Closing out the year

Is the past really prologue? ... What's on tap this week? ... And what year is it, anyway?

Welcome back, folks!

We hope you missed us while we took a chunk of December off to bank some family time, plan a whole election year’s worth of newsletters and migrate our entire operation to a new email provider.

As usual, we were a bit ambitious with the time allotted … We need another week or so to finish our big move, bosses!

We’ll continue publishing here on Our Regrettable Platform (TM) as we work out the final kinks in our new system. By next Monday, we’ll be all moved into our new home(?).

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As the new year begins, let’s get caught up on what you missed while you were celebrating the holidays.

Housing was a top issue for the Tucson City Council as it wrapped up its business for the year, while eyeing a sizable drop in revenue for 2026.

The data center boom in Arizona, and the fight over where they should be built (or if they should exist at all), kept humming along and shows no signs of slowing down.

As Trump 2.0 enters its second year, federal officials are expanding their crackdown on Democratic-controlled cities to Phoenix, while also starting a war with Venezuela that is splitting Southern Arizona’s congressional delegation.

It’s a lot to take in, so let’s get started.

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Housing on their minds

With two new members sworn in, the Tucson City Council wrapped up its final meeting of the year by voting — almost unanimously — to expand on a new state law aimed at boosting affordable housing across most of the city.

The 6–1 vote, with Councilman Kevin Dahl dissenting, clears the way for developers to build duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes on a typical residential lot citywide, with a handful of carve-outs.

The same meeting also underscored the city’s housing crunch. Tucson quietly closed its public housing waiting list last month, citing more than 40,000 residents already in line for a unit and roughly 700 units coming online each year.

And before heading into the new year, the council signed off on a series of revenue increases — higher fees for pawn shops, new taxes on hotels and short-term rentals, and a bump to the city’s utility tax — all part of a push to close a looming, multi-million-dollar budget gap.

We’re not done with data centers

It looks like Marana will be the next hot spot in the fight over building more data centers.

The Marana Planning Commission backed the rezoning of roughly 600 acres for a proposed data center near the Arizona Veterans Memorial Cemetery. The Marana Town Council will ultimately decide whether to approve the proposal.

The upcoming debate in Marana might feature former U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema before long.

Over in Chandler, which already is a hot spot for data centers, Sinema lobbied the city council to approve a data center project, per leaked emails that suggest, despite her repeated denials, she is, in fact, working as a lobbyist — a revelation that comes as little surprise to critics.

That followed Sinema’s veiled threats to the Chandler City Council just ahead of its vote to reject a massive data center proposal last month. After the deal fell apart, the Democrat-turned-independent lashed out at the left for killing the project, even as she was publicly praising the Trump administration for backing AI-driven data centers.

As for data centers in Tucson, we’re still expecting an answer this month on whether Davis-Monthan Air Force Base will lease space for developers to build an AI data center. It’s part of the Trump administration’s AI initiative to get private companies to invest $500 billion to build new data centers on select Air Force bases. We’ve been calling it Project Red, White and Blue.

Pima County sells the land

The controversial sale of 290 acres to one of the developers behind Project Blue closed out 2025 with nearly $21 million flowing into the county’s coffers — and a lot of lingering anger.

Opponents of the deal remain furious, even as the developers signed a new agreement with the county pledging $15 million in community benefits and reaffirming a commitment to renewable energy.

It’s worth noting that a corporate version of Russian nesting dolls continues behind the scenes. It turns out that the county actually sold the land to Bobcat B1 LLC, a different Delaware-based limited liability corporation formed in mid-December that is legally distinct from Humphrey’s Peak Properties — the one we’ve been talking about for the last year.

All the companies are tied to the same private equity firm, Blue Owl Capital, renewing questions about transparency and long-term financial accountability.

In the near future, the Marana Town Council will decide whether to approve a proposal from Beale to build another data center on 600 acres on what used to be farmland.

We’ll note that one of the parcels is owned by the Kai Family Trust. Marana Councilmember Herb Kai says he’ll recuse himself from the vote.

Just like Project Blue, there is local opposition to the proposal.

Back to the Pima County news, county supervisors also approved the sale of more than 400 acres west of the Tucson city limits to the National Park Service, a move that will expand the boundaries of Saguaro National Park West.

Meanwhile, the board tabled a proposal to limit vehicle trips on county-owned dirt roads after getting sharp pushback from supporters of the Copper World mine, who warned that restrictions on Santa Rita Road could hurt the project. At least one group made thinly veiled threats of legal action if the supervisors pressed ahead.

Busy in Washington, D.C.

Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva didn’t slow down after getting pepper-sprayed by Homeland Security Investigations agents in early December. Her Democratic colleagues want an official inquiry into the incident.

Grijalva called for UA professor Noam Chomsky’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein to be investigated, and criticized her Republican colleague, U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani, on healthcare costs by calling him a “just another MAGA rubber stamp.”

The Tucson congresswoman also denounced the Trump administration’s attack on Venezuela over the weekend.

“At a time when Americans are struggling to afford rent, groceries and health care, President Trump is spending billions on playing dictator abroad while doing nothing to improve the lives of working families here at home,” Grijalva said on Twitter.

Ciscomani praised Trump for the strike against the “narco-terror regime.”

“President Trump’s decisive action marks a critical step toward disrupting these deadly trafficking operations and pushing back against a destabilizing regime that has aligned itself with some of our most dangerous adversaries, including Iran, China, Hezbollah, and Hamas,” Ciscomani wrote on Twitter.

Meanwhile, Democratic candidate Samantha Severson announced she is suspending her campaign to challenge Ciscomani in CD6. While we’re early in the campaign season, Pinal County native JoAnna Mendoza still leads the Democratic field in fundraising and high-profile endorsements.

Crackdown incoming

Phoenix is next on the list of Democratic-led cities the Trump administration plans to target in the coming weeks, officials told the Bulwark.

Federal officials spent the last year sending Border Patrol and ICE agents into cities like Chicago, Portland and Los Angeles. In each city, officials and protesters objected to the agents’ heavy-handed tactics, including pepper-spraying and pointing guns at people on the streets.

The report from the Bulwark last week came two months after Trump officials removed the head of ICE in Phoenix and several other cities. As we previously noted, that decision was widely seen as a precursor to giving Border Patrol agents freer rein to sweep up anybody they think looks like an immigrant in Home Depot parking lots, residential streets and anywhere else they want.

Border Patrol agents during their deployment in Chicago last summer.

December wasn’t all bad

Reid Park Zoo upped its cuteness quotient with a capybara named Chocolate; the endangered Red squirrels on Mount Graham are making a comeback; and the Arizona Corporation Commission believes the 520 area code can be given out for a few more years before Southern Arizona will need a new area code.

That should get you up to speed on political news in Southern Arizona. For the big stories at the Arizona Legislature and other state-level news, check out today’s edition of the Arizona Agenda.

We’re launching a small calendar section on Mondays for those of you who want to be in the room where it happens (or watch it happen from the comfort of home).

• The Democrats of Greater Tucson meet virtually today at 6 p.m. Minority Leader Rep. Oscar De Los Santos and Assistant Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Guttierez will discuss the 2026 legislative session. You must register in advance here.

• Pima County Board of Supervisors meets on Tuesdays at 9 a.m. at 130 W. Congress St. The board’s meeting agenda is on this page. The county’s livestream of meetings can be found here.

• Pima County Republican Club meets on Tuesdays at 11:30 a.m. at The Kettle just west of I-10 on 22nd St.

• The Tucson City Council has two meetings on Tuesday, a study session at 1 p.m. and their regular session at 6 p.m. The council meets at 255 W. Alameda, but you can also watch the meeting via the city’s livestream. The council’s agendas can be found here.

This isn’t until next week, but Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes will hold a town hall on Tucson Electric Power’s rate increase on Tuesday, January 13. You can register here.

Please reach out to Joe (joe@tucsonagenda.com) to get your events on the list.

The Pima County Democratic Party got a little backlash on New Year’s Day when they used the wrong graphic in a social media post.

Several people were triggered at the thought of repeating 2025.

Hat tip to the top commenter. We couldn’t have said it better.