The most powerful woman in Pima County that has never been on the ballot is retiring at the end of the year.
Jan Lesher, who has served as county administrator since 2021 and quietly shaped county government for more than a decade before that, announced during a budget retreat that she’s retiring at the end of the year.
The move wasn’t a surprise — she signed a two-year contract last January.
But the agenda item outlining a transition plan for Lesher triggered one last plea from supervisors to stay past 2026.
Supervisor Jennifer Allen — the chair of the board — started with a tongue-in-cheek solution.
"I think we've already solved this, right? We just come up with another one-year contract," Allen said, while Lesher laughed and shook her head no.
While Lesher is popular with the current board, there is also a desire among the supervisors who want to delay a substantial leadership transition at the very top of county government at a time when state and federal politics are volatile.
Monday’s decision set the search in motion for Lesher’s replacement. The Pima County Board of Supervisors is preparing to hire a third-party firm to help identify candidates to be the county’s top bureaucrat next year.
Pima County Administrator Jan Lesher
As the county administrator, Lesher oversees the day-to-day operations of the county government that includes roughly seven thousand employees, dozens of departments and a $1.7 billion budget — while answering to the four Democrats and one Republican on the Board of Supervisors.
This high-profile position makes her one of the most powerful people in the Old Pueblo.
Not to mention, she’s the highest paid employee in Pima County government.
Her $330,000 annual salary is impressive, but the benefits and perks of the job substantially increase her take-home pay. Her most recent contract included a $70,000 annual raise as well as others perks, including a payout for unused sick and vacation time. The latter two are common for all full-time county employees.
Her added payout for sick and vacation time was a jaw-dropping $225,366 for the two-year period tied to her last contract, public records show.
Her departure will leave some big shoes to fill.
Before joining Pima County government in 2010, she served as chief of staff to then-Gov. Janet Napolitano. She followed Napolitano to Washington as her chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, helping manage the massive federal agencies responsible for border security, immigration enforcement and responding to national emergencies.
After rising through the county ranks as deputy and chief deputy administrator, Lesher became acting county administrator in 2021, after then-County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry was critically injured when a car hit him from behind while he was biking in downtown Tucson. She was permanently appointed in 2022 — becoming the first woman to hold the position.
With former Tucson Police Chief Chad Kasmar joining as deputy county administrator next month, here is the revised county leadership tree — with Pima County taxpayers on top.
Her tenure reflects her deep institutional knowledge of the county, bringing stability to a massive bureaucracy as it emerged from a landscape changed by the COVID pandemic.
Later crises included juggling county budget stresses with increasing costs tied to inflation and a competitive market for talent, and managing huge political upheavals as Supervisors Sharon Bronson and Adelita Grijalva stepped down during their terms.
Critics say her political successes often came at the expense of transparency and public process.
Last year, the supervisors approved a new deal with Lesher even though the contract itself wasn’t publicly available ahead of the vote.
It was a procedural mess that raised uncomfortable questions about timing, access and whether the public — or even all supervisors — were seeing the full picture before the decision was made.
Then there was Project Blue.
What began as a proposed data center on county-owned land quickly turned into a master class in nondisclosure agreements, economic-development secrecy and public distrust.
Lesher was at the center of that political fight, facing questions about what the county could say, when it could say it — and who actually controlled the flow of information.
Lesher may have violated a nondisclosure agreement with Project Blue by accidentally releasing a confidential memo tying Amazon Web Services (AWS) to the data centers — although AWS ultimately pulled out of the project.
The county is now being sued by activists arguing the earliest presentations related to Project Blue violated the state’s open meeting laws.
The Board have ten more months with Lesher, although there is a push to hire an “administrator-elect” before the end of the year.
Supervisor Rex Scott reminded his colleagues that Lesher’s successor will mark the end of an era, and the community deserves a robust search for her replacement.
“The reality is that we are looking at somebody — other than someone who has the last name of Huckelberry or Lesher — serving as the county administrator for the first time since 1993,” Scott said.
When will we find out who is in the running to be the next Pima County administrator?
Probably this summer, after the county get its ducks in a row as part of a recruitment process.
Still in the hot seat: Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos is still fielding uncomfortable questions as the investigation into the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie drags on, the Arizona Daily Star’s Norma Coile reports. This time, Nanos is saying he “probably could have held off” a little longer before deciding the crime scene at Guthrie’s home could be released back to her family, which is raising questions about chain-of-custody issues with evidence. The intense news coverage of the case is putting Tucson and local leaders through “spasms of local despair and national attention,” Star columnist Tim Steller writes, just like the shooting at the University of Arizona nursing school in 2002, the Rep. Gabrielle Giffords shooting in 2011, and the disappearance of Isabel Celis in 2012.
Losing the battle: The Arizona State Land Commissioner is going ahead with the auction of 160 acres that the Pima County Board of Supervisors (except for Supervisor Steve Christy) has railed against repeatedly. The land would be used for mine tailings from Hudbay’s Copper World project. The county supervisors already drafted a letter to Gov. Katie Hobbs asking her to delay the auction, which is scheduled for April 29, until after Hudbay completes its final feasibility study.
Meanwhile, at the UA: As the drama over the 160 acres for Hudbay plays out, the University of Arizona is betting on mining, particularly after the Trump administration decided to spend big to support copper mining, the Star’s Prerana Sannappanavar reports. UA officials built a coalition with mining companies like South32Hermosa (which is building the manganese mine in the Patagonia Mountains) and Resolution Copper (Oak Flat). The next project is a processing facility near Sahuarita, funded by $3 million the UA got from the federal government.
Looking back to see ahead: While local voters consider the upcoming RTA Next election, the Green Valley News’ Jorge Encinas has a primer on previous ballot measures that were meant to boost infrastructure in Pima County, along with an update on how voter-approved bond money has been spent in and around Green Valley and Sahuarita.
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Lessons from the border: Southern Arizona border experts Todd Miller and Melissa del Bosque share their insights into the Border Patrol’s role in the ongoing campaign to terrorize Democratic-controlled cities, which has mostly been attributed to ICE. They’re seeing a “new phase of expanded border policing” that’s on par with the deterrence strategy of the 1990s or the sweeping powers granted to border agents after 9/11.
On Friday — just hours after news broke that Tucson Police Chief Chad Kasmar was leaving TPD for a job with Pima County — the Tucson Crime Free Coalition posted this unsanctioned “ad” for jobs at the county.
We don’t think the timing was a coincidence.
There’s always a steady stream of city employees taking jobs at the county and vice-versa.
But this AI-generated poster demonstrates the group’s disdain for a lot of the decisions made by the current Tucson City Council.
Fun fact: We’re pretty sure TCFC reads the Tucson Agenda, considering Councilwoman Miranda Schubert used the term “bread and roses” (it’s a labor slogan) in an interview with us two weeks ago.
Coincidence? Maybe!
But also: Hi, thanks for reading. 👋