Prop 414 redux
If at first you don't succeed, split it in two … Watch your mouth … And the bad luck of the draw.
It’s been six months since nearly 70% of Tucson voters rejected Proposition 414.
Now, there is a new proposal to address the same issues with a series of sales tax increases that would go before voters next year.
Prop 414, which proposed a half-cent increase in the city’s sales tax, faced organized opposition from both sides of the political spectrum — but for different reasons.
Some liberal residents didn’t think there was enough funding for addressing the city’s homeless crisis and gave too much to the police. Conservative groups agreed the city needed more police officers, but didn’t think the city should raise taxes.
But by breaking up the plan, you might be able to break up the resistance to it.
That’s the logic behind Councilman Kevin Dahl’s proposal to split the two issues — public safety and improvements to the city’s safety net — and put them before the voters next year. 1
So we talked to the architect of the proposal.
Dahl is a first-term Democrat who represents Ward 3 on the council, and he’s up for reelection against Republican Janet “JL” Wittenbraker in November.
The Council crafted Prop 414 — which would have generated $800 million over the next decade for police officers, firefighters, public safety-related infrastructure, housing initiatives, keeping buses fare-free, and community programs — and voted to send it to the ballot.
Dahl backed it, thinking it would garner broad support from the public.
“I thought that, hey, there's something in here for everyone,” Dahl said. “And what we learned is there was something in there for everyone to hate.”
The opposition was palpable before the election. But Dahl was fully committed to the proposal, and he waited until after the election to gather feedback on how to address the problems the Council sought to address with Prop 414.
“I heard that people thought there wasn't enough for public safety, that's why they didn't vote for it. Or there wasn't enough for housing, that's why they didn't vote for it and they didn't want to support public safety issues,” he said. “So the thinking is let's separate them and let's have the groups that support these things really push it.”
If his plan to split Prop 414 into two parts moves forward, he would want the city’s police and fire department chiefs to craft the police funding portion, leaving them to decide what each of their departments needs.
The public safety net portion would be handled differently, Dahl told us.
He’d leave it to the community to craft the proposal, deciding on what should and should not be funded and how much.
Just to dig down a little further, Dahl’s proposal on its face also redistributes where the money goes more equitably. A major complaint against Prop 414 was that public safety got roughly two-thirds of the revenue, with issues like affordable housing, addressing a citywide substance abuse problem, and a lack of beds for homeless individuals competing for the remaining one-third.
Under Dahl’s proposal, each proposition would split the sales tax revenue 50/50.
“I think that question should be put to the voters. We have capacity for a half-cent sales tax, so dividing it in half for those two different issues just initially makes sense to me,” Dahl said.
The only group that Dahl has spoken to is the business community, which came out against Prop 414. Dahl said he hopes to engage more stakeholders after the November election — assuming he wins.
Pima County Administrator Jan Lesher went on Bill Buckmaster’s radio show Friday to give her take on the new Project Blue 2.0 proposal.
In the hour-long conversation with Buckmaster and Green Valley News editor Dan Shearer, Lesher outlined some of the big changes in the updated plans.
Shearer was skeptical about whether the public can trust the developers, especially after Beale refused to discuss the closed-loop water system with the city of Tucson. That system, he noted, would use far less water.
“I’m wondering, to be blunt, can we trust Beale? Because suddenly they pull this out of their back pocket. But clearly it was always available to them because many other plants are like that. So I’m surprised that it didn’t come up earlier. And I think the City of Tucson is as well,” Shearer asked Lesher.
Lesher responded that the choice came down to finances, citing recent conversations with Beale Infrastructure.
“Their answer is that this model without the water is much more expensive. And so they had been looking to move to a model that provided the service but was not quite as expensive,” Lesher said.
She added that the county is still in its due diligence period with Beale and that she hopes to secure concessions.
In her view, there needs to be a clear benefit to the community if Amazon’s massive data centers are going to be built in Tucson.
Free-ish speech: Tucson politicians, public employees, even a floral designer, are facing backlash to comments they made after the murder of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, Arizona Daily Star columnist Tim Steller writes. That backlash has morphed from online complaints to official federal policy as President Donald Trump and other top officials use Kirk’s death to justify a censorship campaign.
Protest crackdown: After their homes were searched last week, two people were charged with rioting, vandalism and terrorism because they protested the ICE office on Valencia and Country Club in June, KOLD’s Sean Mahoney reports. Tucson police issued a news release saying the two men provided protesters with riot shields, rocks and balloons filled with unidentified substances.
False pretenses: A federal judge had some harsh words for a Trump administration effort to suddenly deport hundreds of Guatemalan children, including dozens of children in Arizona, in the middle of the night over the Labor Day weekend, the Washington Post reports. Judge Timothy J. Kelly, who was appointed by Trump, said a Department of Justice lawyer made a false claim in court when he said the children’s parents wanted them to return to Guatemala. That claim “crumbled like a house of cards,” Kelly said as he temporarily blocked officials from deporting the children.
“There is no evidence before the Court that the parents of these children sought their return,” Kelly said. “To the contrary, the Guatemalan Attorney General reports that officials could not even track down parents for most of the children whom Defendants found eligible for their ‘reunification’ plan. And none of those that were located had asked for their children to come back to Guatemala.”
Spreading the wealth: The Rio Nuevo board invested about $13 million worth of sales tax revenue in projects last fiscal year, mostly focused on bars, restaurants, and retail, the Star’s Gabriela Rico reports. The board also supported sports teams, such as the Tucson Sugar Skulls, and the Moxy Hotel downtown, the board’s annual report shows.
Not looking good: As the federal budget year comes to a close, the Tucson Unified School District could lose $6.4 million under the proposed federal spending plan, which the district’s CFO said “would completely decimate” supplemental instruction in reading and math, the Arizona Luminaria’s Shannon Conner reports. Sunnyside could end up losing $2.2 million and Amphitheater could lose $1.5 million.
If you wanna support local news, this button works better than federal grants or sales tax revenue.
Arizona’s general effective date is coming up fast — just four days from now. That’s when the bulk of this year’s new laws officially take hold, including most of the 265 bills signed by Gov. Katie Hobbs.
As Friday nears, here’s your rundown of what’s about to change.
We’re doing a series of webinars you can pop into to hear from your colleagues about how Skywolf, our legislative tracking software, can help your legislative workflow.
• On Thursday, we’ll show you a workflow designed specifically for policy professionals working at municipalities.
• On Friday, we’ve got a webinar designed specifically for associations.
Let’s talk about the other Proposition 414.
Tucson Unified School District drew the short straw on timing this year: Its bond override landed with the same number as the deeply unpopular city measure voters rejected in spring.
TUSD’s version of Prop 414 asks voters to approve a 15% Maintenance and Operation Budget Override — something it hasn’t requested in 25 years.
The laws on naming propositions are pretty clear, but the unlucky numbering probably makes this one a much tougher sell.
We’re not exactly sure what the proposition numbers will be. Plan Tucson will be on the ballot this fall as Proposition 417. We also expect both the Regional Transit Authority extension and Tucson Electric Power’s franchise to go before the voters next Spring, suggesting 418 and 419 are already reserved.
One has to wonder if this new proposition 414 might have a better chance of passing if that expected budget shortfall was going to destroy administrative salaries or cut TUSDs administrative bloat instead of cutting math and reading education....