BUSINESS BOMB: Sic fugit Janos, bye-bye Wild Johnny's Wagon. There's no longer room at the table for the downtown restaurant whose four-star Southwest cuisine put Tucson on the national culinary map. The Tucson Museum of Art board voted unanimously on Monday, October 6, to forge ahead with plans to make an art gallery out of the historic Stevens House where Janos has been located since 1983. Despite the neighborhood's heated opposition to the museum's plan and assorted compromise efforts by the city, the museum will require Janos to vacate the atmospheric adobe at the end of its lease in August 1998. "The museum's own use of the Stevens House will allow TMA to better protect the fragile structure of the house for future generations," TMA's director, Robert Yassin, and board president, Burt Lazar, wrote in a letter to Tucson Mayor George Miller. The Stevens House conversion is just one segment of a multi-part museum expansion plan for its historic block, a project that has largely been overshadowed by the controversy over Janos. Yassin said he hopes the announcement puts an end to the furor, but Lazar left open a puzzling possibility at a press conference announcing the decision: "We will keep our options open...rational business logic tells you never to shut the door." Oh, shut up, Burt. BENDING OVER FOR BUILDERS: Last Thursday, October 3, the increasingly pathetic Tucson Citizen, purportedly one of those "unbiased" bastions of nearly daily journalism, ran a front-page story headlined: "Builders Abandon Westside Project--Anti-growth concerns lead to scrapping of home and hotel plans near the Tucson Mountains." The story alleged developers had backed off building 600 homes, a golf course and a hotel near the Tucson Mountains because their investors were concerned "about the county's political climate." Citizen assistant business editor William Clemens (who must have a cake job, considering the size of that section) wrote that, "...investors presumably are concerned that Sharon Bronson, a neighborhood activist seen as anti-growth by the development community, may win a seat on the Pima County Board of Supervisors in November." Only in the eighth paragraph at the bottom of the page did Clements stop "presuming" and give us some facts: "The election, however, may not be the deciding factor in whether the project gets built. A key parcel of the development is on the market again." Translation: The deal fell through, but the Growth Lobby is using it as an excuse to claim it's all the fault of a Board of Supes candidate who hasn't even been elected yet. Incidentally, the developer in this case is the well-known Peter Herder, whose own lawyer once described him as a "leader in real estate development in Tucson." Of course, that was during a 1991 bankruptcy in which Herder was attempting to weasel out of millions in liabilities so that he could "get on with business and reorganize," according to that same lawyer, who was quoted at the time in The Arizona Daily Star in a story written by Ernie Heltsley, a real reporter. The Citizen is either too dumb to know they're being manipulated politically, or they're part of the attempt to manipulate the rest of us by printing this crap with a straight face. That's assuming you believe their proposition that another 600 houses and a golf course near the Tucson Mountains was a good idea in the first place, which we don't. And giving Bronson credit for killing this sucker by just being a candidate gives many of us another reason to vote for her. VOTEC BLUES: The role of Votec, the San Diego-based company contracted with Pima County to supply vote-counting software and procedures, has become highly controversial since the botches in the 1996 Pima County primary election. (See "Biting The Ballot," on this very page.) We have a fundamental question about all this: Why, with millions in hardware and about 600 computer geeks on the payroll, does the county has to contract with anybody for a relatively simple program that's nothing more than a big spreadsheet any bank employee could figure out in a few days? Just another policy decision that oughta be reconsidered. In the meantime, we had the fouled-up canvass where the vote totals didn't jive. Votec president John Medcalf is vociferous in placing the blame on County Elections Director Mitch Etter. Medcalf even claims Etter deliberately lied when he told county officials Medcalf would be in attendance at two different board meetings. Etter, who clearly screwed up the election, blames Votec for its inability to complete a final canvass that couldn't merge absentee votes with the election-day ballots. Problems began when County Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez decided to count the absentee ballots on the "bubble card" system and used another vendor, Global Systems of Albuquerque. Medcalf claims that despite repeated requests to Etter, Votec was never given enough data to merge the two vote files, and that Votec's contract calls for hand-proofing of the final canvass by Pima County. Clearly the latter wasn't accomplished, as Etter presented the supervisors with a canvass that hadn't been checked in even a cursory fashion. It took GOP supervisorial candidate Ann Holden to point out the discrepancies that eventually resulted in a partial recount. And the problem was further compounded by a series of muddy memos from Votec to Pima County that spell out little. Then Medcalf came to town, held a news conference and blamed the whole thing on the supervisors' dismissal of former Elections Director Larry Bahill. Medcalf claims that Global Systems, which obviously wants his election business here, was uncooperative. Hold on. Bahill, long known for his sour and abusive attitude when dealing with the public, is now working for Rodriguez and was clearly involved in the decision to hire Global Systems. And since Rodriquez hired Global, it would appear Medcalf's complaints about lack of cooperation should be aimed elsewhere. The whole thing is probably headed--where else?--to court, with the county going after Votec for alleged non-compliance on its contract and Votec threatening to sue Etter and others for libel. Meantime, County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry proposes employing the Global "bubble card" system for the entire election and dumping Votec. Rodriguez originally proposed this--at a cost of more than $2 million--but the supervisors rejected the idea as too costly. Rodriquez proposed placing a computerized ballot scanner in every precinct. Huckelberry figures you can count all the votes centrally, as now, with a few scanners in outlying areas like Oro Valley, Ajo and Green Valley, for a net cost of under $300,000--and still get the count accomplished by midnight. We'd like to remind all the players that the biggest issue is a not media deadlines but a system that safeguards secrecy, is easy to use and ensures an accurate count. Most important of all--given county bureaucrats' sorry performance in this area--we'd like to see a system that guarantees that everybody's vote counts. Is that too much to ask?

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