The ultimate perk is power. In an arid land, the ultimate power is over water.
Currently, our water management policies leave much to be desired, and who is in control of what raises serious questions of accountability. That the City of Tucson has a checkered past, at best, on this issue is obvious.
But as ineptly as our precious water has been handled, at least water policy is still run by people elected by the voters. In other words, the ultimate power is where it should be in a desert-dwelling democratic society. And even when arrogant white guys like Grady Gammage Jr. come down here from Phoenix to lecture Tucsonans about water, Gammage is at least elected by somebody to be their rep on the CAP board.
But the ultimate insult to the democratic process and the ultimate attempt to grab raw political power occurred recently when former land speculator Roy Drachman actually proposed that he and three of his friends, former University of Arizona president John Schaefer, former Tucson Medical Center executive Donald Shropshire, and former state Represenative Jack Jewett, be empowered to appoint (all by themselves) a nine-member group to control all the water in this valley.
This little clot of self-serving has-beens are being taken seriously by establishment media. Most other places, they'd be laughed out of town. They propose to eliminate any elected officials from having a say on water. Their other purposes are, as they proudly admit, to remove any jurisdiction from the Arizona Corporation Commission--an elected body--and to prevent the present and any future water initiatives that might be proposed by the unwashed peasants they have so little regard for.
Pima County Supervisor Ed Moore agrees with Drachman and the over-the-hill gang that we need to "take the politics out of water decisions." Well, they've got some pretty good role models for getting politics out of the decision-making process--Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler and Castro come to mind. Moore probably identifies more with Idi Amin. Fortunately, even a city council as weak as Tucson's isn't that weak and is reacting negatively to the plan.
In the annals of arrogance, this proposal ranks with the Emperor Caligula's choosing his horse as a consul.
--Emil Franzi
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