State Legislature

PCC would quit offering the lowest tier of remedial classes – Math 82, Reading 71 and Writing 70.

The chancellor and faculty advisory groups have said few students are successful in these classes.

Flores spoke of Math 82 as an example.

Students who place into Math 82 tested at grade levels one through five, Flores said. About 1,160 students placed into that class last fall semester, he said. That’s 18 percent of PCC students entering college for the first time.

Simone Gers, a writing faculty member, talked about Writing 70.

PCC taught 50 sections of the class last year, and only 5 percent of students succeeded, she said.

Many of the students would be better served by taking English as a second language classes or adult basic education classes before attempting college-level classes, she said.

The chancellor has said the classes are not a good use of student tuition money or tax money.

It costs about $6,600 to educate a full-time student at PCC. Local property-tax payers pay a large part of the cost.

The state subsidy is $325 per student.

Posted: Thursday, July 14, 2011 10:00 am | Updated: 10:13 am, Thu Jul 14, 2011.

Tale of the tape: tracking the numbers that make a difference in Tucson By Joe Higgins and Chris DeSimone – Inside Tucson Business

The tale of the tape, here are numbers we’re watching and so should you:

200,000 – the number of residents in Pima County, or one out of five, who try to get by on incomes below the federal poverty rate, according to a report in the June 23 Tucson Weekly that starts out: “If poverty were a disease, Pima County officials would have declared an epidemic by now.” It amounts to less than $10,890 annually for an individual or $22,350 for a family of four.

$4.68 per $100 of assessed valuation – Pima County’s combined primary and secondary property tax rate for this year, which was up an average 2 percent despite declining property values. Your neighbors in Maricopa County paid $1.05 per $100 of assessed valuation. What do we in Pima County get for the four times more we pay?

95 out of 101 – Tucson’s ranking as a place to business by the Dow Jones news service MarketWatch. Detroit surpassed Tucson.

165 out of 200 – Forbes ranking of Tucson as a market for business and careers.

2 – Tucson’s ranking on the list of cities with declining average home values, down 18.2 percent, since the second quarter of 2010. Only Columbus, Ohio, dropped more, 19.2 percent. Detroit was down 12.6 percent.

$4,000 per day – the estimated cost to subsidize a planned four-mile trolley from University Medical Center through downtown to some dirt lots on the west side of Interstate 10, according to Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik.

$13 million – the amount of money moved from the city’s pothole fund to build a bridge over the Santa Cruz River for the new trolley’s rail. The cost to resurface a road is about $500,000 per mile and more than 60 percent of city roads are in poor condition.

$87.50 – the cost of a case of duct tape to patch railing at the Tucson Convention Center. Despite collecting facilities fees on every event at the center, the fund those monies went into was swept by city officials to be spent on operations, including $187,000 salary and a car for the previous director. And to think some were pushing to spend $200 million on a hotel to support the decrepit convention center.

$475,000 – the base salary for Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University. Under Crow’s leadership, ASU has not only eclipsed the University of Arizona in size but its ability to raise money by convincing donors it is a top tier university and valuable resource to the state.

0 – the number of Republican candidates names on the ballot for Tucson mayor this year.

$29.1 billion – the total gross domestic product for the Tucson region. It’s $187 billion in Phoenix.

40 percent – the expected increase in Pima County wastewater fees over the next four years to bring processing fees into compliance with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards county officials have known about for more than a decade.

$8 million – the increase to the Sun Tran budget from the City of Tucson, raising the total subsidy to $39 million. Meanwhile, police, fire and street maintenance were cut by a combined $25 million.

21.8 percent – the increase in tourism revenues in the Tucson region since 2000. Statewide, tourism revenues are up 41.4 percent and the Phoenix area was up 49.7 percent. Tucson can’t keep up with its place in the sun.

Top 25 – A list in the March issue of Travel + Leisure magazine that includes Tucson as one of the “World’s Most Underrated Travel Destinations.”

5 years – the length of time Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities has been promoting economic development for our region.

62 – the number of dignitaries who showed up last month at ribbon cutting ceremonies at Raytheon Missile Systems’ new production facility at Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, Ala. The list included U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., who could wield some influence in Raytheon’s way as a member of the defense subcommittee of the Senate’s powerful Appropriations Committee.

300 – the number of jobs Raytheon Missile Systems is adding in Alabama at the new $70 million, 70,000-square-foot missile intergration facility. Taylor Lawrence, president of Raytheon Missile Systems, was quoted at the ribbon cutting, saying the plant there “was the best business decision for us because of all the incentives and the integrated approach that the state brought to supporting this facility.” He also said, “We see it being part of our integration facilities for many, many, many years in the future, and to support next generations” of missiles

7 months – the time it took Joe Higgins (one of the two writers of this column) to lease a 1,200 square foot retail space to Goodwill in a building inside the Tucson city limits. The use required a neighborhood meeting, zoning commission approval and a vote by mayor and council. (Aside from Joe: Guess how many more retail developments I want to do in Tucson in the future?)

$600,000 – the original contract for the Scott Avenue improvements near downtown. Costs jumped to more than $9 million as a result of change orders that included lighted sidewalks and an orange phoenix or griffin piece of art. One of the original four Rio Nuevo board members was the owner of a bed and breakfast on Scott Avenue.

$1 – the amount of rent paid to the city for the old downtown fire station by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), which is in the Rio Nuevo redevelopment district. One of the original four Rio Nuevo board members is MOCA’s executive director.

$5 billion – the investment Intel is making in Chandler to build a new chip manufacturing plant, adding 1,000 new jobs. The same week that announcment was made, Tucson’s announced was the arrival of 400 new call center jobs.

300 and 500 – the number of new jobs Sargent Controls is bringing to Marana and Roche is adding at Ventana Medical Systems in Oro Valley. Between Roche and Sanofi Aventis, Oro Valley now has the No. 3 and No. 6 ranked largest biotech firms in the world.

390 – The combined number of employees earning $100,000 or more working for the City of Tucson (200) and Pima County (190). There are 122 staffers in the White House who make more than $100,000.

$340,000 – the per-unit cost to rebuild the $23 million Martin Luther King low income housing project in downtown Tucson. Upon completion the building appraised at $10.5 million. Studio and one-bedroom apartments will rent for $167. A three-bedroom apartment in Oro Valley rents for $1,500 a month.

$820,000 – the price paid by Rio Nuevo to make a 15-minute video that was to be played at the Heritage Museum which never got built.

2.4 – the number of police officers per 1,000 population in Oro Valley. In Marana the figure is 2.05, Tucson is 2.0 and unincorporated Pima County is 1.28.

$17.53 – the bed tax paid on an average hotel room in Tucson. It’s the highest in Arizona and higher such cities as Austin, Texas, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and Honolulu.

4.1 percent – the increase from 2000 to 2010 in passengers served at Tucson International Airport. The region’s population grew by 20.1 percent over the same period. In the two previous decades, 1990-2000 and 1980-1990, Tucson airport passenger traffic grew by 74.4 percent and 66.3 percent, respectively.

60 percent – the number of students in Tucson Unified School District who identify themselves as Hispanic. Those identifying themselves as Anglo represent 25 percent.

93,699 – average daily circulation of the Arizona Daily Star, down from 113,296 in 2005.

21.8 percent – the percentage of Tucson’s workforce in the government sector. It ranks No. 5 among the highest percentage of government workers in a non-state capital city and 11th among all cities.

$4.8 million – the price land speculator Yoram Levy paid by buy 2,760 acres in the Santa Rita Mountains in 2004. A year later he offered to sell it to Pima County for $11.5 million, which turned it down, and by June 2005 it was sold to Rosemont Copper for $20.8 million. As a copper mine it is projected to produce annual revenues of $3.8 billion.

Contact Joe Higgins and Chris DeSimone at wakeuptucson@gmail.com. They host “Wake Up Tucson,” 6-8 a.m. weekdays on The Voice KVOI 1030-AM. Their blog is at www.TucsonChoices.com.

Posted: Friday, July 1, 2011 9:00 am | Updated: 10:38 am, Thu Jun 30, 2011.

A ‘Dear John’ letter from a former Tucson business owner now in Texas By Joe Higgins and Chris DeSimone, Inside Tucson Business Inside Tucson Business | 3 comments

This is a parting letter from a friend who is young, engaged and for a year was part of the fight to fix broken processes and get the community back on track. Read it and weep:

Tucson for me is like a girl I love who has a heroin problem. I love her. I can’t forget her, but I know I can’t live with drugs.

I just moved to ________ County. Texas is about 80 percent Republican. The ______County Democratic Party is a PO box. The attitude here is so refreshing. Saw a gal at the barbeque joint wearing a T-shirt: “Guns kill people, and spoons made Rosie O’Donnell fat.”

The things that drove me out of Tucson, in addition to the taxes and the left-driven real estate conditions, were the suffocating liberal atmosphere and the utter lack of leadership.

When I moved back to Tucson two years ago, there were two things I cared about: Seeing downtown revived and seeing a business-Republican leadership take the mayoralty and run with the city, making it wonderful. If you notice, the two things are really one thing, or at least they merge into one thing: community leadership.

In Tucson I joined the Republican Party, I convened a “meeting” with (Republican operative) who was the operating head of the Pima County Republican Party when _______ was chair and I sought out (Republican staffer) and (District chair), (CEO number and Southern Arizona Leadership Council member), (commercial developer), (commercial developer), (CEO of the biggest company HQ’d in Tucson), (real estate family guy), (business Republican leader), (small business guy), (economic development guy) and another dozen local business and political leaders.

But the day came when I had to recognize that I was just a crow, sitting on the barbed wire fence, squawking and pooping. I was utterly ineffective, partly because of my limitations as a communicator, and partly because my message was being delivered to people who couldn’t accept the premises or the goals.

It would exaggerate only slightly to say that it broke my heart to see what the business community did with the opportunity to elect a real forceful, effective person as mayor. What they did was absolutely nothing. If it didn’t break my heart, it sure was the straw that convinced me I had to leave. For me, it was like I was living in a neighborhood where nobody mowed the lawn, and there was trash and broken cars everywhere, and all my neighbors just sat on their porches and drank beer and tossed the cans into the yard.

I can understand a poorly educated, low intelligence person being that way, but there is no way I can accept that kind of dereliction of duty on the part of the so-called business leaders of Tucson, people whose entire lives and families and futures are tied to the prosperity and stability of your community.

Tucson has three big constituencies all with the motto: “Tucson – Just Like It Is.”

The big three voter groups are the fixed-income retirees, the psychologically downtrodden poor and the quasi-Marxist university crowd. I drive down Speedway, or Broadway or Grant or 22nd and I want to call in the dozers. They revel in it.

“Breakfast: 89 cents”

As I’ve said before, I understand and accept the attitude of Tucson’s three constituencies. What I can’t understand and certainly can’t accept is the passivity of the business community. If Tucson were a car dealership, the owner would fire the general manager, get a new sales manager and keep going until the dealership was making good money. Yet in Tucson, that car dealer shells out big bucks year after year and sees no change.

Austin made the change that Tucson spurns. Back in the 50s and 60s and before, the “no growthers” were in the driver’s seat. But the high energy/high purpose guys knocked them out of power and the city started to change. Now it’s gangbusters.

Hope your health and your spirit and your businesses and your family continue to thrive mightily in 2011.

Signed,

(Ex-Tucsonan – New Texan)

Tucson, you are running out of options.

Business community, you are running out of customers.

Republican Party, you are running into each other.

Wake up, Tucson.

Contact Joe Higgins and Chris DeSimone at wakeuptucson@gmail.com. They host “Wake Up Tucson,” 6-8 a.m. weekdays on The Voice KVOI 1030-AM. Their blog is at www.TucsonChoices.com.

Some Comments from AZBiz.com

Dale Bruder:

Having built a cutting edge digital network for the one Republican Mayoral candidate who could make a difference – Ron Asta, and see his chance destroyed by a shyster petition gatherer named Steve Cole I feel your pain.

What you need to do is name names. If Joe and Chris edited your letter shame on them – they are perpetuating the protect the annoited/do nothing approach to stay in power just like Jack Camper did in his decades running TMCC. Yeah, he’s gone but the effect of his self-serving was years in making and will be years in fading – get that Bill Holmes; you can’t cover up the smell of manure by burying it.

Joe and Chris – are we to see that, now that you’re on top, you have no leadership ability to create the epithany Tucson needs? More of the same. Lead, follow or get out of the way! I read that declaration in 1976 sitting in a prison cell and it made the difference for me. Your air conditioned nightmare is no comparison.

Alan Rosen:

Far too often the response to anything negative written about Tucson is the all too familiar ‘goodbye and good riddance’.

Unfortunately, criticism is not allowed in this town, particularly from those thant have left or those that were not ‘born and bred’. That is really too bad because a lot of the sentiments expressed by those compelled to write are intended to be thought provoking and are heartfelt.

I have been here 11 years and still have not adjusted to how impossible it is to change anything in this community.

As a professional I was ignored by my local peers (not a U of A guy) my ideas and experience from another part of the country was of no interest. Fortunately for me it was the best thing that could happened. I found better and bigger projects out of town where I could apply my knowledge and help the communities that hired me. That’s almost impossible to do here for someone relocating from other parts of the US, the ‘club’ is usually closed.

I feel this town has suffered significant deterioration during the time I have maintained a home here and I think that the future prospects for the community are bleak. If Tucson can improve it must do so by opening itself up to new and fresh ideas (not the stale ideas of too many generations of isolation and UofA educations). Tucson most find BETTER LEADERS, Tucson must fight the entrenced interests of the past and Tucson must address its failed public education system.

Until those things happen it will be more of the same…stagnation, ineffective government, no new businesses and low wages.

Kevin:

glad you’re gone. Stay in Texas.

Your Money

As we edge into Obama’s third year of his administration it’s important to draw some parallels to another trans formative President and compare some policies and outcomes. Both Reagan and Obama inherited an economy in trouble.  Reagan inherited a Democratic administration mess signified with high unemployment, high interest rates and high inflation. Obama inherited a complete melt down of the financial and housing markets which sparked a massive shedding of jobs by the private sector.

How both men approached the solution shows their ideologies and their willingness to risk it all to prove their points. Both administrations came in with a roar and lost major political ground in the mid term elections just two years into their presidencies. That’s were the similarities stop.

Reagan moved quickly to reduce federal spending on run away programs, federal spending on non-defense sectors. Obama primed the government spending pump by spending on government. The ballooning of the bureaucracy is growing to epic proportions.  An alarming stat from the WSJ:

Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.

It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers.

Reagan took on the Federal Air Traffic Controller and Obama takes over GM to save the union heavy auto maker, fights Boeings ability to flee to right to work states.

Reagan runs up the deficit spending credit card to build up the military which eventually ended the Cold War. Obama talks about restoring our decaying infrastructure and resurrecting the Conservation Corp of the Great Depression era and ended up squandering $787 billion on bridges to no where, high speed rail systems that are getting shot down by governors in states that aren’t buying into the pork. Under Obama we saw ‘Cash For Clunkers’, ‘Cash for Cualkers’.  The Coburn-McCain report slammed the wasteful stimulus package for juicy nuggets like:

The Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center was awarded $71,623 to study what the report calls, “Monkeys Getting High for Science.”

Bonnie Davis, a spokeswoman for The Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, said the “small grant has helped protect very important research that will have significant impact on public health in regards to cocaine addiction and the issue of relapse.”

Go a little further down the list and you’ll find even bigger spending. The California Academy of Sciences is receiving nearly $1 million in stimulus funds to send researchers to the Southwest Indian Ocean Islands and East Africa to capture, photograph and analyze thousands of exotic ants.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

There’s also funding for yoga and hot flashes. Researchers at Wake Forest University have received nearly $300,000 to study whether integral yoga “can be an effective method to reduce the frequency and/or severity of hot flashes” in breast cancer survivors.

embedded by Embedded Video

YouTube Direkt

Reagan reduced regulations which told the business community that the American market was going to welcome their entreprenurial spirit and encourage them to get back to work. Obama on the other hand flirted with Cap and Trade and used the long arm of the EPA to mandate coal fired energy production and attempt to move the country towards solar and other inefficient alternative energy sources.

As if our brief history lessons and comparisons aren’t example enough of how incredibly off the Obama administration’s policies are, let’s take a look at the United States health care industry. Health care makes up 20% of the US economy  and it’s just received a major governmental partner in virtually every aspect of it’s delivery, billing, R&D and administration.  Health care reform is the holy grail of Progressive politics.  Clinton tried and ultimately failed to get a health care overhaul bid through the legislative process. Obama  learned two valuable lessons from Bill, don’t let Hilary anywhere near the process and move quick while your political capital is at it’s peak.

Even with super majorities in Congress what came out of the Potomac meat grinder was a health care bill that was loaded with new bureaucracies, new government oversights and new hurdles to jump through. The ‘bending of the cost curve’ discussion was thrown out the window and replaced with ‘we are from the government and here to help’.  Why would we be skeptic of a Federal take over of 20% of our economy? Look no further than the US Postal Service for your answer.

Both Reagan and Obama have had two years to implement their plans. Both lost big in the mid term and both were under criticism for their policies. Reagan set the table for the private sector to roar back with 20 years of prosperity.  Even the stock market melt down of 1987 (bigger than the correction of 2009) rolled through as no more than a blip on the two decades of prosperity.  The policies Obama has put in to place have frozen the private sector. There is more money sitting on the sidelines in the private sector than any time in history. When small businesses or multinational conglomorates experience and uncertain marketplace they sit and wait. No one will put capital at risk until their is certainty. From the dry cleaner on the corner to the major pharmacutical company, the messages coming out of the Obama Administration point to the the private sector being a necessary evil rather than an important partner in our economic recovery.

Liberal media wrong about economy.

By Edwin Feulner – The Southeat Missourian

…..For better or for worse, more than two an one half years into the Reagan administration, the nations economic policies – while still a hodgepodge, confusing, and in some cases counterproductive are generally modeled along the lines Ronald Reagan proposed as a presidential candidate. Taxes have been reduced; government spending increases have been slowed; the regulatory burden has been eased somewhat. The mix would be far  different in an ideal world; but Washington is far from that.

In other words, whether Sam Donaldson of ABC-TV or Horbart Rowen of the Washington Post like it or not, the economic program is more similar than dissimilar to what we called Reaganomics three years ago.

If its working, it’s Reaganomics we can credit; if it’s failing, Reaganomics gets the blame.

Is the program working:……

-          Sales of domestic autos were at a 7.2 million rat in July, up by more than 40% over the 5.1 million rate of June 1982.

-          More than 74% of manufacturing, mining and utilities capacity was in use in June, up seven percent from November, when the recession was at its worse.

-          The University of Michigan index of consumer confidence soared to 93% in May-June, it’s highest level in 10 years. People are optimistic about their current and future economic situation and about the prospects for the economy as a whole.

-          Consumer spending, adjusted for inflation, surged 10% annual rate during the second quarter – the largest quarterly increase in two decades.

-          The civilian unemployment rate fell to 9.5% in July and August from a high of 10.8% last December – falling a full one-half percent in July alone. New claims for unemployment insurance, moreover, were down to 388,000 during the first four weeks of July. Lowest since July 1979.

-          New housing starts were at a 1.7 million unit annual rate in June, up 92% from a year earlier.

Much to the dismay of the gloom and doomers, inflation remains firmly in control. Interest rates are well below earlier peaks, as well.

The bottom line is that economic recovery is gaining momentum. Real GNP grew at an annual rate of 8.7% in the second quarter – far higher than forecast, and three times greater than 2.6% rate in the first quarter.

The limousine liberals in the news media have willed failure on the Reagan economic program from the beginning. The only thing that has failed, however, is their creditability.

Some of the best quotes from Walter Russel Mead’s story in American Interest:

1. California’s public unions are sucking the state dry.

2. For the fast 5 years California has been losing one Fortune 500 company per year.

3. California has the one of the worst business climates in the country: in three widely-cited rankings, California came 49th or 50th.  High taxes, rigid regulations, bribery, unresponsive bureaucrats: California has it all.

4. California has the country’s 6th highest total tax burden and yet also the largest budget deficit ($25.4bn projected for FY2012 — that’s about $687 per capita). 

5. In 2008, although California spent more on public schools than any other state in the country and more per pupil than many, its students ranked 49th (out of 51, including DC) in reading achievement, 48th in math.

Sounds like a winning plan to me……

California used to be the glory of this country, the dream by the sea, the magic state.  Now it produces so many criminals it can’t pay to keep them locked up.

This is partly a blue social model thing.  California’s public unions are sucking the state dry — like a parasite killing its host.  Too many Californians buy the ideology of entitlement best described by that great Louisiana prophet of the blue social model Huey Long: “If you aren’t getting something for nothing, you’re not getting your fair share.”

The federal government’s generation of serial failures in migration policy is also to blame.  More exposed to illegal migration than any other state, California has been overwhelmed by both legal and illegal immigrants.  Immigrants are a net plus for the United States, but neither the federal nor the state governments have been willing to provide the appropriate policy framework to manage this flow — and to cope with the consequences.

Some of the fault is judicial.  California’s prison blues partly reflect micromanagement by a host of addled judges who among them have imposed a conflicting and overlapping set of requirements that increase costs to the point where overall conditions decline.  One judge imposes a health mandate; another throws in some food and nutrition requirements; somebody else issues an order for exercise, education, visitation rights or what have you.  In the end the system becomes unmanageable and unsustainable and in yet another fatheaded intervention the Supreme Court supports a lower court order for mass prisoner release.  Judicial intervention in the prison system needs to be safe, legal and rare: at the moment it seems to be none of the above.

It’s partly about corporate flight.  Destructive and shortsighted tax policies have literally driven big corporations out of the state.  For the last five years, Southern California has been losing roughly one Fortune 500 corporate headquarters a year, while the state as a whole has lost four such companies in the last twelve months in an accelerating flight to greener pastures in less-dysfunctional states like Texas, Colorado and Virginia.

Meanwhile, California has the one of the worst business climates in the country: in three widely-cited rankings, California came 49th or 50th.  High taxes, rigid regulations, bribery, unresponsive bureaucrats: California has it all.

It has one of the most expensive and least effective governments in the country.  California has the country’s 6th highest total tax burden and yet also the largest budget deficit ($25.4bn projected for FY2012 — that’s about $687 per capita).  North Dakota, by contrast, balances its budget every year, educates its kids better, is creating new jobs and taxes its residents at less than half California’s level.

California’s school expenditures bear no relationship to results.  In 2008, although California spent more on public schools than any other state in the country and more per pupil than many, its students ranked 49th (out of 51, including DC) in reading achievement, 48th in math.  States like South Dakota spent much less per pupil and got much better results.

The former paradise of the automobile can’t even get car policy right; it has the country’s second highest gas prices and some of the worst traffic in the United States.

Vail Town Hall results highlight two preferences

More than 300 people attending a Vail Town Hall on April 20 at Empire High School gave first preference to incorporation (57%) and second preference to an improvement district (44%) as options for possible future governance of the Vail area.

 Following presentations on the options of annexation, do nothing, incorporation, establishing an improvement district or community coordinating council, Greater Vail area residents were able to share their first and second preferences by placing a No. 1 or No. 2 on the various options. Annexation ranked the lowest in both preferences.

 The final results will be reviewed by the Vail Community Action Board for further consideration on what option to pursue, if any. If the board decides to pursue the preferred options, additional information on costs, requirements, timetable and other factors would be researched further for public consideration.

 The Greater Vail area includes Rincon Valley, Central Vail, the Wilmot/Kolb area, New Tucson, the Houghton Road corridor, Empire, Marsh Station, Corona de Tucson and the Southlands, all within the Vail School District. Town hall attendance was particularly strong from the Rincon Valley, Central Vail, Wilmot/Kolb, New Tucson and Houghton Corridor areas.

 The Vail Community Action Board opted to explore the various governance models to consider how the area may better address such things as improved access to services, transportation improvements or neighborhood safety in anticipation of continued growth.

Despite budget cuts, attempts to take over UMC and hikes in tuition  the University of Arizona has just overtaken Raytheon as our regions largest employer. Raytheon has been at the top spot for years but got nudged out this year by the University.  I guess this fits with Tucson’s largest industry (at 21% of our workforce) continues to be the government sector.

Last year Raytheon reported 12,140 employees and the UofA posted 10,363. This year the numbers are 11,604 for the UofA and 11,500 for Raytheon according to Inside Tucson Business.

Pima County went from 8,300 in 2008 to 8,132 this year, a 3%  drop. Tucson went through a 27% drop.  Pima County lost 450 positions with a contract shift from Pima County Health. So in reality the County actually added positions.  Anyone seeing a trend here?

City of Tucson and TUSD went down.

I guess the evil legislators cutting the UofA funding could be concidered Arizona’s own stimulus plan. Raising tuition, grabbing UMC’s pot of money is needed to feed the big payroll.   Nice job Shelton.

UofA President Robert Shelton is making a big dollar power play to gain control of over $150 million sitting on the balance sheet in the University Medical Center. After running the medical operations to the brink of disaster, the medical operations were spun off to run more like a private sector operation. University Medical re-calibrated and became a successful part of our community and a leading teaching hospital that graduated thousands of pharmacist, nurses and doctors.

Now UofA President, Robert Shelton, wants to take hundreds of millions of cash reserves and all future profits from UMC out of Health Sciences and use them to make up his own black hole deficits at the UofA. This is wrong.

Shelton’s dash for our cash is a political play dictated by the Arizona Board of Regents and encouraged by Fred DuVal to curry favor amongst the academics so he can run for office in 2012.

Regent Rick Meyer is the CEO of C-Path which is in the medical research industry.  Meyer is seeking the good favor of Shelton and the potential research business it could mean to his company. If you remember c-path has been supported by Oro Valley (Explorer News 2009), Marana, Tucson, Pima County and of course The University of Arizona (funding sources HERE).  Guess where c-path built their first medical lab with all the financial support from Southern Arizona?  If you answered Tucson, Oro Valley or Marana you would be wrong – the $2.2 million grant opened a $2.2 million lab in Phoenix.  How’s that for a return on investment?

The only public source of funding mentioned on their web site with a Phoenix presence is……you guessed it, the UofA.  Shelton sites more medical research if he’s in control of UMC, cpath works in the medical research field, coincidence?

Is Rick Meyers deeply embroiled in the middle of a big fat conflict of interest?

If I were a taxpayer of Marana I’d be upset.  If I were a taxpayer of Tucson I’d be upset. If were a taxpayer of Pima County I’d be upset.  As a taxpayer from Oro Valley…..I’m down right pissed off.  We may have tax increases to pay for cops while we’ve invested for years  in c-path only to see them open a lab and create jobs in Phoenix! Loomis and KC, thanks.

Meyer and DuVal are all over this mess and someone needs to reign them in or kick them off the board. Shelton has overstepped his authority and should be ousted as the President. How does the legislature real in or hold Shelton accountable? Through none other than the Board of Regents.

Would a freedom of information request show any email trails between any of these players?

What grants or contracts does c-path and the UofA have in the hopper?  Follow the money and drop a line over to The Goldwater Institute for me  would you.

Call your legislator at the Capitol today and tell them to support community based medicine at UMC — not Shelton’s money grab.

Don’t allow Robert Shelton soil our community with his bad policy.

Here’s the story and Meyer’s quote;

…….

It makes sense, Myers said, to step back, talk and figure out how to move forward together, as opposed to continuing with a potentially harmful power struggle.

He had a “cordial discussion” with UA Healthcare’s board chairman, Granger Vinall, on Thursday, Myers said. Vinall did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.

But the regents’ repeal may not be enough to stop legislators from pursuing their own plan.

“So as soon as we back down, they’ll do it the day after?” asked Sen. Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert. It was Biggs who successfully engineered a vote Wednesday to statutorily override the regents’ plan.

That’s also the concern of Rep. David Stevens, R-Sierra Vista.

“They (regents) could come right back after we’re out of session,” he said, noting lawmakers hope to adjourn by the end of the month. “And then we’ve got eight months where we couldn’t do anything.”

Regent Myers said that’s not the intent.

But he said that doesn’t mean the regents are scrapping the idea of ever approving a plan just like the one that caused the legislative dust-up in the first place.

“Nothing is precluded,” Myers said. “But nothing is preordained.”

Everyone in state government has a role to play in the future of the hospital and medical school, Myers said. “Our role is to do what’s best for the university and the people of Arizona.”

But regents Chair Fred DuVal said the concerns of Biggs and Stevens are unwarranted and that the regents won’t try to pull a fast one on legislators.

“Having just taken $198 million in cuts, we do not in any measure underestimate the power of the Legislature to express themselves in ways that matter to us,” said DuVal, referring to the just-approved state budget for the coming fiscal year.

Stevens remains skeptical of both the board and its president.

“Fred DuVal’s trying to run for the U.S. Senate,” Stevens said. “This is a ploy to get his name out in the press, to get him notoriety so he can run for (retiring Sen. Jon) Kyl’s seat.”

DuVal said he’s not looking for publicity and not running for the Senate. He also said the changes being considered are not partisan, noting they date to when a Republican was regents president.

What won’t happen, DuVal said, is what many interpreted as a last-minute and secretive process about the change.

Posted: Friday, March 25, 2011 10:00 am | 

Bureaucracies could use a little entrepreneurial attitude adjustment By Joe Higgins and Chris DeSimone, Inside Tucson Business Inside Tucson Business | 0 comments

In a recent conversation with a local mechanic we learned the City of Tucson pays its fleet services department more than $90 for an oil change on a police car. You know as well we do, it’s pretty easy to find a good mechanic who will do the same thing for $29.95. Do a little shopping and it’s possible to get it done for $19.95.

Why does the city pay itself so much for the same services?

The answer is that bureacracies lack the same motivations and competitive pressures that you find in the competitive marketplace. Government bureaucracies exist to keep existing. Add in a unionized workforce that understands the political system and you can see how difficult it becomes trying to make government efficient.

Less than five months ago, Tucson voters overwhelmingly rejected a sales tax increase despite city leaders’ threats that thousands of jobs would have to be cut, including police and fire protection. In hours after the results were in, the number of lost jobs was cut to 400 by Mayor Bob Walkup and City Manager Mike Letcher. In the end, the “crisis” was averted and there were no layoffs at all.

So how can we trust Tucson leaders crying wolf? If they can mysteriously find enough money to keep from laying off anyone, how confident can we be that they are spending tax dollars efficiently?

There are a handful of game-changing bills working their way through the Legislature this session that will attempt to get our region back on track.

Here’s a look at three bills that will make an immediate and long-term difference in your daily life:

• Outsourcing all city services over $50,000 (SB 1322). The example of the $90 oil change is too common in local governments. This bill requires all services be bid out to the marketplace except for police, fire and the judiciary. The city can bid to keep the services currently provided in-house, but it must justify the true cost of every function and prove to the voters why a private sector shouldn’t be doing the service. This idea was implemented by Sal DiCiccio, a Phoenix city councilman who has been running into obstacles trying to reform the way his city does business. The threshhold population was originally set so that it would apply only cities of over 1 million people but that has been reduced to 500,000 so it would apply to Tucson.

• Annexation and incorporation (SB 1333). As a Pima County property owner, you pay almost four times as much in property taxes to Pima County than what you would pay in Maricopa County. That’s mainly due to the fact that so much of the Tucson region is unincorporated. The Phoenix metropolitan area has 16 incorporated municipalities, all competing for the tax revenues to provide quality of life and public services. Besides Tucson and South Tucson, which it surrounds, Pima County has just Marana, Oro Valley and Sahuarita. Current law prohibits new municipalities from forming within six miles of an existing incorporated municipality. Since most areas don’t want to be a part of Tucson, they remain unincorporatted. We need more Maranas, Oro Valleys and Sahuaritas.

• Control of wastewater (SB 1171). Since the 1970s Pima County has been in control of our region’s destiny through the wastewater system. By determining who gets connected to the system, the county can solely decide where shopping centers are located and how quickly a manufacturing facility can be up and running. This bill will allow Marana and other municipalities to gain control of their own wastewater systems and, as a result, gain better control over their own economic development. The bill has cleared the state Senate and is being considered by the state House. This is the time to let your state representatives know how you feel.

What these and some other bills have in common is that they promote and encourage an entrepreneurial spirit and economic development. They’re about attitude and getting things accomplished. They’re about giving businesses and residents an opportunity to shop around for a lower-priced – and probably better – oil change.

Contact Joe Higgins and Chris DeSimone at wakeuptucson@gmail.com. They host “Wake Up Tucson,” 6-8 a.m. weekdays on The Voice KVOI 1030-AM. Their blog is at www.TucsonChoices.com.