Charter Fright Why We're Worried About The Upcoming Charter Election. By Emil Franzi CHARTER GOVERNMENT sounds like a good idea: Let the folks in big counties like Maricopa and Pima have the independence to structure their own local governments and make them less dependent on decisions made by the state Legislature. This proposal was hardly the result of popular fervor. It's basically the creation of the kind of policy wonks and nerds haunting C-Span at 3 a.m. And in that apparent dullness lies the big danger to local democracy. Legislators placed the issue on the ballot via referendum, and it passed over minimal opposition. The law allows each county to set up the mechanism for electing three people per supervisorial district, having them go off for six months and recreate county government, and then hold another election for the voters to approve the final proposal. So, during this November's general election, local voters will be asked to choose 15 delegates; or, in the alternative, they may decide to abandon the whole process. As the hidden agendas begin to unfold, the latter option grows more attractive. In Maricopa County, the business establishment players there revealed a clear game plan early on to dominate the Charter process. They saw it as a golden opportunity to eliminate such items as elections for tax increases and bond projects, all while dumping pesky elected line officers, such as county treasurers, who've been known to blow the whistle on supervisor-created funny money. The Maricopa establishment types also saw an opportunity to raise the high cost of countywide political campaigns even higher by expanding their board of supervisors from five to nine by adding four at-large members. Unfortunately, Pima County's power players tend to be a pale satellite of Maricopa's. Many of Tucson's fearless leaders are nothing but employees of somebody up there. Is it any wonder, then, that we're seeing folks like Dan Cavanaugh, Mark Lewis and Jan Gingold on the ticket? (see "Charterheads," below.) It's obvious this rather obscure-seeming election is really about a whole lot more than good government and civic involvement. Fortunately, the current players are about as subtle as an Ed Moore direct-mail piece. They've already sounded off about what their agenda for the rest of us will be: • Controlling the Pima County Board of Supervisors by expanding the number of districts and adding at-large members. Tucson's Growth Lobby has always had trouble in supervisorial elections, more so as more folks figure out their scams. By adding at-large members, they'll make their ability to raise big money count for more. And by adding more supervisors at the very moment they could lose control--which could happen this year--the pro-growthers break up the game and have another shot at control. • Eliminating all those "unnecessary" line officers like assessor and treasurer. While some of the people who've held those offices may be useless, the offices themselves serve as a useful check and balance against the supervisors. These guys want to first control the supervisors and then have their folks appoint the line officers. • Creating a "regional" water authority to end "dissension." Translation: Take the ability to determine our community's water future away from the city and the voters, blow off any future Proposition 200s, and model the whole thing on the Tucson Airport Authority, over which the public has no say and no direct representation. Why? In the desert, water is power. • Using the Charter process as a stepping stone to metropolitan government. How, nobody's sure--even towns like Marana, which are run by builder stooges, wouldn't give up their sovereignty to a behemoth government, nor would Oro Valley or South Tucson. What the Growth Lobby charterheads haven't noticed is their old ploy to combine Pima County and Tucson governments (to give them more power and you less under the phony banner of "efficiency") becomes less feasible as the Maranas and Oro Valleys become bigger portions of the total equation, something that's occurring because of the Growth Lobby's own developments. Ain't irony fun? • Dumping the state requirements for elections to approve new sales taxes and certain bond proposals. This mantra has been publicly chanted by many of those who want to write the new Charter. The Southern Arizona Home Builders Association is questioning candidates on their views, as is the Chamber of Commerce. Their game is pretty obvious. IT'S POSSIBLE ENOUGH real citizens could get elected to the Charter Committee to thwart these and other items on the Growth Lobby agenda, but that would make it highly difficult to get the kind of consensus for real governmental reform some of the early Charter advocates wanted. It's clear the current Pima County supervisors could care less about real consensus--they've set the election to approve the proposed Charter for the middle of summer 1997, a guaranteed voter-turn-out suppressant. In fact, the whole Charter process is beginning to smell like a front operation for the same narrow special interest groups we see every election. What else would you expect? County government has always been their playground, and if a rule change is coming, expect to find them on the head-end of the movement. The problem with county government hasn't really been how it's structured, or that the Legislature has limited its powers. There were times that's been to the advantage of normal citizens. The real problem has been the low quality of the pols we've elected to local public office. Abolishing elected officials and giving their appointed replacements even more power doesn't really seem like a very good idea. Of course, the new Charter doesn't have to contain the stuff of anti-democracy nightmares--it could expand the Board of Supervisors into a bunch of smaller districts and add new elected line officers. But considering the current heavy momentum in the other direction, the process has already been tainted.

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