Why Vicki Cox-Golder And Her Campaign Chairman Must Not Be Given Countywide Power. By Jim Nintzel DID REAL ESTATE broker Bill Arnold, who chairs the Vicki Cox-Golder campaign for the Board of Supervisors, conspire with Amphi School District officials to falsify district records? A letter from Arnold to the district discussing his role as the district's broker in land deals, dated July 27, 1993, was actually faxed from Arnold's employer, Genesis Real Estate and Development, on September 11, 1996--just one day after The Weekly inquired about the school district's decision to hire Arnold. In documents handed over to reporters, the letter was attached to a copy of Arnold's résumé, which was faxed to the district on September 18, 1996, and which includes Arnold's professional experience through this year. Arnold says the letter is a copy of his original 1993 request, which he faxed to the district at the request of Assistant Superintendent Katie Frey. "She was asking me to send her a copy of what I had--I just sent it straight out of my computer," Arnold says. "Apparently, they needed a copy of it. I don't know why. I've got to tell you that your efforts over there have created a minor blizzard of work for me over here, making copies and digging things up for them. I've complied with every request they've made of me to give them materials. That must be why--she either didn't have it or couldn't locate it." Questions about Arnold's work for the school district were first raised in a Weekly editorial a few days before the primary election ("Land Rush," Tucson Weekly, September 5), in which we exposed the sweetheart deal between Arnold and the Amphi School District, where Cox-Golder has served on the board since 1988. Given the amount of influence the Board of Supervisors has over property values in Pima County, we asked if it was wise to elect a team which had already demonstrated a penchant for inside dealing in the real estate business. Arnold responded indignantly the same day on John C. Scott's radio show. "The company that I work for is the exclusive agent for the Amphitheater School District and has been since late summer of 1993, long before Vicki ever dreamed of running for the Board of Supervisors," Arnold said, even though he actually began working for the district in 1992. "We've had an exclusive contract with them as their agent of record since that time and we have represented them in the acquisition of properties." When Scott asked Arnold if his company had bid on this exclusive contract, Arnold was emphatic. "Of course it was a bid," Arnold told Scott's listening audience. "We submitted a bid along with others. Other than our participation, I don't know who was involved, but there were other people involved. The school board made their selection as to who they were going to hire--that happened to be us. For anyone to assert that there's anything wrong with that is absolutely ridiculous. From what I understand, it absolutely complied with state law. Nothing underhanded, nothing under the table, it was all above-board, and apparently we had the most adequate bid to represent the district, and what's wrong with that?" We found out exactly what was wrong with that: It never happened, as Cox-Golder herself admitted when she appeared on Scott's show the next day. "The job was not bidded, as they tried to make this dirty thing in The Weekly out of the process," Cox-Golder announced on the air, even though it was Arnold--and not The Weekly--who had said the job had been open to bid. "Anything under $10,000...you don't have to bid," Cox-Golder continued. "It's procurement law you have to follow and it was a selection process. There were several brokers involved and we had used brokers subsequent to Bill's having been hired back in 1993, and we have found--the staff has found, not me--that they have not been as competent as Bill has been." That's news to Katie Frey, the Amphi official who hired Arnold. Frey says Arnold is the only broker she's worked with since 1992. Frey admits the district never advertised the position. As she recalls, someone--oddly, she still can't remember who--recommended Arnold for the job. Frey thinks there may have been two other applicants, although Amphi's sketchy records appear to show only one other broker approached the district. "In one case, I know the person called and approached us and with the other individual, I don't know...I'm sure that somebody had contact or they had contacted somebody and asked, 'Would we talk to them about it' type of thing," Frey vaguely explained, shortly before she was told she could no longer speak to the press without the permission of Amphi Superintendent Robert Smith, who has contributed at least $200 to the Cox-Golder campaign. Suzanne Joe Kai, the other broker to apply for the job, recalls she was never seriously considered for the position. "We didn't go through the process," remembers Kai, who is now living in Corona Del Mar, California. "We learned early on that they'd had good results with their previous contractor." Arnold considers this sort of insider dealing a level playing field. "I'm telling you flat-out, anything that's been done is on the up and up and anybody who wants to look into it, I invite them to do it," Arnold said during his radio appearance. "It's public record. Everything's available for anyone who wants to peek, so go peek. I invite everybody in Tucson to go peek. This was a straight-up, arm's-length, positive transaction over the last four years." Following Arnold's invitation, we tried to peek, only to be told Amphi had no records detailing the amount of Arnold's commission on the land deals. It was only after The Weekly threatened to sue the district that officials were able to locate purchase contracts for each of the transactions, which revealed that Arnold had made about $150,000 in commissions on approximately $4 million in property transactions. The district also paid Arnold $5,748 for consulting work. The district is still unable to locate any billing records or tax forms related to the consulting work. But even more revealing were the documents which district officials turned over after we requested any "bids" they had received. Amphi has two letters in its files. The first, dated June 17, 1993, is from Suzanne Kai, who hoped to land a job representing Amphi. Kai's package included several pages listing successful past projects. The second letter is from Bill Arnold. Dated July 27, 1993, it outlines ways in which the Amphi land deals can be structured. Arnold also includes a detailed résumé--so detailed, in fact, that it covers his activities straight through 1996. Arnold's letter bears a fax date showing it was sent from Genesis Real Estate and Development, Inc., at precisely 1:53 p.m. on Wednesday, September 11--one day after we asked Katie Frey about any records she had of the hiring process. The résumé was faxed one week later. We called Katie Frey to ask why Arnold's back-dated letter was faxed to the district and placed in a file, but her secretary informed us Frey was not allowed to speak with reporters without the permission of Amphi Superintendent Smith, who was out of town. Arnold maintains the letter is the same one which he originally sent to the district and which has mysteriously vanished from Amphi's files. The Weekly's original editorial expressed concern that Vicki Cox-Golder's campaign chairman had much too cozy an arrangement with the school district which Cox-Golder supervised. The subsequent reaction of the campaign and its supporters--muzzling district officials, stonewalling, falsifying records, publicly distorting the record and clumsily botching an apparent cover-up--only deepen our fears that Vicki Cox-Golder and Bill Arnold are the wrong people at the wrong time for a troubled Pima County.

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