Tucson Weekly: The Skinny (June 26

Skinny CHARTER DETRACTORS: Breaking a long-standing rule of not standing for much of anything, the Executive Committee of the Pima County Republican Party passed a resolution condemning charter government and urging voters to reject it at the August 5 election.
Both Ron St. John, aide to Pima County Supervisor Mike Boyd, and Mark Lewis, one of the few Republicans on the committee that hammered out the proposed charter, extolled the virtues of passing it to the GOP executive committee. Afterward, the committee proceeded to vote 7 to 3 to reject the charter concept.
St. John and Lewis were outnumbered by former mayoral candidate and present GOP District 14 Chair Sharon Collins. She argued persuasively that charter government simply meant more government, and that the much-touted complaint about the need to gain approval from the state Legislature to change laws was little more than a red herring.
We applaud the GOP for finally taking a stand on a local issue. Political parties are dying because they refuse to get involved in politics, and then wonder why nobody else does.
CHARTER SUPPORTERS: Ron St. John, aide to Pima County Supervisor Mike Boyd, has become one of the staunchest supporters of the recently written Pima County Charter, which voters will approve or reject at the polls in August.
You may remember St. John ran an abortive campaign for the Arizona House of Representatives in 1996, raising about $30,000 and spending a bunch of it on a number of questionable personal items, including books, computers, rental cars and automobile tires--and then he failed even to file for the office. As noted above, he's attempting to take on the rising opposition to the proposed charter in many GOP circles.
St. John's arguments range from ludicrous to borderline slander. At a recent GOP breakfast, he said he likes the charter because it will keep the Supes from putting in the fix for contracts in departments like Public Works and keep guys like Supervisor Dan Eckstrom (who served on the charter commission) from filling patronage jobs at places like Kino Hospital. St. John figures this will happen because the charter will greatly reduce the power of Pima County supervisors to actually supervise anything and convert them to the sort of potted plants the Tucson City Councilmembers have become.
We'd like to thank St. John for making part of our case for us--he's right about the proposed charter moving the decision-making process even further into the hands of the unelected bureaucracy. But we'd defy him to name one fix or one patronage employee fitting his scenario of corruption in county government.
And we would remind him that his boss, Boyd, has been in either the partisan or functional majority since he took office five years ago. If any fixes have gone down, Boyd either was part of 'em or failed to notice 'em. Why hasn't he blown the whistle if things are as bad as St. John claims? In failing to offer proof for his BS, St. John begins to smell like a bush-league version of Joe McCarthy.
Perhaps the real reason St. John and Boyd favor a diminished role for elected supervisors is that Boyd himself has already personally reduced his role to a few hours a week. Quite possibly the laziest man ever to hold down a job that now pays $52,000 a year with bennies, a great pension and a brand new Taurus, Boyd is certainly the politician in this valley most interested in re-defining "non-feasance in office" by further restricting his own responsibilities. That his aide has become charter's latest pimp is not surprising.
THE PITTS: Tucson Citizen political reporter David Pittman last week put forth the rumor that, should Gov. J. Fife Deadbeat III get booted out of office after a conviction on those felony charges he's facing, leaving Secretary of State Jane Dee Hull to inherit the governor's job, two possible appointees to fill her vacancy are GOP Pima County Supervisor Mike Boyd and former state Sen. Patti Noland.
While it was nice to see Pittman do something besides rewrite press releases out of Washington, we still feel a responsibility to debunk his efforts.
The case for Noland, who wouldn't comment to Pittman, is reasonable--she served with Hull in the House and the two are close friends. Both Noland and Hull showed the good taste to clam up while the Symington trial is still underway.
The case for Boyd, however, is ludicrous. In fact, apparently the only person Pittman could find to talk about the possibility was Boyd himself. Unlike Noland, it apparently escaped Boyd that some Republicans might consider it the height of tackiness to comment on what happens if Fife goes down.
Admittedly, we first floated the idea that Boyd might be in line for the Secretary of State job, about, oh, two months ago. (Hell, that might be where that bulldog Pittman got the idea for his column.) And it didn't take long for our many spies in Phoenix to let us know Boyd has as much of a shot at being appointed Secretary of State as he does making Ambassador to the Court of St. James.
So anybody who knows any GOP insiders in Phoenix--as Pittman should--ought to have figured out with a couple of phone calls that Boyd has wild delusions of adequacy.
We're guessing that Boyd hopes Hull will give him one of those nice patronage jobs in state government--you know, the same sort of job there are too many of in Pima County government, according to his aide, Ron St. John.
Of course, with those state government jobs--some of which pay 90 grand a year--Mikey might actually have to show up at work.
BOYD'S FOOTHILLS WAFFLE: While we're talking about Pima County Supervisor Mike Boyd and his aide, Ron St. John, we should mention the two have a difference of opinion on the matter of incorporating an area of the Catalina foothills.
Under that new law that allows towns to incorporate next door to existing towns, some folks north of the Rillito River are talking about creating a foothills suburb of Tucson.
Boyd has been on their side in the past, arguing that residents wouldn't be at the mercy of the Board of Supervisors if they incorporated. We certainly get a kick out of that position, given that Boyd (who has managed to waffle his way into the majority throughout his time on the Board) is the one who's been representing them. Guess he's his own worst critic. (And here we thought that was our job.)
But in a recent article in the morning daily, St. John echoed the general feeling of the political establishment: That allowing these communities to incorporate will cause no end of trouble for the City of Tucson in the future.
According to the published report, St. John is trying to convince Boyd to oppose the incorporation process--and we're betting it's only a matter of time before Boyd comes out against the idea. We don't call him the Flaky Waffleman for nothing.
KING GEORGE'S LATEST OUTRAGE: Speaking of those incorporation efforts, Tucson Mayor George Miller is going apoplectic about the thought of some of those folks way out there in unincorporated turf having the audacity to form their own towns. He's so wild that he called a joint meeting of Tucson, Oro Valley, Marana, South Tucson and Sahaurita to discuss the problem and push for united action. Here's part of Miller's agenda:
"That existing cities and towns should be able to continue to seek annexation of unincorporated territory without the presence of new incorporations." And, "existing cities and towns should unify against the formation of new unincorporated areas, including the possibility of joining in litigation to declare the new statute on incorporation invalid."
Gee, George, whatever happened to letting the people decide?
You can't have any new incorporations without the permission--through both a petition drive and a successful effort at the ballot box--of the residents involved. Remember that one, George? It's called the American Way, and the process is totally unlike the sneaky, gerrymandered annexations Tucson and Marana have been perpetrating of late. Annexation is based solely on who owns the property to be annexed; incorporations are democratic and depend upon what registered voters decide.
The problem here is the usual arrogance of government. Miller looks upon the residents of unincorporated areas as future tax-producing subjects, not citizens with rights. What Miller has never recognized is that most non-city residents already pay a bundle to the City of Tucson in sales taxes--and many others without a vote in the matter have to drink that increasingly crappy Tucson water.
To expand Tucson's piece of the revenue pie, Miller would rather that folks on the northwest side end up in Dogpatch/Marana, instead of being allowed to plan their own destiny. And now he wants the existing residents of Tucson and the other towns to cough up lawyer money to enforce his--and Dogpatch's--rule.
Sounds like it's time for a revolution.
YET ANOTHER CLINTON SEX SCANDAL: Our spies tell us we missed another delightful get-together of the Saturday Morning Breakfast Club.
The ever-vigilant Breakfast Club, which believes the United Nations to be the home of the Devil and fluoride to be a plot to poison our bodily fluids, recently broadcast one of its meetings on a local public access channel, featuring a woman who claims she and her daughter were brain-washed by the CIA and programmed to perform sex acts for Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton in the service of a wide-ranging conspiracy involving the CIA, the FBI, the U.N., the Pentagon, the governors of a number of western states, various senators and congressman, and an awfully long list of country music stars (we reckon they're involved because they're so patriotic).
Although our informant couldn't watch more than five minutes because he to wrap his head in tinfoil to block the phone company's mind-control rays, he strongly suspects that this wronged woman eventually got around to sex with extraterrestrials. Why leave anyone out?

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