No one asked us to weigh in on the pending appointment of the next treasurer for Pima County.
But we just gotta do it anyway. We’ve seen too many elected officials get into trouble.
A list of nine names went out late last week, all Democrats who live in Pima County and want to fill the relatively low-profile — but pretty well-paid — elected office.
We’re not here to put our finger on the scale. We just have some serious concerns.
Records released by the county last week — chronicled in depth first by the Tucson Sentinel and Arizona Daily Star — show some disturbing allegations of bad behavior from former Pima County Treasurer Brian Johnson that forced him to step down.
The treasurer holds an incredibly important job in safeguarding public dollars, and we don’t have to look far to find other political scandals involving county treasurers in Arizona.
We can easily point to former Santa Cruz County Treasurer Elizabeth Gutfahr, who pleaded guilty to stealing more than $38 million from county coffers, or the investigation into Yuma County Treasurer David Alexandre this spring for allegedly misusing public funds.
We hope many of our questions will be addressed at a debate tonight hosted by the League of Women Voters of Greater Tucson. And we hope the candidates get grilled by the county supervisors when they meet with them individually.
The Treasurer’s Office is in the basement of the county’s public service center.
For now, the county has an interim treasurer in place — Jake Martin, who served as chief deputy treasurer before Johnson stepped down.
Candidates for treasurer include Martin, Brian Bickel, Daniel Dempsey, Derrick Espadas, Sami Hamed, James Hannley, Derika Louk, Karla Morales and Jorge Soto.
With Martin already serving as interim treasurer, we’d rather see the supervisors take extra time than rush into the wrong decision. We can’t find anything in state law that requires the supervisors to make an appointment next week.
Whenever the supervisors appoint someone, that person will fill the remainder of Johnson’s term and serve through December 31, 2028.
The supervisors aren’t just filling a vacancy. They’re deciding who will oversee hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and lead an office recovering from months of turmoil and political drama.
The appointee will also enjoy the advantages of incumbency if they seek a full term in 2028.
Rebuilding trust, setting clear expectations and creating a culture where employees feel comfortable raising concerns will be part of the job.
Right now, there is an active vetting process going on behind the scenes, including everyone submitting to a background check and handing over a financial disclosure form.
It is a full-time position
It feels like half of Tucson already has a side hustle, including some elected officials.
The county treasurer shouldn’t be one of them. The appointed candidate will make just shy of $100,000 a year.
Pima County deserves a dedicated professional who will give their full attention to the job, not someone leaving at noon to clock in somewhere else. 1
The Treasurer’s Office has spent the last six months in crisis. The next treasurer shouldn’t be treating it like a part-time job managing staff.
The county has five elected supervisors and more than two dozen other elected officials, from constables to the county attorney. Very few have a side hustle.
It’s true some own businesses, serve on boards, and one or two sell artwork they make in their homes. We’re not aware of any self-publishing authors like Johnson in the mix, but let us know in the comments if a justice of the peace is also writing fiction as a side hustle.
In our minds, there is a big difference between attending a nonprofit board meeting and working 20 hours a week for someone else.
High emotional intelligence
The next chapter for the Treasurer’s Office is going to require someone who can be a calm, reliable presence — someone with the emotional intelligence to rebuild trust, recognize problems before they become crises and create a workplace where employees feel safe speaking up.
County records indicate multiple allegations of sexual harassment and inappropriate workplace behavior by Johnson, and the internal HR investigation involved multiple employees and witnesses.
The Pima County Treasurer’s Office has about 30 staffers.
As the chief deputy, Martin was in a position where he may have had reporting obligations under county policy, even if honoring the complainant’s wishes complicated that decision or required him to go around his boss to file a report.
We’ve been told that Martin ultimately worked with county officials and formally reported Johnson, but the timeline is still fuzzy.
According to Martin, he learned of at least one complaint in January but did not immediately report it because the complainant asked him to hold off. By June, everyone in county administration was in the loop.
Whether he struck the right balance between respecting the complainant’s wishes and protecting the broader workplace is a fair question for the Board of Supervisors to explore before deciding whether he should lead the office.
No political favors
At the moment, candidates are making their cases both privately and publicly to the supervisors.
There’s nothing wrong with sharing your experience in the Treasurer’s Office or having relevant finance-related experience.
But showing up with letters of endorsement from major political figures slowly moves us away from picking the most qualified candidate and toward the best-connected politician.
Again, we don’t have a favorite in the race.
So far, Pima County voters have already weighed in on Bickel, Hamed and Morales. Both Bickel and Hamed ran to be the county’s next treasurer. They lost, but they did earn the support of tens of thousands of voters. Morales was elected to the Pima Community College Governing Board in 2024.
The rest, as far as we know, haven’t formally run for office.
You can check out the candidates yourself later today. The League of Women Voters of Greater Tucson debate starts at 5:30 p.m., and the supervisors are expected to appoint someone next week.
But at the end of the day, this is an important office and a decision shouldn’t be rushed for political expediency.
It’s worth taking the time to do it right.
Hacking and swatting: It started with a game of “Rust,” but it quickly turned serious, Griffin Salkowski reports for the Arizona Daily Star. A Tucson man, Axeel Melenendez, says hackers stole his personal information while playing the multiplayer video game with him, demanded money and threatened to make fake emergency calls to send police, the FBI or ICE to his home. He called 911 to warn them about the threats, but two days later, someone allegedly made the fake call anyway. Deputies broke into his home and shot him, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down, which is raising concerns about “swatting” and how police respond to these dangerous hoaxes.
Truly historic: Tucson’s Mission Garden was just put on the National Register of Historic Places, one of the highest honors for local preservation, Ivy Kleinman reports for the Tucson Sentinel. The garden covers four acres at the foot of Sentinel Peak and the garden’s curator touted it as one of the longest continually cultivated agricultural sites in North America. Historical records indicate O’odham people and their predecessors lived on the site for more than 4,000 years.
Creative accounting: As tech companies push for more data centers in Southern Arizona, Wall Street Journal columnist Christopher Mims highlights an overlooked aspect of the debate over water use by data centers: the billions of gallons used while generating electricity. The water used to power Google’s data centers was three times higher than the water used on site, while Facebook’s parent company, Meta, used 20 times more water for generate electricity than it did on site. The public outcry over water used for data centers led Big Tech to promise to be “water positive” in the next few years, but those promises usually don’t include indirect water use. Locally, public concern over data centers led the Town of Sahuarita to launch an “FAQ Saturday” to answer residents’ questions about whether the town’s general plan, which goes before voters on July 21, would encourage more data centers, Jorge Encinas reports for the Green Valley News.
All in on semiconductors: In other tech-related news, the University of Arizona is partnering with Taiwan’s National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University to launch a Talent and Innovation Hub focused on semiconductor education and workforce development, Prerana Sannappanavar reports for the Star. The program, which begins in 2027, will allow students to take courses in both Tucson and Taiwan, participate in internships and collaborate with industry partners. University officials say the hub is designed to strengthen Arizona’s growing semiconductor workforce.
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Not over yet: The Republican-controlled Cochise County Board of Supervisors may ask the county attorney to investigate whether Attorney General Kris Mayes exceeded her authority when she threatened to use public nuisance laws against the Aluminum Dynamics recycling plant, per the Herald/Review. The plant was one of the most controversial projects in the county, which led to the company canceling the project last month. Board Chair Frank Antenori put the item on the agenda for this week’s board meeting, referring to Mayes’ lawsuit threat as “alleged interference” with the project.
We’ve all heard the debate over who the fifth Beatle was. But who is the 61st member of the Arizona House of Representatives?
If you only read the text message below, the answer would be Maritza Higuera.
There’s just one tiny problem: she’s still a candidate.
She’s running for the second House seat in Legislative District 21 — which stretches from the U.S.-Mexico border to southeast Tucson. And she’s working alongside Democratic Rep. Consuelo Hernandez to knock off the district’s other incumbent, Democratic Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton.
But it looks like someone on the Higuera campaign hit send before finishing their thought, turning “Democratic candidate for State Representative” into simply “State Representative.”
Campaigns are all about confidence. Sometimes too much confidence comes across the wrong way.
Send us your favorite campaign messages with a quick email to Joe.
1 If you’re curious, County Administrator Jan Lesher wrote a primer 18 months ago on what to expect out of the Pima County treasurer.