Fighting fentanyl, rate hikes and snipers?
Tucson Council had a busy week … Fibs from Project Blue … And Adelita is already ruffling feathers.
In Tucson, the headline-grabber yesterday was Adelita Grijalva becoming the first Latina ever elected to Congress from Arizona.
But at Tucson City Hall, the Council had its own drama.
Fentanyl plan delayed
A big push to deal with open drug use on Tucson’s streets is being delayed for 60 days.
Some elected officials want to create a brand-new misdemeanor for fentanyl possession that could be prosecuted by the city attorney, instead of the Pima County Attorney’s Office.
Sounds straightforward, but in reality, it’s messy.
Fentanyl possession is a class 4 felony under state law, and what happens in court depends on how much of the opioid someone has on them.
Councilwoman Nikki Lee says the current system isn’t working. She’s backing police complaints that fentanyl cases are being tossed too often, and her plan would let the city step in.
Cue Councilman Paul Cunningham’s favorite point when it comes to city/county bureaucratic knife fights.
He often points to the turf wars that are baked into the system when you have a million people living in an area with two governments, like the City of Tucson and Pima County.
One is wholly in charge of delivering some services, like TPD making most of the felony arrests, while the other runs different services, like the county being in charge of the court system.
The Council kicked the tires for almost an hour before hitting pause. Their laundry list of questions included:
Can city court handle a major influx of misdemeanor cases?
Would people go to jail or treatment? And do we even have the beds?
Is the county attorney on board?
Would this effectively decriminalize fentanyl possession inside city limits?
Who’s paying for treatment if people want help?
For now, staff will huddle with the county and community leaders and then report back. The delay also means the new Council — seated after November’s election — may be the ones to actually deal with this mess.
City says no to TEP’s 14% hike
Mayor Regina Romero and the Council voted to oppose Tucson Electric Power’s 14 percent rate increase at the Arizona Corporation Commission.
They’re still salty about the 10 percent hike the ACC approved in 2023.
This fight is just the latest in a long list: legal battles over underground power lines, franchise agreement negotiations, and that simmering idea of Tucson creating its own public utility to replace TEP altogether.
County Administrator Jan Lesher has already jumped into the case on behalf of Pima County residents. Just like the Council, she opposes the rate hike.
Attorney General Kris Mayes is expected to jump into the fight.
She tore into the state’s biggest electric utility, Arizona Public Service, for trying to get a similar 14 percent increase in Phoenix two weeks ago:
“Arizonans are already feeling squeezed by sky-high electric bills and now APS is trying to jack them up even further,” Mayes wrote in a press release. “Giving APS another rate increase, after making more than $600 million in net income last year, is outrageous and I will not stand for it.”
A formal announcement of her opposition to the TEP rate hike is days away.
Still, some elected Democrats are worried the ACC isn’t listening.
Romero has already warned that when push comes to shove, the ACC tends to side with utilities.
Call to the Public
Resident Phineas Anderson asked during the Call to the Public segment of the Tucson City Council meeting why a peaceful protest had snipers on the roof last week.
Anderson, with his wife holding a picture of the snipers, told the Council that the snipers were apparently dispatched by federal law enforcement, not local police.
A fixture in the protest community, Anderson said all of the protests he has organized (like those outside the Tesla dealership) have been peaceful and shouldn’t warrant such an aggressive response.
We’ll note that a right-wing protest planned for last week — but fizzled out — did have Tucson police officers on top of City Hall to observe the crowd.
The small print in the contract: The developers behind Project Blue lied to the Pima County Board of Supervisors at a June meeting, Arizona Daily Star columnist Tim Steller writes. A representative from Beale Infrastructure talked solely about the need for annexation to move forward, but already had a Plan B in the back of their minds if the city balked. They knew — but the public didn’t — that it was already baked into the contract that the county now has to honor.
Third time’s the charm?: The LGBTQ+ community in southern Arizona is questioning whether they should keep supporting Daniel Hernandez, an openly gay man who ran to the right of the other Democrats in the CD7 race, LOOKOUT’s Tori Gantz reports. It was the second time in four years that voters chose more progressive candidates over Hernandez.
Be careful out there: Pima County officials reported the first death related to the West Nile virus of the season, KVOA’s Marissa Orr reports. The person who died was an older adult with pre-existing conditions. It was the second confirmed case of West Nile virus in the county so far this year.
Making it rain: University of Arizona President Suresh Garimella is going to get $285,000 in bonuses, the Star’s Prerana Sannappanavar reports. The Arizona Board of Regents is giving him the bonuses for achieving individual and collective goals for budgeting, research and athletics. Garimella’s base salary is $810,000.
You can give us a bonus by clicking this button.
A new genre: An award-winning science fiction movie set in a border town will be screened next month here in Tucson, the Border Chronicle’s Melissa del Bosque writes. Filmmaker Alex Rivera will hold a panel discussion after the screening of his cult classic “Sleep Dealer” at the Fox Theatre on October 15.
Play ball: Professional baseball is coming back to Tucson for the first time since 2011, Cronkite News’ Nate Johnson reports. The Arizona Fall League is hosting a tripleheader at Kino Memorial Stadium on Oct. 11.
Every legislative session has its fair share of questionable bills, proposals and talks. But once in a blue moon, lawmakers pull off something surprisingly sensible.
Tomorrow, the vast majority of the 265 bills that Gov. Katie Hobbs signed into law this year will become active.
That even includes some transparency laws like this one.
Speaking of new laws taking effect this week, Skywolf, our legislative tracking software, is doing a series of webinars you can pop into to hear about how it can help you track bills and make sense of the madness at the Capitol.
Today we’ll show you a workflow designed specifically for policy professionals working at municipalities.
Tomorrow we’ve got a webinar designed specifically for associations.
We started today’s newsletter mentioning Adelita Grijalva, so it’s fitting we’re mentioning her at the close, as well.
She got a shout-out from independent political commentator Chris Cillizza yesterday, who said Republicans are in “full panic” mode now that she represents the 218th vote to release the Epstein files.
So, merely electing her into office is making Republicans in Congress freak out.
This must make Raúl proud.
Joe, thank you for the YouTube link to Phin's appearance at the City Council. I was not aware of this as I have not protested at ICE - yet........ This is outrageous.