Posted inPhoenix

The rule of holes

It's the sweet season in Phoenix, with the usual nice weather, resort amenities and economic forecasts. The panel at the annual lunch sponsored by JPMorgan Chase and ASU was its usual sunny self. According to the Arizona Republic, Philadelphia economist Joel Naroff said, "Better times are ahead. I truly believe this is a recovery, that this is an economic change that you can count on." ASU economist Lee McPheters told attendees, "2011 is going to be the best year for Arizona's economic growth in the past three years. So, I think there are bright skies ahead."

Another sense of the luncheon comes from the tweets by Channel 12 anchor, and former Republic business editor, Brahm Resnik: "Show of hands at Chase econ forecast luncheon indicates (fewer than) 6 people in room of 1200 believe recession is over." "1 year ago #PHX job losses were worst in US. Now, PHX No. 2 in US (sure doesn't feel that way)." " 'At threshold of recovery,' McPheters keeps saying." "Home prices have not hit bottom, Pollack says." "Apartment market only (commercial) market that looks good. The rest of you might consider suicide," Pollack tells crowd. "Pollack says 4-5 more years till commercial construction returns to normal (same as his forecast year ago)." Pollack being Elliott, the developer/economist who was once one of the biggest cheerleaders of the Real Estate Industrial Complex.

It's one sign of the trauma wrought by the Phoenix depression that Elliott Pollack is the realist in the room. Unfortunately, the overall tone sounds much like every year's brightside delusion, while the facts confronting Phoenix, Arizona and America keep sliding in the opposite direction.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

Go Goddard?

Terry Goddard is a good man. He was a popular and effective Phoenix mayor, and after failing to achieve the governor's office in the '90s came back to become the best attorney general in the state's history. Among his top achievements has been going after the wire transfer companies that are enabling the smuggling of people, drugs and guns. He's also knocked off some of the rough edges he was said to possess as mayor and, I would assume, collected lots of political IOUs. For all these reasons, I wonder if he should run for governor.

A Rasmussen poll showed Democrat Goddard only 9 points ahead of Gov. Jan Brewer and in virtually tied with Treasurer Dean Martin, his likely Republican opponents. Another survey indicated Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio as a huge favorite of Republican voters and, according to the Info Center, leading Goddard by 12 percentage points. It's unclear whether the Badged Ego will run.

This seems like madness, or, if the polls are accurate, the pulse of a madhouse. The Republicans have wrecked Arizona through their policies and set it on a collision course with a very nasty future. The party's cruel, spiteful behavior is epitomized by Arpaio and detailed in the brutal budget cuts of the Kookocracy Legislature. Brewer and Martin are empty suits. Arpaio probably won't run because the exposure of a statewide race might finally cause the mask to slip and leave him exposed as the calculating bully he is. Yet why would any of these clowns even be in contention against Goddard, a man of genuine accomplishments and a centrist one would hope represents the best of my home state and the hope for its future?

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Posted inPhoenix

Valley of denial

ASU's Morrison Institute has always labored under two Sisyphean tasks. First, its public-policy scholarship necessarily antagonized the state's ruling elites — hence, it was forced to pull its punches to avoid losing funding, and, even then, the elites wouldn't accept its work. Second, it was treated in the media as the "liberal" equivalent of the (Bob) Goldwater Institute. This, even though the "Goldwater" Institute is an arm of the national right-wing advocacy machine, not a genuine think tank that engages in open-minded, peer-reviewed research. With the loss a few years ago of my sometime collaborator Mary Jo Waits, author of Morrison's most prescient and important works (Five Shoes, Meds and Eds), the institute became even more marginalized. Now Morrison is trying once again to become part of the conversation under the leadership of Sue Clark-Johnson, retired Arizona Republic publisher and close friend of ASU President Michael Crow.

Good luck. Unfortunately, the first effort, Forum 411, seems destined for the dustbin of forgotten, well-intended reports at an even faster speed than its predecessors. It is brief, as to be expected from an entity now headed by a former Gannett executive, and strives to be inoffensive. Think of a pep talk. Anthony Robbins on economic development. It states two broad themes: the obvious (Arizona needs to diversify its economy) and the untrue (which I will deal with momentarily). Worst of all, it leaves critical information entirely out. The loss of Waits' intellectual heft is obvious. So, too, is the continued bowing before the Real Estate Industrial Complex (the report's sponsor is the suburban mall developer, Westcor).

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Posted inPhoenix

Jan and the floating diaphragm

Non 'Zonies will have to endure one more Phoenix-centric post before I end my visit. The Republic did a piece this morning on the first 100 days of Gov. Jan Brewer, the Republican secretary of state who replaced Janet Naploitano when she blew town to become secretary of Homeland Security. To say it's a puff piece would be too severe; it merely reflects the inexperience and lack of deep sources on the staff now, as well as fear and lack of curiosity, skepticism and leadership by the meeting-addled editors.

My sources give me this portrait of Brewer: A conservative Republican, but not an extremist ideologue; hard-working and well-meaning; not a mental giant; not very organized and served by a staff that pales in comparison to Saint Janet's "West Wing" stars; may not run for the office. She can be arrestingly tone deaf, for example, leaving the governor's arts awards dinner after delivering an early speech — the first time that has happened in memory, including chief executives of both parties. This benign annual do has plenty of Republican arts trustees, so it's not as if she were fleeing the socialists (excuse me, SOCIALISTS!!). As for her advocacy of a tax hike — more courageous, and realistic, than Saint Janet — but a roadblock to my hopes that the Kookocracy gets to rule, and then be rejected as their policies run the state even more into the ground

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Posted inPhoenix

How Arizona can feel good

Random observations from my trip to Arizona:

'Zonies, particularly Phoenicians and the Real Estate Industrial Complex, are always after cheap praise. "Make the community feel good about itself," as the diktat from the Arizona Republic to its "information center" goes. This is usually a license for boosterish fraud and an extended holiday from reality. Real accomplishment must be earned. I saw some of that on display.

    * This past weekend's inaugural Tucson Festival of Books was a wonder. Sponsored by the Arizona Daily Star (what a concept: a newspaper supporting reading and printed media) and the University of Arizona, it was the first big-time book festival to happen in the state. The crowds were large and enthusiastic (people even came to see me speak and sign books). Big-name authors came from around the country. What was most amazing was the cohesive community support behind the event, from the array of corporate and philanthropic sponsors to the army of smiling volunteers. Tucson took its best-practices from the world-class Los Angeles Times Festival of Books and gave the state something magical. It's also important: a community push to improve literacy in a county where one out of five residents is functionally illiterate. Eat your heart out Phoenix.

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Posted inPhoenix

The Kookocracy gets its moment

Now Janet Napolitano heads to Washington, leaving not much of a legacy in Arizona, despite what the Sewing Circle cult of personality would have us believe. She was a victim of her native caution and the unwillingness to take on issue No. 1 (land use and all its permutations, including sprawl and water) — to do otherwise would have caused the Real Estate Industrial Complex to destroy her ambitions. Michael Lacey has some further trenchant thoughts on immigration policy and deals with devils. But the biggest reason for Napolitano's failure is simply that the Legislature is by far the most powerful branch of government (the second being the media-ignored Corporation Commission). And the Legislature is dominated by kooks.

Now they will have one of their own as Secretary of State Jan Brewer ascends to the governorship. This is change I can believe in. Brewer is a member of the Kookocracy, having politicized the office charged with the integrity of elections. Except for Attorney General Terry Goddard, Arizona will now have an all-Kookocracy leadership. And I say, go for it. I want no Jane Hull-like temporizing or moments of sanity from Gov. Brewer. I want her to lead Arizona into the brave future that the minority who actually votes has consistently demanded.

This is the state where the most popular politician is Joe Arpiao, the civil-liberties-optional sheriff of Maricopa County. The state where Andrew Peyton Thomas won a resounding re-election as Maricopa County Attorney. Both have waged a thuggish war on the poor, underclass and minorities in the guise of "fighting illegal immigration." Funny, I have yet to see a big construction mogul or developer do a perp walk for hiring them by the hundreds.

It's time for Arizona to get the government it deserves.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

Napolitano’s mojo: You can’t lose what you never had

The news story begins, "Has Janet Napolitano lost her mojo?" And I am thinking about how the older core readers, loyal but constantly abused by the newspaper, are wondering, "What the hell is a mojo?" In any event, it continues:

Unthinkable even a year ago, the question is circulating among some of
the governor’s watchers at the Capitol. They’re struck by an
administration seemingly put on its heels by a stumbling state economy,
rash of key staff departures and, most recently, the disqualification
from the November ballot of her two most favored initiatives.

What was unthinkable until Monday was that the Arizona Republic would ever print anything even mildly critical of the governor, aside from the dreary sameness of the protected Republican political op on the editorial page. Napolitano was close friends with former publisher Sue Clark-Johnson. This, along with the Republic’s war against having experienced journalists consistently cover state government (or any beat), ensured that the governor would be treated with something like uninformed reverence.

The reality is that Napolitano never stood astride state government like a colossus. The faded "glory days" mentioned in the story were neither glorious nor had much to do with her. Nor did she have "absolute dominance" over the Legislature. The reality is more complex, and more interesting.

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Posted inPhoenix

Apparently the road to perdition won’t be widened

I shed no tears if the TIME initiative doesn’t make the November ballot in Arizona. This misbegotten transportation measure, backed by Gov. Janet Napolitano and the "business leaders" somehow couldn’t competently amass enough legitimate signatures on petitions to make it through the secretary of state’s office.

The measure promised $42.6 billion in transportation "improvements" over the next 30 years, paid for by a one-cent hike in the sales tax. It’s difficult to find specifics; I could find no Web site by the supposedly "powerful" coalition backing TIME (Transportation & Infrastructure Moving AZ’s Economy). In newspaper articles, the measure promised rail service between Phoenix and Tucson, but apparently only 18 percent of the monies to be raised would have gone to rail and transit.

In other words, this would have been more roads and freeways to empower sprawl.

The "tell" about TIME came earlier this year, when Napolitano was accused of making a secret deal with the (genuinely) powerful Home Builders Association of Central Arizona, agreeing not to tax development in exchange for the association’s "support" of the measure. More sprawl, and paid for disproportionately by lower-income Arizonans.

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Posted inPhoenix

On transportation, stuff you can’t make up

Gov. Janet Napolitano is not so tough when it comes to dealing with the real power in Arizona. Thus, we have this story broken last week by Capitol Media Services:

Gov. Janet Napolitano agreed to take home builders off the
financial hook for paying for new roads in exchange for a $100,000
donation to a campaign to persuade voters to boost their own taxes.

The deal, outlined in a letter obtained by Capitol Media Services,
resulted in the recrafting of the $42.6 billion transit improvement
initiative shortly before it was filed Tuesday to remove a provision to
raise at least some of the money from fees on new developments — fees
that would be added to the cost of new homes.
Instead the final version of the initiative — the one being
circulated for signatures — calls for the entire costs of new highways,
widened roads and mass transit projects to be paid for with a 1-cent
increase in the state sales tax, an increase of 18 percent from the
current 5.6 cent state levy.

I suppose this could be shrewd if it delivers long-needed Phoenix-Tucson rail service and commuter rail to Pinal County, not merely more roads. But it comes at a huge price, may never be approved, and will face the usual rear-guard attacks by the Legislature.

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