Pima County Sues State of Arizona
Unwilling to live within its means for years, Pima County filed suit on Monday with the Arizona Supreme Court asking that the state continue to pick up the tab for its recklessness.
Pima is unhappy that the 35-year-old constitutional amendment that caps county property taxes at 1 percent.
Previously, the state backfilled money when the cap was ignored. With the state facing financial issues, it is now only able to pay up to $1 million per county in additional state aid.
According to the Rose Law Group Reporter, the County’s hired gun, attorney Joe Kanefield, said the people who will be hit are not even in the taxing districts that will benefit. “It’s an unfair taking of revenue by one taxpayer to subsidize a neighbor,” he said. And that, Kanefield argues, is unconstitutional.
IRC commissioner’s emails, phone records, show collusion
In the first day of testimony in the IRC trial, claims that the redistricting Committee targeted incumbents’ homes were all but shot down by Republican commissioner Rick Stertz, of Tucson. David Cantelme, FAIR Trust attorney, tried to present evidence that the IRC had knowledge of whereabouts of incumbents’ homes and considered that when drawing up district maps.
According to the Yellow Sheet, Stertz testified that he had “no knowledge” as to “whether Strategic Telemetry, the IRC’s mapping consultant, maintained a list of incumbents’ or candidates’ residences, which would violate the requirement that the commission not take incumbency into account while drawing its maps.” The Yellow Sheet also reported that Cantelme provided no evidence of such a list.
In his testimony, according to the Yellow Sheet, “Stertz said that the commission its consultants were not allowed to know where incumbents lived, and went so far as to say that the Commission stopped any incumbent who tried to give their address to the Commission during their public meetings.
Cantelme asked Stertz, “That being the case, why would Strategic Telemetry have had a candidate list?” Again, Sterz denied any knowledge of any incumbent list and trusted that Strategic Telemetry did not know the addresses either.
At one point, Cantelme implied in his questioning that the incumbent location information “may have included and later removed and asked Stertz what it would “mean if someone tried to open a map file and received a message stating, “Incumbents not found.” Once again Stertz denied knowing anything about the matter, and testified that someone other than him would be better to ask.
According to the Yellow Sheet, Stertz said he was comfortable with the guidance provided by IRC attorneys Joe Kanefield and Mary O’Grady, as well as consultant Bruce Adelson.