Not everything went according to plan at Tuesday’s Pima County Board of Supervisors meeting.
The plan to release the damning 65-page report that reportedly found Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos violated county human resources policies when he suspended his political rival weeks before the 2024 election was tabled for another day.
The plan to potentially replace all five members of the Pima Industrial Development Authority has been put on the back burner so County Administrator Jan Lesher can meet with the IDA board and their lawyers.
Instead, the supervisors got something that wasn’t on the agenda — a demonstration of civil disobedience by Vivek Bharathan with the No Desert Data Center Coalition, who climbed on top of the table as a form of protest during call to the public.
Vivek Bharathan barefoot on the table in the supervisors meeting.
Bharathan isn’t alone in ratcheting up his tactics.
After repeated setbacks when it comes to attempting to derail data centers in Pima County through political channels, activists have begun to lean into more public forms of protest. Last month, for example, protesters briefly blocked the construction entrance to the parcel across the road from the Pima County fairgrounds.
During the first part of his address, Bharathan calmly said Supervisors Steve Christy, Rex Scott and Matt Heinz should resign immediately for supporting Project Blue. He accused the three men of being duped by Beale Infrastructure, noting how much water the data center will pump directly out of the local aquifer.
“Beale infrastructure has permits from the state to drill two wells endangering the water supply of nearby families who rely on that groundwater and have said they'll use up to 20,000 gallons a day," Bharathan said during call to the public.
Unlike many angry constituents we’ve seen at public meetings, Bharathan never yelled or cursed during his speech.
Instead, he said he was disappointed with the supervisors for putting out a statement of support for Keri Silvyn after about 20 masked protesters stormed the Lazarus and Silvyn law firm office, beating drums ad clanging pots. Silvyn is the attorney for Beale Infrastructure and has represented them in at least two planned data center projects in the region.
We’ve reviewed the police report from the incident, and while the report mentions “assault” and “criminal damage” — the narrative suggests nobody was assaulted and the damage was accidental.
“The damage was a small scrape mark to the wall, which removed some paint. No one in the office had been hurt, or required medical attention,” a Tucson Police Officer wrote in the initial report.
There is no formal link between the protesters and members of the No Desert Data Center Coalition.
As one of the main voices for the No Desert Data Center Coalition, Bharathan chided the supervisors for supporting Silvyn while denouncing the protesters and suggesting their “behavior was intimidating and threatening.”
Bharathan tied his protest on Tuesday night to the kind of non-violent forms of civil disobedience used by his grandparents.
“Civil disobedience, whether it’s noisy or silent, whether expressed as anger or love, is disruptive to business as usual. So I can smile and take a beating like my grandparents’ generation did in the Indian independence movement, the Satyagrahas, like many Black people did during the civil rights movement here. Is that what you'd like? I can do that for you. But something tells me this isn't acceptable to you either, is it?” Bharathan said as his climbed on the table.
No one answered him directly as he asked the supervisors whether this was a form of protest they could support.
"How is this (as) a form of civil disobedience to you? Is it palatable? Is it more palatable than noise? I can smile for you," Bharathan continued.
When Bharathan refused to climb down, Pima County Supervisor Jennifer Allen — the chair of the board — moved to take a break and county officials cut the county's live YouTube feed as Bharathan was escorted out of the room.
“I forgive you,” Bharathan told one of the officers who forced him to leave the chambers.
Last week, Republican Congressman Juan Ciscomani signed on to a letter to the head of the Department of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, asking for help to “modernize” the DeConcini Land Port of Entry in Nogales.
Letters like these are somewhat pro forma in an election year, and this one had bipartisan support, as it was co-signed by Reps. Abe Hamadeh and Greg Stanton.
Sure, the port isn’t in any of their districts. But almost no one locally argues there isn’t a need for upgrades at the Nogales port of entry.
But the letter left us wondering: Why didn’t Ciscomani sign onto a similar letter sent a month earlier signed by Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva (whose congressional district includes Nogales) as well as Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego.
Ciscomani was reportedly invited to add his signature to the initial letter to Mullin, but he didn’t respond.
We’ve reached out to both offices about the dueling press releases.
Grijavla responded by taking a swipe at her colleague for supporting building a second, redundant border wall in Southern Arizona.
"I am glad that my Republican colleagues recognize the importance of investing in our ports of entry. However, if they were truly serious about this, they would divert the billions we are wasting on terrorizing our communities and building a useless second wall for this purpose,” Grijalva told us.
As of Wednesday night, we hadn’t heard back from Ciscomani’s office.
Following the rules: Graduation week in Arizona is a little different for Indigenous students, Shannon Conner reports for the Arizona Luminaria. Several students in Tucson are going to wear their traditional outfits, moccasins and jewelry underneath their graduation gowns. They’re among 2,200 Indigenous high school seniors in Arizona who have to follow rules from a “toolkit” put out by state officials last year after lawmakers passed a law in 2021 protecting Indigenous students’ rights to wear tribal regalia at graduation.
Wildlife worries: An unusually warm spring caused quails to hatch early this year, and now hundreds of them are being housed at the Tucson Wildlife Center, Arizona Public Media’s Laura Holanszky reports. Down at the Arizona-Mexico border, wildlife officials are trying to rescue an endangered turtle species before it’s wiped out by border wall construction, per the Arizona Daily Star’s Henry Brean.
At City Hall: The City of Tucson is offering grants to help start small businesses north of downtown, the Tucson Sentinel’s Jim Nintzel reports. The idea is to use $3.5 million in federal Choice Neighborhoods grant money to boost entrepreneurship as part of the “Thrive in the 05” program. Elsewhere in Tucson’s city government, park officials had to close down a second pool after a vandalism incident, KOLD’s Michael Cooper reports. Officials found broken glass on the deck and in the water at Freedom Pool, a week after Udall Pool was closed, also due to broken glass.
Getting a second act: Saguaro City Music Theatre breathed new life into the Berger Performing Arts Center, which supporters feared would close as the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and Blind moves from its Tucson campus, KOLD’s Payton May reports. The theatre, which is accessible to performers and guests with disabilities, will stay open for another year under the agreement.
A somber affair: The Migrant Trail Walk is now in its 23rd year of memorializing migrants who died while crossing the border, Mia Kortright reports for the Sentinel. About 50 people are walking from the border near Sasabe to Kennedy Park in Tucson. The 75-mile trek will take them about a week and they expect to get to Tucson on May 31. The crisis they’re highlighting is long-running and tragic. In just the past 12 months, the remains of 119 people were recovered in the deserts and mountains of Southern Arizona.
Four Democrats hoping to represent Tucson and Southern Arizona in the state House squared off in an Arizona Citizens Clean Elections debate last night — and shots were fired.
The district’s two incumbents are not running together as a slate. Instead, Democratic Rep. Consuelo Hernandez teamed up with political newcomer Maritza Higuera over her seatmate, Democratic Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton.
Asked about the messy dynamic, Hernandez said she’s never been part of the establishment, and was proud to support Higuera, a rural Latina, for the office.
“I believe that we do need people who represent the rural part of the district — it’s also a majority Latino district … I also think primaries are healthy for our democracy, that it’s important to hear our ideas,” she said.
Stahl Hamilton argued that Legislative District 21, which stretches from the U.S.-Mexico border to Tucson, has three lawmakers — two in the House and one in the Senate — who all approach the job differently, and that that mix has served the voters well.
“There consistently seems to be pretty good representation in that there are two people of color and one caucasian for a district that is about two-thirds persons of color and one-third caucasian, at all different levels of economics and education,” she said.
Higuera said she joined the race because she has long wanted to serve her community and support her country, and the political seat doesn’t belong to any politician, but the people.
“Some people just smile at me and some say good luck, but Consuelo Hernandez told me ‘OK, if you have any questions let me know.’ And of course I had a ton of questions,” she said. “And that’s how we ended up working together because she was the person who supported my journey.”
Political newcomer Miranda Lopez, who is not running as part of a team with any of the other candidates, slammed Hernandez for her voting record and her fundraising record, saying that’s what pushed her to join the race.
“Over the last four years Representative Hernandez has sided with Republicans over Democrats 155 times,” she said. “She basically lost my vote and I decided that I wanted to see someone very progressive, very young, running for this office to really represent the best that this district has to offer. And I thought that person should be me.”
You can view the entire debate below. And for more debates, visit the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections YouTube page.
We’re not quite ready to talk about the Pima County Board of Supervisors FY27 budget, but we know budget humor when we hear it.
Pima County Supervisor Jennifer Allen made a surprise plea for $450,000 in additional funding during Tuesday night’s meeting — with most of the money going toward paving county-maintained dirt roads more frequently — and joked the funding would come from a “money tree” in her district, apparently somewhere outside Arivaca.
Before you fire up Google Maps to start a gold-rush-style expedition down to Arivaca, the chairwoman later clarified she meant the money would come from the county’s general fund reserves — which, to be fair, is about as close to a money tree as local government gets.