Finding someone to replace Jan Lesher atop the Pima County bureaucracy is proving harder than supervisors initially expected.
Months after deciding they could handle the search for a new county administrator themselves, the Pima County Board of Supervisors has concluded its initial candidate pool isn’t deep enough.
This doesn’t mean there weren’t good, qualified candidates locally. But the supervisors decided to hire a recruitment firm and expand the search, which will lead to a broad, national recruitment effort.
We will point out that the short list was never made public. And while there’s a decent reason for that standard practice — so employers don’t find out that their employees have applied for the job and might be quitting soon — that secrecy means we have no real idea who was considered, what their qualifications are, and why they didn’t get the job.
And it’s a pretty important job.
While supervisors set policy, the administrator is the one stuck with the job of actually running county government — everything from making sure supervisors actually make decisions, to overseeing county departments, including hiring and firing directors, and making sure the county stays on budget.
It’s been 35 years
Pima County Supervisor and chair of the board Jennifer Allen acknowledged at the start of the discussion two weeks ago that some of her colleagues wanted to start with a national search months ago.
“I know that there might be a few ‘I-told-you so’s’ (over the plan to) bring in a recruiter,” Allen conceded. “We have not done this hiring for 35 years for an administrator position … and I think that we got some excellent candidates, but we did not get very many candidates.”
It might be closer to 33 years, but close enough.
Former County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry served in the county’s top spot for 28 years, and Lesher stepped in after he was hit by a car in 2021 while riding his bike downtown.
The serious injuries forced Huckelberry to retire, and Lesher has served as county administrator ever since.
After 28 years on the job, Huckelberry left some huge shoes to fill. But Lesher stepped in to adequately fill them — steering the county through both the COVID pandemic, the migrant crisis along the border and fights with the Trump administration over executive orders cutting funding to the county.
However, Lesher essentially announced her retirement when the board renewed her contract, saying she planned to retire after the two-year agreement ended.
Someone who knows Arizona
Supervisor Andrés Cano, who worked for years in the District 5 office before becoming supervisor, said it was important to him to hire someone who understood Arizona.
“This is my own District 5 opinion, but I am not interested in a national search. I am not interested in recruiting somebody from Montana or from New York or any of these other jurisdictions,” Cano said.
He eventually supported the motion to hire a firm, but said he was doing so “with a bit of resistance and hesitation” because even he wasn’t sure who applied in the first round of advertising the position.
Supervisor Steve Christy had separate concerns, saying the county should have done its homework before committing to outside recruiters.
“I’ve been on the board long enough to know we’ve had several of these consulting firms over the years and they ain’t cheap,” Christy told his colleagues. “I’d like to have some ideas how much it’s going to cost us before we jump into this thing.”
How much and how long?
Tomorrow, we’re expecting to learn more about how much the expanded search effort will cost.
You won’t find anything in the board’s agenda — despite our repeated complaints — because the item still doesn’t include a staff report.
Two weeks ago, Pima County Supervisor Matt Heinz got a second opinion from the internet on how much it could cost.
“According to Google, the Google Machine, hiring a recruitment firm for a county administrator in a large county will typically cost between $30,000 and $60,000 in estimated recruitment fees,” Heinz said.
The board will discuss a new timeline to find Lesher’s replacement tomorrow, although there are concerns that the county has six months to hire a recruitment firm, conduct a broader search, pick a new short list, hire a candidate and give them enough time to figure out where their office is before Lesher is set to retire in January.
Still, some on the board expect Lesher could be coaxed to stay longer if needed.
“I don’t think that December 31st is any sort of drop dead date anyway because we have the gracious flexibility of our current county administrator. Should it take us seven more months to deal with this, I’m sure she could hang out for a couple months,” Heinz said.
Lesher didn’t respond to Heinz’s suggestion, but we’re guessing she already has a fairly detailed list of things she’d rather be doing in retirement.
Today’s the final day to register to vote if you wanna cast a ballot in Arizona’s July 21 primary election.
A quick reminder: Even independents can vote in the primary — you just have to decide which party’s primary you wanna vote in.
To register to vote, check or update your voter registration status or request a ballot, contact your county recorder.
Here’s the website for you Pima County residents. And for the rest of you, the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission has a one-stop shop where you can find your recorder and other voting information.
He’s in, then he’s out: U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance nixed his planned trip to Oro Valley today to give a speech in Republican U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani’s Congressional District 6. Vance is instead jetting to Switzerland for U.S.-Iran peace talks. Meanwhile, today’s planned joint press conference featuring city and county officials as well as the Arizona Commerce Authority officials to talk about a recent trip to Taiwan was canceled on Friday. One elected official told us that the event was postponed as it conflicted with Vance’s (now cancelled) event in Oro Valley.
Releasing the refunds: In the wake of former Pima County Treasurer Brian Johnson’s resignation, the office will refund about $6 million in property taxes that Johnson had refused to release, Hannah Cree reports for the Arizona Daily Star. Johnson’s replacement, Chief Deputy Treasurer Jake Martin, said “it’s clear at this time that the treasurer’s office does not have the legal or statutory authority to litigate, hold up, or investigate” the notices of proposed corrections.
Slander sells: All it took for a Star intern reporter to become the subject of bonkers conspiracy theories was spending a little time in Nancy Guthrie’s neighborhood, Star columnist Tim Steller writes. The YouTubers camped near Guthrie’s house started telling their viewers that the intern was “creepy, creepy, creepy” and surmising that his shoes looked like the ones worn by a suspect caught on camera. The recent arrests of three YouTubers raises First Amendment questions, Steller notes, but local reporters haven’t been too upset about those arrests.
“That’s in part because people working as professional journalists don't see what (streamers are) doing as real journalism. We don't hang out for hours on air, talking idly about whoever happens to pass by, wrapping those people publicly into scenarios about who harmed Nancy Guthrie. We usually don't report on nothing happening,” Steller writes.
Moving forward and backward: Trump officials are moving ahead with their plan to convert a former state prison in Marana into an immigration detention center, Paul Ingram reports for the Tucson Sentinel. Department of Homeland Security officials say they need to double the building’s capacity to 1,300 beds, and they laid out their plan to renovate the building, which is in a 100-year floodplain. Still, the company that will run the detention center says it doesn’t have a contract with ICE yet. Marana Mayor Jon Post reiterated that the town “does not support expanding the facility,” per KVOA. While the Marana renovations move ahead, Trump officials are signaling they’re backing away from a much larger plan to convert warehouses into detention centers, per the New York Times.
Popping corks in Benson: Opponents of a controversial aluminum recycling plant planned for Benson celebrated after the company said it wasn’t going to build the plant, Terri Jo Neff reports for the Herald/Review. Aluminum Dynamics had come under pressure from environmental groups, local residents and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes. Plus, three new members of the Benson City Council took their seats after their predecessors were recalled last month for supporting the plant.
Here are the top events this week for those who want a front-row seat to local politics.
The Democrats of Greater Tucson meet virtually today at noon. The guest speaker is state treasurer candidate Nick Mansour. (Register here.)
The Pima County Republican Club meets on Tuesdays at 11:30 a.m. at The Kettle just west of I-10 on 22nd St.
The Rio Nuevo Multipurpose Facilities District board will hold its monthly meeting on Tuesday at 1 p.m. online. (Agenda / Livestream.)
Radio host Bill Buckmaster will have Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos on his show on Friday at noon.
Former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will be in town on Sunday evening to hold a rally in Tucson for Congressional District 6 Democratic candidate JoAnna Mendoza. The location is still TBA but requires you to register to attend.
Did we miss an event? Email Joe. There are, somehow, always more meetings.
It looks like the Trump administration is taking pages right out of “Mission: Impossible.”
The Department of Homeland Security put a timer on the public notice about the “detention facility enhancements” in the planned ICE facility in Marana.
As in: This webpage will self-destruct in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Seems like a week was enough time to gather public feedback on how local residents feel about packing as many as 1,300 people into the old prison that was built to house 550. The town of Marana, for what it’s worth, says this is the first it’s heard of the plan to cram in 1,300 people. It says the old prison can’t hold more than 775 people.
At the bottom of the DHS’ webpage inviting public comment is also a note that the page will disappear on June 18. (It was still there on June 21.)
We just hope they realize there is a big difference between deleting a webpage versus archiving it, per the Federal Records Act.