Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

The latest scandal involving Arizona's Child Protective Services agency involves thousands of abuse and neglect reports that were not investigated.

I don't have much to add to the able reporting of Mary Jo Pitzl and Mary K. Reinhart at the Arizona Republic. This includes a year-long series.

Not much to add, but a little context.

This is what happens when you spend decades cutting the state budget, even as population and need grows, as part of worshipping the god of small gub'ment.

State spending as a percent of personal income in Arizona fell from 5 percent in fiscal 1994 to 3.5 percent for fiscal 2014. CPS has been underfunded for decades as the state added huge population, especially in vulnerable groups.

The starting salary for a caseworker is a little more than $33,000 — and he or she get to be vilified as a public employee, never mind the crushing case load.

So when you read or hear of failures such as Child Protective Services, just remember: Your tax cuts at work.

I was made aware of this recent conversation. My name came up, and an Influential Person said, "But he hates Arizona." The other person responded: "No, he actually likes it quite a bit." Influential person: "OK, but he's blinded by nostalgia."

Nostalgia has its appeal. Indeed, it can be healthy, as an article in the New York Times recently pointed out:

Nostalgia has been shown to counteract loneliness, boredom and anxiety.
It makes people more generous to strangers and more tolerant of
outsiders. Couples feel closer and look happier when they’re sharing
nostalgic memories. On cold days, or in cold rooms, people use nostalgia
to literally feel warmer.

Nostalgia does have its painful side — it’s a bittersweet emotion — but
the net effect is to make life seem more meaningful and death less
frightening. When people speak wistfully of the past, they typically
become more optimistic and inspired about the future.

“Nostalgia makes us a bit more human,” Dr. Sedikides says. He considers
the first great nostalgist to be Odysseus, an itinerant who used
memories of his family and home to get through hard times, but Dr.
Sedikides emphasizes that nostalgia is not the same as homesickness.
It’s not just for those away from home, and it’s not a sickness, despite
its historical reputation.

But nostalgia is not what attracts people to Rogue Columnist, why traffic here keeps growing every month, or why people — even the Kooks — consider this a must-read.

The big, big Phoenix story is the resignation of City Manager David Cavazos, who is leaving to accept the same position in Santa Ana, Calif. Everyone is pleading surprise. This is almost certainly not true. Cavazos put out a prepared statement that was both graciously restrained and yet also appeared to be highly lawyered. There may prove to be much more to this than meets the eye.

With the local paper continuing to lay off people and institutional knowledge fading, here are a few pieces of important background. The council/manager form of government is one of Phoenix's proudest achievements, having done away with the corruption not only of cities "back East" but also old Phoenix. The council sets policy and the manager implements it, running the city from day-to-day. The mayor is a relatively weak position and one vote on council. Once a person assumes the purple of the city manager, he is expected to serve for many years. Frank Fairbanks, who Cavazos succeeded in 2009, served for two decades. One simply doesn't walk away, and certainly not to little Santa Ana (pop. 329,427). So this is a bombshell even if there's nothing more to it. If there is, it's explosive, including for Mayor Greg Stanton.

There was a stupidly nasty fight over giving Cavazos a raise to bring his pay up to $315,000. The next largest city with a council/manager form, San Antonio, pays a base $355,000 to Sheryl Sculley, the capable former deputy city manager in Phoenix who was shown the glass ceiling by Phil Gordon and the firefighters union (over an old grudge). The council is more divided and kooky now, more small ball. A sense of stagnation is felt, although the light rail extension is happening (WBIYB). The Legislature has made life even more difficult for cities. Phoenix is struggling relative to the prosperous suburbs. The Phoenix polity is much more limited compared with the other most populous cities. Any of these — or the blowback from previous controversies — could have driven Cavazos to leave at the prime of his professional life. Also, he was caught up in the minor expense-account scandal in the mid-2000s. I always wondered if Cavazos had the chops for the job, not to mention the quiet, genial ruthlessness of Frank Fairbanks.

When Hillary Clinton lashed out in 1998 at "the vast right-wing conspiracy," most people laughed. I certainly did. Then I returned to Phoenix two years later to see how correct she was. Exhibit A was the "Goldwater" Institute, motto: "Where freedom wins." Before he died, Barry wanted his name removed from the organization, but he backed off because it was dear to his brother. So I have always referred to it with Goldwater in quotes or as the Bob Goldwater Institute. Either way, it has played a pivotal role in damaging Arizona and holding back progress.

After its founding in 1988, local media accorded the institute respect as a "think tank." Robert Robb, a political operative who came out of the "Goldwater" Institute, was hired as an editorial columnist for the Arizona Republic. After the departure of Ricardo Pimentel and me, he became the only real editorial columnist after the 2007 newsroom organization. Unlike most entrusted with a position of such influence, Robb did not spend 20 years gaining experience and accolades as a journalist for a major newspaper. He was always a member of "the vast right-wing conspiracy." And the institute itself was regularly quoted in news stories as an authority on virtually every issue.

The trouble is that the "Goldwater" Institute is not a think tank as conventionally understood, an organization where scholars pursue research with open minds and produce material that is vigorously peer reviewed (think The Brookings Institution). Instead, it is an advocacy organization such as the NRA or the Sierra Club. It is rarely identified as such in the media — unless I am writing about it, which I try to avoid, aside from one takedown in the early 2000s.