for their time through union dues.

After Cooper’s initial injunction, Phoenix officials proposed a system that would require full-time union officers to create a log of their hours and activities and that would require the union to reimburse the city for hours spent doing work that was not determined to be for a public purpose.

The union rejected those proposals, and the contract was approved through 2014 with few changes.

Attorneys for the union, the city and Judicial Watch said Cooper would need to determine that the City Council abused its discretion when it kept release time in the contract.

“Do not substitute your judgment for that of the council,” Napier said.

Cooper didn’t indicate when she might rule on the case.

Corporate welfare at Tempe Town Lake!!!!

Corporate welfare at Tempe Town Toilet!!!!

1) A large part of the time the park is not open to the public, but used for events to raise money for the royal rulers of Tempe. And these events are expensive to attend and most of the working class people that live in Tempe can't afford to attend the events, despite the fact that these people were forced to pay for Tempe Town Toilet with their hard earned tax dollars.

2) These events cause huge traffic jams and parking problems in the downtown Tempe area

3) When these events are concerts they routinely keep people awake late at night in the entire downtown area, and as far north as Roosevelt Road in Scottsdale which is also Continental Drive in Tempe. I am not sure how far south the concerts can be heard.

Also check out:

Source

Tempe to weigh revising Town Lake plan

By Dianna M. Náñez The Republic | azcentral.com

Tue Jul 30, 2013 12:10 AM

The Tempe City Council took a leap of faith more than a decade ago when it sank $44.8 million into building a 2 1/2-mile-long lake in the desert.

The council hoped that risking the debt to create high-profile waterfront property would pay off in the long run for Tempe, then a landlocked city desperate for new development.

But 14 years after the lake opened in 1999, city finance officials say Tempe is faced with a reality check that Town Lake is far from reaching the city’s development goals.

Tonight, the council is expected to consider revising a financing plan for Town Lake.

City finance officials have said the revised plan would give developers a financial break on their share of costs tied to the man-made lake [i.e. - stiff us taxpayers with the cost], make private development more affordable [i.e. stiff us taxpayers with the cost] and, ultimately, advance Tempe’s plans to secure sufficient lakeshore private development to ease the hefty public costs of maintaining Town Lake. [now the last phrase certainly is an oxymoron - give tax dollars private developers to lower the cost to taxpayers - now that's an impossibility - the more we give them the more it costs us]

But critics argue that taxpayers have long carried the financial burden for private lake development.

The new plan offers no guarantee that economic breaks for developers will actually spur construction, argue Joe Pospicil and Art Jacobs, two longtime Tempe residents who regularly question city finances and criticize lake expenses.

If approved, the revised plan also would shift the burden of paying for a new west-end lake dam, which the city has estimated will cost at least $37.4 million, to Tempe taxpayers, freeing developers from sharing the expense to replace the dam. [That a fancy way of saying give boatloads of our hard earned tax dollars out in corporate welfare rich corporations - the rich corporations that give bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions to the members of the Tempe City Council]

Approval of the city proposal would mark the second time a Tempe City Council, aiming to drive development, has tweaked the original 1995 lake-financing plan in favor of developers. The first was in 1997.

Mayor Mark Mitchell said he believes the proposal merits more time in the public realm so that council members may gain sufficient community feedback. [Translation - he wants to make it look like the taxpayers approve of the members of the Tempe City Council giving boatloads of our cash to the rich corporations that gave the members of the Tempe City Council bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions]

But it remains to be seen whether Mitchell’s colleagues agree that the council has a responsibility to arrange future forums for the public to question and comment on the proposal.

As of Monday, the proposed changes were included on the agenda for today’s council meeting.

The finance proposal is not set for a two-hearing process, which would have allowed for public comment at the first hearing and then required a vote and a second opportunity for public comment at a future council meeting.

That means the council could choose to approve the revised Town Lake financing plan with little opportunity for public input.

But before the council agenda was posted on the city’s website Friday, Mitchell said he still had questions about the financing plan.

“When we initially developed the lake, we had a plan, but it’s a working document,” he said. “We might change it, we might not. (But) we’ll have enough time to thoroughly review (any formal changes).” [translation - we know how to run your life better then you do, but if we screw it up don't blame us]

Mitchell said he expects staff today to merely explain the long-term impact of the proposed changes. [That pretty simple Mayor Mitchell, you and the other royal members of the Tempe City Council will be giving our hard earned tax dollars out as corporate welfare for years to come to corporations that give you bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions]

The proposed finance changes were triggered by an economic reality check, Roger Hallsted, the city finance analyst for the Rio Salado Community Facilities District, told The Arizona Republic.

“From all of our original projections, (we were) thinking really by about this time ... the lake would be built out,” Hallsted said.

Tempe’s goal is for private development on 120 acres to generate assessment fees covering 60 percent of annual operations costs. [So us taxpayers will be forced to pay for 40 percent of the developers costs]

But a Republic analysis last year revealed that in the 13 years since the lake was filled, private development still only covered about 20 percent of operation and maintenance costs, well below the 60 percent envisioned in the original city plan. [So in stead of us taxpayers being stuck with paying 40 percent of the developers costs, we are stuck with paying 80 percent of the developers costs - if you ask me us taxpayers are getting screwed on this deal]

Tempe taxpayers have and continue to pay the majority of the $2 million to $3 million in annual costs for operations and maintenance as well as most of the bill for the $44.8 million in original construction costs. [translation - us taxpayers are getting screwed - also did you know that the city of Tempe spends more on Tempe Town Toilet, aka Tempe Town Lake then on all the other parks in Tempe combined???]

Private investment has spurred construction of about 24 acres of condos, high-rise office and commercial space around the lake. Town Lake supporters blame the recession for slower-than-expected development. [Well why didn't the freaking geniuses on the Tempe City Council figure out this??? I guess they were too busy taking bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions from the rich developers]

The proposed changes to the financing plan are aimed at making land surrounding Town Lake more attractive to private development, Hallsted said. [yea, like giving then 10 times as much corporate welfare as originally planned]

If the council approves the changes, Town Lake developers would pay less toward their share of payments for the original construction costs. [And us taxpayers get screwed again and will have to make up the difference]

The proposal emanated from Tempe’s Enhanced Services Commission, Tempe Finance Manager Ken Jones said. [It sounds more like it came from the developers who will be getting the corporate welfare if you ask me!!!!]

The commission includes representation from Jones; Town Lake developers; Nancy Hormann, the president of the group that manages the downtown Tempe district; and Arizona State University, which owns and is attempting to develop acres of lakeshore property. [yes I was right, it did come from the developers who will are getting the corporate welfare!!!!]

A Republic review of public records from the commission meetings shows that commission members have spent the past year discussing development and maintenance plans for the lake.

At a January meeting, Jones asked for “the logic behind asking the council to cover the cost of replacing the dams,” according to public records of the meeting. [If you remember it was the idiots on the Tempe City Council who get screwed on the damn. The accepted a worthless ORAL 30 year guarantee on the damn, which failed after 10 years causing us taxpayers to get stuck with the replacement costs]

Hallsted said shifting the cost of the dams from being a shared debt with private developers to a taxpayer-only-funded cost is the result of the original rubber dam deteriorating years earlier than expected. [yea, like I just said]

“These new dams, at $38 million to $50 million, if we were to put that in at the true cost, just the (Town Lake) infrastructure replacement budget would have gone from $531,000 (annually) to $2 million,” he said.

The city had to face facts, he said, that it would have to shoulder the dam’s cost rather than “bankrupting every single (lake) property owner,” Hallsted said. [f*ck you!!!! bankrupt the developers for making dumb decisions, not the taxpayers. Or let the members of the Tempe City Council pay for the whole thing.]

The commission questioned whether it’s “more expensive to build at the lake than anywhere else in the Valley” and whether the city was “willing to offer an incentive to level the playing field,” according to public meeting records. [Well maybe the idiots on the Tempe City Council should not have build the lake, since it is a money losing experience]

The commission recommended a plan that would lower an annual “holding fee” of sorts that developers pay until they build on their lake property. [translation - make the taxpayers pay more of the developers expenses - i.e. more corporate welfare for the rich corporations building stuff on Tempe Town Toilet]

If the revised plan is approved, that fee would be reduced from the current 5 percent to the rate of inflation, which is currently 2.2 percent, Hallsted said. [which the Tempe taxpayers will pay]

The financing proposal also includes lowering the annual interest rate developers pay over the 25 years they are allowed to pay back their share of lake construction. [again, which the Tempe taxpayers will pay]

The current interest rate is 5 percent, and the proposal would lower it to 3.64 percent, Hallsted said. He added that the proposal calls for the council to make the rate reduction retroactive to July 1, 2009.

If the council approves rolling back the fee, developers that have built existing commercial and residential development at the lake would receive credits on biannual debt payments they are currently making. [and us taxpayers will be stuck with even bigger bills. Of course the members of the Tempe City Council will get to keep the bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions they accepted from the developers of property at Tempe Town Toilet]

While critics worry that taxpayers are funding too much of the cost for Town Lake, Hallsted reasons that the revised plan will establish a realistic financing plan for the lake and encourage development that will help pay a greater share of the lake’s annual operations and maintenance costs. [why expect the developers to pay for their costs, when they can give small bribes, oops, I mean small campaign contributions to the Tempe City Council members who will stiff the taxpayers with the bill]

“The key thing,” he said, “is being fair to the citizens, but try to make it more enticing for developers to come in.” [translation - the key to this is SCREWING the taxpayers and forcing them to pay the developers bills]

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