Phoenix Archives - Page 19 of 42

Strong mayor

Phoenix is the most populous city in America with the council-manager form of government. Council sets policy which is carried out by a professional city manager.

The only places that come close are San Antonio (where the city manager is the former deputy city manager in Phoenix, Sheryl Sculley) and Dallas. San Diego abandoned council-manager in 2006.

The alternative is the strong mayor form, where the mayor acts as a largely independent chief executive and the city council is a legislative body. Think: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Detroit and Seattle.

Twelve of the 20 most populous American cities have strong mayors. The remainder are council-manager. Now there is at least a boomlet to bring a strong mayor form to Phoenix.

Jon Talton April 8, 201430

Phoenix Phoenix 101: History Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

Charlie Keating’s Phoenix

Everybody who was anybody in Phoenix has a favorite story about Charles H Keating Jr., who died this week at 90. Here's mine. By the time I came back in 2000, Keating, the disgraced imprisoned former S&L kingpin, was once again a fixture around town. I would run into him at Durant's, where he was cordial but declined my invitation to sit down sometime and tell his story.

One day the restaurant was packed and Keating couldn't get seated. He confronted the day manager, the fabulous Mari Connor, and said, "Do you know who I am?" Without a second's hesitation at a restaurant that had hosted governors and mobsters, Connor said, "No, but I'm sure they can seat you up the street at Alexi's. Otherwise, the wait is thirty minutes."

Time wounds all heels.

I was gone from Phoenix during Keating's glory days of the 1980s. He developed Dobson Ranch in Mesa and Estrella Mountain Ranch in Goodyear among many other projects. The most impressive physical monument he left behind was the Phoenician resort. The name says much about the time: Phoenix was still the center of "the Valley's" economic universe. It would never happen today; the resort claims it is in Scottsdale, even though it in the city. And for all the criticism heaped upon it, the Phoenician to me remains a beautiful place — built within the existing urban footprint — with an apt, evocative, allusionary name.

Jon Talton April 3, 201489

Phoenix Politics: National

Rough justice

Mark today. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released what my grandmother would have called the "Katy bar the door" report on climate change. It is the product of the sober work by hundreds of actual climate scientists. Read it for yourself. Please.

And mark the day you knew, without doubt. Climate change is real, human-made, happening now with growing costs — and the worst is yet to come. Especially if we do nothing.

Someday historians will note the curious contrasts of our time. So much of the public square is dominated by scolds with their calculators, talking about what we can't afford, how the cost side of the ledger must be the deciding factor in any debate.

Yet these are the same people who block any attempt to show the astronomic costs of doing nothing to stop pumping carbon into the atmosphere.

Those historians will shake their heads at our myths about "makers and takers," "bootsrappers" vs. "welfare queens" and the widespread belief that government was an impediment to the efficient, justified workings of "the free market."

Jon Talton March 31, 201468

Phoenix

Train dreams

True high-speed rail: A train running from Paris to Brussels at 186 miles per hour.

The news stories said that ADOT was seeking our input on its study of passenger rail between Phoenix and Tucson. It isn't seeking my input for reasons that will become apparent, but here goes anyway.

It was always a joke renaming this entity the Arizona Department of Transportation. It was and remains in spirit the Arizona Highway Department, committed to building highways. The glory days were under state engineer William Price (1963-1977), when Arizona could boast some of the finest highways in America, before population growth and underfunding overwhelmed the agency.

Also under Price, the Highway Department began its swerve from serving the public interest to private interests and it's never looked back. You can see an early indication in the odd, seemingly illogical, westward shift the Black Canyon Freeway makes between Northern and Dunlap in Phoenix. This mission became gospel with the metro Phoenix freeway system, most of which was built to benefit private land owners whose worthless desert was suddenly highly profitable because a freeway was coming. The damage done to the city by the ensuing sprawl was catastrophic and is probably irreversible.

Jon Talton March 26, 201464

Downtown & central Phoenix Phoenix

Downtown podcast

Edward Jensen was kind enough to interview me on the history of downtown Phoenix and the issues facing it. Listen to the Downtown Phoenix Podcast here. If you want a…

Jon Talton March 24, 201439

Phoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

Keep out the vote

It is fitting that a federal judge chose this week to uphold the power of Arizona and Kansas to require proof of citizenship in order to vote.

This was the week in 1965 when 25,000 marchers led by Martin Luther King Jr. reached Montgomery from Selma, Ala., a landmark in the long, bloody struggle for equal voting rights.

Who says the clock can't be turned back?

My favorite quote came from Arizona Attorney General Tom Horney: “This decision is an important victory against the Obama administration because it ensures that only U.S. citizens, and not illegals, vote in Arizona elections.”

Ah! Now I understand! The reason a bunch of ignorant, nihilistic Krackpots have taken over state government in Arizona is because illegal immigrants have been voting them in. Now, thanks to this George W. Bush-appointed judge in Wichita, perhaps sanity can return to the capitol in Phoenix.

Jon Talton March 21, 201466

Phoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

The fix was in

If I really wanted to grow Rogue's readership, this post would be something like "Ten Reasons Do(w)nton Abbey Sucks" (1. All the white guys look alike, can't tell a footman from a nobleman…). But no, we'll stick with the serious stuff in the antique essay form.

Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Dennis Wagner wrote a fine piece of public-service journalism last week. It shows what the Arizona Republic would be capable of doing if its corporate masters at Gannett would allow it to commit more journalism and do less fad chasing.

It turns out that the FBI gave federal prosecutors all they needed to bring serious criminal charges against the High Sheriff for Life of Maricopa County, the ambitious right-wing county attorney, Andrew Peyton Thomas, and their top stooges.

The three-year investigation of abuse of power produced "found probable cause to recommend felony counts of obstructing criminal investigations of prosecutions, theft by threats, tampering with witnesses, perjury and theft by extortion."

Instead, the feds shut down the three-year investigation in August 2012.

Let me pause to note that this story didn't come from "crowdsourcing," "citizen journalists" or video and slide shows. It came from good, street-smart, shoe-leather investigative journalism, including the newspaper using the Freedom of Information Act to obtain all records of the investigation.

Jon Talton March 11, 201424

Phoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

‘Picking on Arizona’

Let's close out the SB 1062 saga with a look at the meme, "Why is everybody picking on Arizona?"

1. While it is true that similar anti-gay Jim Crow laws have been introduced in at least nine other states, only Arizona passed it through both houses of the Legislature. It would have become law if not for the veto, under great pressure, by Gov. Jan Brewer.

2. Context matters. Arizona has already gained national infamy from such things as the anti-immigrant Jim Crow SB 1070, the ongoing misdeeds of the High Sheriff of Maricopa County, his highly publicized immigrant "sweeps" and horrendous jail conditions, Brewer wagging her finger in the face of the president of the United States with her mouth open in a hectoring pose, the assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and ongoing gun liberalization, including guns in bars.

3. Phoenix is the nation's sixth most populous city, Maricopa County the fourth most populous county and the Phoenix metro area the 13th largest metropolitan statistical area. This is not rural Oklahoma. It has bureaus of influential news organizations, including the New York Times. So Arizona's Krackpot schemes will be noticed.

Jon Talton March 4, 201436

Phoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix Politics: National

SB 1062: The aftermath

Keep Arizona green. Bring money. — Old expression

It was well and right to let a day pass for celebration that Gov. Jan Brewer finally vetoed the anti-LGBT Jim Crow SB 1062. To thank the better angels of Arizona's nature and imagine more appeared. To join in the boozy cheering at Seamus McCaffrey's downtown. A day when, as one observer put it, "we (could) be gracious in victory and in defeat."

Now it is time for a serious assessment. The illusion that with the international spotlight off, Arizona can "move on," the usual "nothing to see here, move along," could not be more misguided or toxic.

I don't see much profit in dwelling on Gov. Brewer and wondering if she is more complex and pragmatic than thought. Do not be fooled. She is no surprising "liberal hero."

If that were the case, she could have made it clear to legislative Republicans that the bill would be vetoed even before it was passed. She would have avoided letting the bill sit for days like a vagrant's turd deposited on her desk.

She could have issued a veto statement clearly, strongly grounded in morality. Instead, it was largely fuzzy proceduralism and nods to the "religious freedom" crowd (probably drafted by fixer Chuck Coughlin) cloaking a fear of the state losing billions. Her manner was that of a pouty teenager being forced to clean her room. She is a kook. She is not too bright. But she is ambitious and can take orders. And she might want to become a U.S. Senator.

To be fair, Hendrik Hertzberg disagrees with me.

Jon Talton February 27, 201437

Phoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

The ghost of Ev Mecham

Given Arizona's population churn, many living there now probably know little of Gov. Evan Mecham. He's the one who opposed a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday ("King doesn't deserve a holiday") and thought it was fine to call black children "pickaninnies."

A broad coalition came together to impeach and remove this embarrassment in 1988. Tolerance won over hate. The beloved Rose Mofford became governor. And Arizona marched forward into its greatest era of (population) growth ever. Or so the elevator speech goes.

Now I'd like that, as Samuel L. Jackson's character says in Pulp Fiction, but that shit ain't the (entire) truth.

Which is why we should study Mecham as people come together again to press Gov. Jan Brewer to veto the Jim Crow, anti-LGBT "denial of service" law. Backed by today's coalition, Brewer can use her power as governor to stop the bill that has brought fresh infamy on the state, much as in the 1980s the Legislature stopped a hateful governor.

Jon Talton February 24, 201425

Phoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

The Hate State

Why does the Kookocracy hate Arizona? For years this has been the unasked but most pressing question. Far more important than, say, tut-tutting that a certain columnist doesn't have multiple growthgasms every time the sun comes out and another tract house is laid down ("Talton hates Arizona").

Which brings us to the bills just passed by the Legislature which would essentially allow businesses to discriminate against LGBT individuals — right down to refusing service — based on the owners' "religious beliefs."

Naturally, this has been pushed under the jingle of "freedom of religion."

Pre-emptive war based on false pretenses and torture by my government offend my Christian religious beliefs. But I had to suck it up. That's the way majority rule works and thank God for the Bill of Rights, tattered though it may be. More to the point, discrimination based on an individual's sexual orientation is another iteration of Jim Crow — it would not even get past the Roberts court.

But the damage done to Arizona by this action, whether or not it is signed into law by Gov. Jan Brewer: Priceless. (Among the many national news organizations covering it, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and the widely read parody, the Borowitz Report).

Jon Talton February 21, 201459

Downtown & central Phoenix Phoenix

Park it

Before getting to the preliminary plan for the remake of the deck park, I want to linger over the most important recent story you may not have read.

According to the Phoenix Business Journal, the Department of Justice has sued Barron Collier Co. over $66.5 million the government claims it is owed for parcels the giant land owner and developer has along Central Avenue north of Indian School Road.

You should read the story and try to make sense of it, but this gets at one of the most curious and outrageous events: Breaking up the old Phoenix Indian School and conveying the most attractive parcels of this public property to a private entity for private gain.

And make no mistake, there has been gain. Despite the company leaving the land a barren waste and claiming it is "not economically viable" to pay its obligations to the feds, this property has no doubt been quietly adding paper value like all the banked land in Midtown Phoenix.

Jon Talton February 17, 201446

Phoenix Phoenix 101: History Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

Phoenix’s charter journey

For better or worse, Phoenicians with a sense of civic pride claim as their finest achievement not a magnificent city hall as in San Francisco, or a great subway system as in New York, or the breathtaking parks of Cincinnati. No, it is the efficient, professional handling of city business through the council/manager form of government. It's the most populous city in America without a strong mayor (with the city council acting as a legislature).

And it all began with the charter government movement of the late 1940s. Anyone that wants to understand Phoenix City Hall today or contemplate changes such as a strong mayor, must have at least a basic understanding of how we got here.

Once upon a time, Phoenix was a wide-open town, full of vice, politics dominated by unsavory bosses, and city hall eminently bribable. Then a group of crusading young businessmen, who knew the city could not grow and prosper under this corrupt yoke, threw out the rascals and created the cleanest city government in America. They went by the name of the Charter Government Committee. The rest is history.

But history is written by the victors. And the real story of Charter is more complex…and far more interesting.

Jon Talton February 7, 201426

Phoenix

The price of Phoenix hatred

So the Phoenix Coyotes NHL team is changing its name to the "Arizona Coyotes." Anthony LeBlanc, the team chief executive, justified the decision at length in this story:

We are very excited to announce that our franchise name will change to Arizona Coyotes for the start of the 2014-15 NHL season. Becoming the Arizona Coyotes makes sense for us since we play our games in Glendale and the city is such a great partner of ours. We also want to be recognized as not just the hockey team for Glendale or Phoenix, but for the entire state of Arizona and the Southwest. We hope that the name ‘Arizona’ will encourage more fans from all over the state, not just the Valley, to embrace and support our team.

As some say in the South: Huh, do what?

This is actually another example of the pathological hatred of the city of Phoenix and the city's name that fascinates, repels and carries significant consequences beyond sports.

Jon Talton January 30, 201460

Downtown & central Phoenix Phoenix

The wrecking crew

I was stunned to read this story about the future of the historic Barrister Place in downtown Phoenix. The 1915 Hotel Jefferson, now city-owned, is one of the few remaining of what were once scores of beautiful old structures downtown.

The Republic's Dustin Gardiner writes, "The hotel, which featured 150 rooms, was decked out in mahogany, marble and expensive colonial furniture. It featured a coffee shop, a cigar stand, private suites and a rooftop garden with palm trees and a fountain."

As an EMT-Paramedic, I saw it in harder times, when it was an SRO which frequently required visits from emergency responders. Amid the human tragedy and shabbiness, it still retained good bones. Unfortunately the interior was later gutted. Now the city is looking for a buyer.

Here's what stunned me: "Councilman Jim Waring…questioned whether the city could get more money for the lot, in the heart of downtown Phoenix, if a buyer could demolish the building and start from scratch."

Fortunately, he didn't prevail. But behold what your city council risks becoming, Phoenix.

Jon Talton January 23, 20148