With only days to go before a contract between the Pima County Sheriff and Pima Community College was set to expire, the Pima County Board of Supervisors stepped in to save a popular jail education program.
The one-year agreement keeps GED and adult education classes operating inside the Pima County Adult Detention Center while county officials work on a broader plan to help inmates continue their education after they’re released.
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told county administration last week the program was better suited for a prison, where people stay for years, rather than a jail where people are there usually for a few weeks.
Technically, this image is on a wall at the Pima County Juvenile Detention Center, but it serves as a reminder of PCC’s long ties with the county’s carceral system.
PCC officials don’t dispute the issue that most inmates don’t get a degree, but they argue the popular program can give people a place to start their journey to getting a GED while in jail.
The college has received 2,800 educational requests from inmates since last July, and 1,700 of those were specifically for GED preparation.
The problem is that most inmates don’t stay in jail long enough to get their GED.
Earning a GED requires passing five separate tests, a process that often takes several weeks or even months to complete.
And the average stay in the jail is approximately 20 days, and for those who may need to detox inside the jail, they are not able to participate in GED classes for their first week.
Roughly 30,000 people spend at least a night in the county jail every year.
But rather than cutting the program, supervisors said they want to build a larger reentry program by partnering with county departments, including Justice Services, so inmates can continue working toward their GED after leaving jail.
The item was placed on the agenda by Pima County Supervisor Matt Heinz shortly after it became public last month that Nanos was severing ties with Pima Community College related to the adult education program.
Heinz said the goal of the program is to reduce jail recidivism by giving those in jail access to a better education.
“Education changes lives,” Heinz said. “Expanding opportunities for people to earn their GED and continue their education after release will benefit not only those individuals and their families, but our entire community.”
Heinz pressed his colleagues to expand the program on Tuesday night, noting he fully supported the initial ask of $170,000, but also wanted additional funding to help more inmates take tests inside the jail.
While it was Supervisor Rex Scott who made the motion to expand efforts outside of the jail, Heinz fully supported Scott’s proposal. During the meeting Scott said he got his GED before starting his career in teaching.
An informational packet from PCC provided to the sheriff includes a photo of one of its graduates.
A secondary pressure for Nanos was a decline in special revenues the jail received from third-party companies that charge inmates for phone calls. A portion of those revenues helps pay for the adult education program run by PCC.
The sole wrinkle in the new plan the supervisors approved Tuesday is that there isn’t a signed contract between Pima Community College and Pima County — the last one was with the sheriff’s department — and it will likely take weeks before the binding contract is signed.
Pima Community College Chancellor Jeff Nasse told the Tucson Agenda that the college is prepared to continue services at the jail for a few weeks while the two public agencies work out a contract.
“I am really grateful to the supervisors for supporting adult education. And in this case, it’s the program at the jail,” Nasse said, noting he personally called each supervisor to explain why the program is so important to inmates.
County Administrator Jan Lesher noted that once a contract has been written, it can be backdated to July 1, to backpay the college for staffing the program without a legal agreement in place.
The lone Republican on the board, Supervisor Steve Christy, said he supports adult education, but he worries about the precedent of Nanos withdrawing funding for politically popular programs that force the county into an ultimatum of funding the programs or increasing Nanos’ budget.
“I have some real concerns with the motivation of the sheriff doing this type of activity of reducing his budget,” Christy said. “We heard folks talk about how the longevity of this program goes back to (former Pima County Sheriff) Clarence Dupnik’s days, 30 some years that it’s been around and been a success that long.”
Ultimately, Christy didn’t vote for the contract, choosing to abstain.
“My colleagues are very interested in education. (Nanos) knew this was going to get everybody’s attention. And so if it’s the GED program in the jails today, what is it going to be tomorrow?” Christy asked.
For now, the program survives. But the larger question — who pays for rehabilitation programs inside the jail — will have to be decided by the supervisors next year.
The Pima County supervisors met for nearly five hours on Tuesday, and not everything will make the headlines.
But here are a few items worth noting.
No tobacco for teens: Pima County Supervisors are toying with an ordinance to push for better policing of federal laws preventing anyone under the age of 21 from buying tobacco, arguing local enforcement is virtually nonexistent. They didn’t make a decision, but Supervisor Steve Christy reminded his colleagues that their predecessors discussed this very issue in 2019 (before the federal law changed) and ultimately balked as businesses came out against the proposal.
A new treasurer in three weeks: The supervisors are in the market for a new treasurer after Brian Johnson resigned last week. The portal to apply will be open throughout the next week, and successful candidates need to check a few boxes, including being at least 18 years old, a registered Democratic voter in the county and being able to pass a background check. Technically, anyone can apply, but getting on the short list is another matter. Current interim treasurer Jake Martin has already announced he is running for the appointment. If you’re interested in the gig, here’s the page. The deadline to apply is July 2.
A bonus for employees: Near the end of the nearly five-hour meeting, the supervisors signed off on an additional $1.2 million in spending for roughly 950 people working at the county who make less than $45,000. The proposal, which would give a $1,000 one-time bonus to those employees, is a compromise between union officials who wanted the supervisors to focus on the county’s lowest-paid employees, and bean counters who are more comfortable with a one-time expense than a long-term raise. The county budget already includes a 3% raise for all employees next year.
The plot thickens: A second note about the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie was sent to media outlets — but unlike the first that claimed she was alive and demanded cryptocurrency, the second one expresses regret over her death, NBC News reports. Investigators continue to treat the case and Guthrie’s Feb. 1 kidnapping as an active mystery, though the FBI previously said a masked man captured on doorbell camera footage outside the home that morning is a suspect.
Consider the Pupfish: President Donald Trump’s plan for expanding the border wall on Arizona’s southern border could wipe out three species only found in one spring, wildlife experts told the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy. The Sonoyta pupfish, Sonoyta mud turtle and Quitobaquito springsnail are all endemic to the spring-fed desert oasis of Quitobaquito — also called A’al Waipai by the Hia-Ced O’odham people — which stands in the way of the project. The Phoenix Zoo is also involved in conservation efforts for the springsnail.
How’d it get worse?: In its ongoing effort to dig itself out of a financial hole, the University of Arizona is being both rightly “aggressive” and “penny-wise and pound-foolish,” Daily Star columnist Tim Steller writes. First of all, the university hasn’t improved its cash-on-hand situation much — it now has 78 days’ worth of budget in the bank, which is somehow down from the 97 days’ worth of cash it had at the start of its financial crisis, and has only ticked up one day’s worth of cash this year. And to solve the problem, it’s making shortsighted moves, Steller says, including breaking up its famed Health Sciences division and allowing endowment money interest to be used for general operating expenses.
“By making moves that could discourage donors and breaking up one of the university’s most famed units, they are risking saving money now but losing it over the long run, and costing Tucson its place in the health field at the same time,” Steller writes.
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Small town, big race: Eight candidates are piling into a race for three seats on the South Tucson City Council, including the three incumbents who form a voting bloc: Cesar Aguirre, Brian Flagg and Roxanna Valenzuela.1 Reporter Susan Barnett has your voter guide and candidate Q&A in the Arizona Luminaria, including what’s at stake — from public safety and Flock cameras, to grocery taxes and city services in this 4,550-person town.
Trouble in the Meadows: Seven employees of Tucson assisted living facility Meadows Catalina were indicted on felony charges for allegedly failing to provide care to a patient who died, KGUN’s Don Davis reports. The charges are being brought by Attorney General Kris Mayes as part of a statewide crackdown on fraud and abuse in care homes, and while one employee is charged with manslaughter, the other six face multiple counts of vulnerable adult abuse.
A member of the Green Valley Recreation Board of Directors is on a valiant mission to undo what he calls “deliberate malfeasance” in local governance.
Director Bart Hillyer wants to strip former board CEO Kent Blumenthal’s name from the community’s pickleball complex, the Green Valley News’ Kim Smith reports.
The board named the courts for Blumenthal during a closed-door meeting in 2020, which Hillyer described as “arrogant, dishonest, furtive and opaque.”
Blumenthal and the board of directors clashed for years over finances, transparency and who had authority over the organization’s day-to-day decisions before he stepped down as head of the board six years ago.
But Hillyer never forgets.
“I think that board, at least the majority of it, was involved with (Blumenthal), I mean, they thought he was God’s younger brother, and as he was getting his ass canned, they wanted to kind of stick a thumb in the eye of the people who were behind canning him,” he said. “That’s my opinion.”
1 Valenzuela is also the mayor, a position that’s chosen among the councilmembers.