Other transcripts

Transcripts

April 30, 2004

Host: Michael Grant
Topics:
· The Journalists Roundtable
In-Studio Guests:
· Howard Fischer, "Capitol Media Services;"
· Le Templar, "East Valley Tribune;"
· Kathleen Ingley, "Arizona Republic."

>> Michael Grant:
It's Friday, April 30, 2004. In the headlines this week, a hearing was held today in U.S. District Court on redistricting, while Secretary of State Jan Brewer says she'll go to court to use the current maps this year. The State Senate has come up with a tentative budget agreement that would provide some funding for all day kindergarten. And a meeting was held this week on the future direction of downtown Phoenix. Good evening, I'm Michael Grant and this is the Journalists' round thing. Joining me to talk about these and other stories are Howard Fischer of "Capitol Media Services"; Le Templar of the "East Valley Tribune"; and Kathleen Ingley of the "Arizona Republic." There were some new developments this week regarding redistricting. Late this afternoon in U.S. District Court, a hearing was held. Howie, you were there. What happened?

>>Howard Fischer:
Essentially, it was a lot of posturing. What happened is that the Hispanic coalition, which won the redistricting fight in superior court, threw out the old lines, got the Independent Redistricting Commission to draw a new line. Now they want the federal court to intervene and speedily approve those new lines. Because Arizona is a Voting Rights Act state because of discrimination going back '50s and '60s, it has to be approved by the Department of Justice, which moves at the speed of the Department of Justice, or perhaps the federal court. That's what they are pushing for now. So they tried to lay the groundwork for that. Of course, the Independent Redistricting Commission says that the federal court doesn't have any jurisdiction, and meanwhile, down the block back in superior court, you've got Jan Brewer, who was going to file a motion on Monday, to use the old lines, and the Redistricting Commission wants to use the old lines, so it throws the whole thing into disarray.

>> Michael Grant:
Judge Fields who heard the case is obviously not going to go along with the request to use the 2002 maps. So is that the quick gateway to get up to the Court of Appeals to say hey, we've got a problem? We know the 2002 maps are okay by the Justice Department, so let's lock those in for one more election cycle and worry about this other stuff next time?

>>Howard Fischer:
Exactly. From Jan Brewer's perspective, she says the County Recorder told her May 15th is a drop dead date. It's not only a question of adjusting the legislative district lines, but within there, there are all of the precincts, and those have to be brought into conformance. Until you adjust the precinct lines so people know where they will be voting, you cannot prepare the absentee ballots. 3 Given the number of Arizonans who are overseas now in the military, they want to get those absentee ballots ready for the September primary next earlier. They are complicated. From the perspective of the Independent Redistricting Commission, it's closer to what you say. We know that the Justice Department liked 2002 lines. There is a problem here. Judge Fields said the 2002 lines are in fact unconstitutional because the Commission did not comply with the requirement to create as many competitive districts as possible.

>> Michael Grant:
Under Arizona's constitution.

>>Le Templar:
That's not a federal concern whether or not the districts are competitive. They just want to be sure everybody has equal voting rights.

>> Michael Grant:
Le, lest we think this actually is a dispute about maps, it's not. It's a dispute about maybe three more districts, legislatively --

>>Le Templar:
Right.

>> Michael Grant:
-- That are competitive.

>>Le Templar:
Under the new maps that are created, it appears they created seven competitive districts where currently there are only four. That would swing at least control of the State Senate if all three of the new districts were to go Democrat or moderate Republican. And the Republicans hold a pretty weak control of the Senate now, and to it could make it worse if the new maps are used and they truly are 4 competitive.

>> Michael Grant:
You know what could be fun, Howie if there was only a two-sheet shift and it would be 15-15 deadlock. We haven't done that for 20 minutes.

>>Howard Fischer:
A year or two. I love coalition government, because I love to see who attracts whom from each side. I mean, last time, obviously, the Democrats convinced Gnant, a moderate Republican from Scottsdale to join with them and form a government. The only reason that happened is because Herb Guenther, a conservative Democrat, joined with the Republicans. Same thing will happen. I love it when everybody tries to line up. It's like you've got to figure out who brung you to the dance.

>> Michael Grant:
Probable developments in both federal and state court next week?

>>Howard Fischer: Next week. The first thing that's going to happen is Judge Silver will decide if she wants to take jurisdiction of the case, and then that puts the question of is she going to rule on the legality of the new districts. At the same time, I think Judge Fields will reject Jan Brewer's application and the independent redistricting application. They will run off to the Court of Appeals and try to get them to declare that the election needs to be run under the largely Republican controlled map.

>> Michael Grant:
Kathleen, we will be voting for president, and we did a poll showing it's a virtual dead heat between George Bush and John Kerry.

>>Kathleen Ingley:
41% for Bush and 38% for Kerry. There are a couple of interesting twists on this. One is that 3% were interested in voting for Ralph Nader. Now, Nader has said, don't worry, this year, I'm not going to be the spoiler. If you do a little math, hmm, 38% for Kerry, if you added those 3%, assuming that they would go to Kerry, you end up with a 41-41 split. Other interesting thing is that two-thirds of Kerry's support comes from people who say, it's not that I want Kerry, I just want to vote against Bush. As a matter of fact, my very own mother-in-law says that. It's not that she's attracted to the Democratic candidate, she wants to vote against Bush. Whereas Bush has many supporters who want to vote for the president. So it's kind of a tough battle. One other interesting point is the margin there, always interesting. 4.8%. So it's big. It could represent a big swing, and what I like is if you apply that to Nader, it's a negative number.

>>Michael Grant:
He may be under water.

>>Howard Fischer:
Part of what's interesting: you are right talking about Kerry. There is a feeling it's an anti, you know, Bush vote, but see, that's what's going to make current events so important. Because as the war drags on, if more dead come back, if there is no progress, if we are still bogged down in Fallujah, that then becomes the anti-Bush vote that Kerry needs. If the economy doesn't bounce back, and if we have this jobless recovery that everyone keeps talking about, again, it's like the saying like a decade ago, "It's the jobs, stupid." That's what it comes down to.

>> Michael Grant:
Also speaking of the November ballot, Protect Arizona Now, is trying to get on that ballot. They got a funds boost this week, Le?

>>Le Templar:
They needed it. They've been disorganized trying to do this campaign by volunteers. They have not done a good job collecting signatures, from everything we hear. So a group called Coalition of Americans for Immigration Reform basically wants to cut down immigration to this country at least in the immediate future, gave them $100,000 to hire paid circulators to collect enough signatures. They need 122,000 by July 1st. Estimates range that they have 25,000 to 50,000 signatures now. It's going to be tough for them, even with this infusion of funds, to get on the ballot. I think they just got started too late, weren't organized well enough, despite what appeared to be enough support out there to at least consider the issue in November.

>>Michael Grant:
If they only get 25 to 50 right now -- because you don't need 120,000, you night more like 150,000 to --

>>Le Templar:
150,000.

>>Le Templar:
That's a pretty large hill to climb in not very much time.

>>>Michael Grant:
Some progress made this week in the ongoing effort to reach a budget for the new fiscal year. The State Senate has come up with a proposed spending plan. Le, we don't know the highlights, but we do know your guesses.

>>Le Templar:
Yeah, Senate leaders think they reached a deal last night after business hours, and they are staying pretty mum about it until they can present it to the full Senate on Monday. Based on what I do know, I think it will be the student enrollment growth funding for university, it doesn't seem like the budget can get out of the Senate without that. Both sides did say that there will be some form of all-day kindergarten, but the plan is to introduce separate bills on that, form from the rest of the budget package so those can be voted on independently and people aren't voting for or against the budget because all-day kindergarten is in that same bill. I suspect there will be some money for employee pay raises but probably not Governor Napolitano's plan which would have cost around $50 million, $1,000 for people up to $50,000 and 2% above that.

>> Michael Grant:
Would it be safe for us to predict a couple of alternate bills on all-day K, one being Senate President Ken Bennett's $5 million plan, the other one being something that looks more closely akin to the Governor's proposal?

>>Le Templar:
I think they will move in those two directions. One issue may be that the Governor's plan may be on the table, but without the 5-year phase-in she wants, it may be -- the vote would be to fund the first year of it, $25 million for the poorest schools, but no guarantee you would continue on for the second year, the argument being well, well, the legislature should decide that next year anyway as part of the budget.

>>Howard Fischer:
There is a lot of feeling among some senators that the Bennett plan makes sense because it provides kindergarten to more kids. The reason is, it's a backfill plan. Essentially, what happens, if your school is providing full-day kindergarten either because you've done it with local funds or because you've got tuition, we will instead use that money to fill in the schools that don't have --

>> Michael Grant:
That doesn't have it.

>>Howard Fischer:
And you can do more the first year than the Governor's plan can do, and I think even among the moderate Republicans, that's very sellable. I mean --

>> Michael Grant:
In the first year, if I recall correctly, it's about $20 million cheaper.

>>Howard Fischer:
Exactly. That's the big issue. Le was talking about the university. There are a lot of lawmakers who are looking -- they say, look, we're not going to get full-day kindergarten the way the Governor wants it and university funding. Now, which could do we want. I think this year the belief is, rather than starting a whole new program for full-day kindergarten, they'll have the universities catch up.

>>Kathleen Ingley:
One of the battles that they have is those schools, especially the schools in the poorer areas that have been pushed and pulled and strained and somehow managed to get their act together, they are saying wait a minute, we did it, and we're being punished. We're left holding the bag, paying it all, and those people who didn't get their act together are getting the money. That's another -- I agree with Howie. It is, in terms of economics, it's a powerful sell to go in with $45 million.

>>Le Templar:
The constitutional question is out there because of that. I mean, at some point you are going to be sued no matter what they do, but I think lawmakers better be very confident they can win that lawsuit before they move that forward, because it's a pretty obvious question to everybody.

>> Michael Grant:
Those people are at the gaming tables and the slot machines are helping us out, Howie.

>>Howard Fischer:
Well, they are helping us out but not as much as everyone thought. When voters adopted prop 202 a couple of years ago, which was the idea of the Indian gaming compacts for another decade and beyond, the trade-off was we would allow the tribes more gaming machines, blackjack, allow transfer machines from some tribes that don't want them so everybody shares in the revenue. The idea was we'll pick up $90 million in state revenues. Well, for the first full year of collections, the state itself got $37 million and the cities and counties got another $5 million on top of that. Part of the problem is the tribes have not been putting the machines up as fast as everyone thought.

>> Michael Grant:
It's been a slow ramp-up process. It was particularly slow on many of them going to blackjack, I think as well.

>>Howard Fischer:
That was a big surprise, I think. I think everyone thought the moment you said you can have 13,000 machines, everyone would buy every machine possible. Well, they didn't, and so the revenues are coming in a lot slower. Now, the Gaming Department still believes that eventually we will reach the $90 million. I asked her when, she said talk to me well, talk to me in September and I'll dig out my crystal ball.

>>Le Templar:
The Navajos have still not approved a gaming measure even to allow transfer of their slot machines to other tribes?

>>Howard Fischer:
That becomes -- the Navajos are the 800-pound gorilla among tribes, but there are other tribes that also do, including some here in the Valley. To the extent that their allocation goes out, it would help. But it's not even that. It's a question of whether some of the tribes even are interested in buying some of them at a price that they would think would be economically viable. 11

>>Kathleen Ingley:
Well, all of this is running into what we all could foresee would eventually happen. The gaming market gets saturated. There is just so much money out there to be bet, and there is so many venues now, you visit any other state and you can gamble as well.

>>Howard Fischer:
That raises interesting questions for down the road. We know that while there is a poison pill as far as the state doing gaming, whether they are going to open doors for different things in terms of certain kinds of additional betting, for example, off-track betting casinos for horse races, which we have some allowing certain kind of things to be done at racetracks. Because the state is becoming hooked on this money.

>> Michael Grant:
The debate continues, Kathleen, over the sex offender clustering bills that would have you fine an apartment complex if it had too many sex offenders living in it. Senator Blendu locking the legislation?

>>Kathleen Ingley:
Right, he has kept it bottled up in the Rules Committee to the great distress of Representative Deb Gullett. This would limit the number of sex offenders to 10% and the landlord would face a $10,000 fine. Obviously, the problem is neighbors say, you know, there is an apartment complex over here, and I don't want to see it half full of sex offenders. Blendu's argument, which I think to me is very persuasive is that you are facing constitutional problems here, some discrimination problems. These are people who have financed their sentence. They may still be on probation. They are registered for life, but can you legally tell a landlord, don't rent to somebody?

>> Michael Grant:
And actually, that is a function of the Rules Committee. It's rare to see the Rules Committee act that way, but --

>>Howard Fischer:
Well, it would have to be mentioned that Bob Blendu is not taking this to the full Rules Committee. This is Bob Blendu, I'm the alpha and Omega --

>> Michael Grant:
The chair has its privileges.

>>Howard Fischer:
It is interesting because Deb Gullett knows that she cannot tell registered sex offenders where to live. She's drug out the slumlord law. This is a law aimed at people who have apartment complex with no running water, with exposed electrical wire, with raw sewage in the yard and said and those laws say you can fine the slumlords and the city can take over the property and, say, oh, by the way, if you rent to more than three sex offenders or 10% of the total property for larger properties, you are a slumlord. That's stretching the law a little bit, to somehow suggest that if you are renting to people and there is no evidence of a public health problems, can the legislature declare that the problem is there?

>> Michael Grant:
So what do you think? Will it continue to be bottled up in Senate Rules?

>>Howard Fischer:
If Deb Gullett wanted, she could get the votes for a discharge petition, but I'm not sure they want to push it on this one.

>> Michael Grant:
The House now has cleared the guns and bars bill?

>>Le Templar:
It says if you are packing heat, you go into a restaurant or bar, you promise not to drink, the law will be changed so that guns are no longer banned from place that have liquor licenses. The House stopped up the old version that said -- that lifted the ban that lets restaurants post a sign that says we don't want you. The compromise wasn't a surprise. So the issue in the Senate was more moderate, a lot more concern about the idea of mixing guns and alcohol, and the fact that we may not be able to trust people to avoid drinking with the weapon and what they are going to do if think they get upset.

>> Michael Grant:
What you are saying is you think the Senate will shoot this full of holes?

>>Le Templar:
I suspect that's the case, yes.

>> Michael Grant:
Oh, okay.

>>Howard Fischer:
It comes at the same time we keep the bars open an hour later. I can't think of a better drinking game than something involving weapons.

>> Michael Grant:
The full legislature, just everybody, passed the anti-bigamy legislation and it's going to --

>>Howard Fischer:
This is going to the Governor, and the Governor has basically said she doesn't see a problem with it. I think she wants to examine it. 14 This is designed to plug a hole in the law. We have a law that says you cannot have more than one spouse. But it defines a spouse as somebody who got a state marriage license for, which means that if you are a member of the fundamentalist church of Latter Day Saints, the male members take one legal spouse and the everyone else is just sealed in the church. There is no State record on it. The real problem lawmakers have is when juvenile girls are involved. They have redefined marriage for the purposes of just this section to say it includes being legally married or living in a marriage-like situation, i.e., cohabitation, living as if you are man and wife. The real interesting thing is it not only goes after the man, but also could allow felonious prosecution of the church leader who marries them and the parents who expedite the marriage. The attorney general believes that he can get more prosecution under this that he couldn't get under the old child abuse law.

>> Michael Grant:
Le, a follow-up on a story you broke a couple of weeks ago. Connie Thompson resigning from the Nursing Board this week?

>>Le Templar:
Right. Remember, this is the obscure board that regulates nursing home and managers and assisted living center managers. It has a lot of problems in its operation. This one board member, Connie Thompson of Tempe, had been complaining since she got on the board about its operation, but other board members were unhappy with her tactics when she would go outside of the agency to complain to anybody she could find, and I had asked her to resign. Once the story ran and the Governor vetoed the bill that would have extended the agency for another 10 years, Connie decided that she had accomplished whatever she could and finally gave into the other board members wishes and stepped down.

>> Michael Grant:
Are they going to bring back a bill that would extend the life of that agency or not?

>>Le Templar:
Carolyn Allen will try that for one year with an audit. There will be a battle from the House side. Connie Thompson's husband, Mark Thompson, a representative, wants to shut her down and assign its duties to the Department of Health.

>> Michael Grant:
We've got proposed changes in teen driver's licenses rules?

>>Howard Fischer:
We've got small ones. The AAA had come early in the session and said teen drivers need not just more training, but they shouldn't be on the road late at night, unless there is a reason, and they said there shouldn't be more than one other teen in the car. They had interesting statistics showing a teen with another teen in the car is 40% more likely to get into accidents. If you put a second teen passenger in the car it's 107% increase and a third teen sends it off the charts. Lawmakers don't want those kind of restrictions so instead they said, tell you what, we'll require 50 hours of driver training, could be done by your parents rather than 25, and 10 hours of nighttime training rather than 5.

>> Michael Grant:
On Tuesday night, several hundred citizens drove and gathered at the Phoenix Civic Plaza to hear plans about the future of downtown. Kathleen, you were there. What are some of the changes on the drawing board?

>>Kathleen Ingley:
I don't know. Next time I'll be taking the train.

>> Michael Grant:
The trolly.

>>Kathleen Ingley:
The trolly. There was a discussion of what might happen when ASU moves a bunch of colleges downtown, including conveniently enough, at some point, this studio, and 15,000 students would be -- are envisioned to be living in the area. Meanwhile you have another group, Phoenix Futures that has been plotting out how can we make downtown more livable and develop it. The city has been trying to get everyone to work together, let's all come up with one idea. And basically, they floated ideas, talked about sort of where they are headed. It wasn't a concrete plan, but it was full of elements that were very interesting, how you can redo a city.

>> Michael Grant: Now, Kathleen, we've been trying to do this for a long time, and I don't mean to minimize it. Obviously, there have been some significant changes down there, but it just hasn't taken on the sort of flavor, particularly residential housing and those kinds of things that you've been trying to get through any number of plans. Any reason to think that this one is more successful than not?

>>Kathleen Ingley:
That level of activity, lots of people make more people want to live downtown. And that's where ASU steps in. ASU has significant plans to expand downtown, and of course, students means you have people going between buildings. They show, if you took like say NYU and plopped it down in downtown Phoenix what would it look like, and you have an idea of how you have the college woven in among city buildings. They talk about reusing historic buildings, so they would have their distinctive flavor?

>>Howard fischer:
We'll have a Washington square downtown, a place you can buy dope?

>>Kathleen Ingley:
No, Washington square, they cleaned it up. They showed us the cleaned up version. The did have shade, shade, shade. They did recognize that for downtown, you have to get out of the sun, and they showed very imaginative ways to add shade, add stuff to buildings and even have very futuristic, very Disneyesque -- sort of lollipops that would -- except horizontal -- that would shade you and be solar panels.

>> Michael Grant:
And you could also lick them?

>>Kathleen Ingley:
There you are, yes, delicious. Vanilla.

>> Michael Grant:
As long as we are on the subject, the term "higher 18 education" is taking on a whole new meaning. Some big fee increases by the regents and at the same time community college board okaying tuition hikes there plus bonds. Just a whole lot of money.

>>Kathleen Ingley:
We have recognized for years that -- or many of us, there are some legislatures who disagree, that college education has been underfunded. We don't have money for the buildings, we don't have the money to keep up with salaries, and they are trying to do a lot of catch-up. This week we heard graduate students getting huge fee increases compared with the past. The biggy was architecture, to $2250, and some of that money would go for undergraduates. So they are looking to bolster other programs. Community colleges, they are looking at tuition increase, $4 per hour. $950 million in money for capital expenses.

>> Michael Grant:
Almost a billion dollar bond, and they are worried that this total package may sink.

>>Kathleen Ingley:
Right. Well, it is interesting that they are just shy of a billion. I think there must be something psychological about that.

>>Howard Fischer:
There is an interesting aspect on this tuition hike and fee hike at the universities. On the one hand they are saying, we're going to go after the kids in the programs where they are going to make a lot of money afterwards. And we figure particularly the graduate programs, it makes sense. You'll get rich from our education; take a little bit more of a loan fund education. But there is one interesting one in there that I think is going to turn around and hurt them. They want to increase the fee for nursing program. This is a state that (A), has a nursing shortage, and (B), it comes even as the community college is sitting before the legislature saying, let us offer four-year nursing degrees because we can can do it cheaper. And then the university says we want to do it, but then they turn around and increase the charges. I think it's politically idiotic.

>> Michael Grant
Le, Governor Napolitano cutting lose of money for the West Nile virus?

>>Le Templar:
She freed $100,000 from the health crisis fund to bolster the rural counties for mosquito control. The Department of Health Services is predicting a spike on cases based on the evolution of West Nile in other states once it arrives. And they are trying to minimize it as best they can. They are also doing what they call the fight the bite campaign, public awareness television and radio ads to remind people that you should wear insect repellant, get all the standing water out of your backyard so you are not breeding mosquitos.

>> Michael Grant:
Some indication it could be a bad year.

>>Le Templar:
Yeah, 3,000 cases, they think.

>>Howard Fischer:
The reason is, the virus has an arc. The first year it hits, and as the birds start carrying it, the second year is bad. In Colorado, the second year they had 61 deaths.

>> Michael Grant:
All right, panelists, we're out of time. Thank you very much. If you would like to see a transcript of tonight's program -- we don't know why -- please visit our web site at www.kaet.asu.edu, click on the word "Horizon." That will lead you to transcripts, links and information on upcoming shows.

>>Larry Lemmons:
The press cooperated with the government during the Lewis prison hostage ordeal, but now the press is questioning that decision. Charles Goyette says KFYI didn't renew his contract because he spoke his mind. And a new survey says the press isn't covering the state legislature as it should. Monday night at 7:00 on channel 8's "Horizon."

>> Michael Grant:
Tuesday, a State lawmakers will talk about research she says shows all-day kindergarten does not produce lasting results.

>>>Michael Grant:
Thank you very much for being here on a Friday evening. I'm Michael Grant. Have a great weekend. Good night.

 

Back to the top