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Jennifer Eckstrom Leaves South Tucson Better Than She Found It

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Eighteen years is a long time to serve in public office. In Jennifer Eckstrom’s case it is about half of her life. This comes to an end, at least for the time being, this week, as the feisty South Tucson Mayor announced her resignation late last week.

Rumors abound as to why she submitted the letter. Such speculation naturally follows such things, particularly since it comes about two weeks after her allies on the Council were defeated in the Square-Mile City’s Democratic Primary. The truth is that her reasons are personal. She is getting married and is planning to move to the far west side to join her new husband. Besides, after nearly two decades, she deserves a rest.

Last week we saw an example of her consistent willingness to speak out on what she thinks is important to her community when she led a press conference on behalf of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. While local media featured Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild, the truth was that he joined the event only after it was organized by Mayor Eckstrom, which was why it was held at the South Tucson City Hall. It may seem a minor, strictly symbolic thing to be sure, but it shows that she took initiative on this issue while others did not.

This was not the only issue on which she was outspoken. In a jurisdiction that could ill afford mere posturing about issues of poverty, she was not only sincere in her concern about economic justice, but she showed a willingness to do the work it took to accomplish something of real substance. She was active in the fight against payday lending, and her initiatives against slumlords are finally starting to bear fruit.

The Mayor and her allies had their detractors, and some of their grievances had merit. However, their complaints have always seemed to have more to do with personalities than policy, and the few policy solutions they have promoted on the council have been unrealistic. A few years back, for example, her opponents proposed pursuing a Wal-Mart as a panacea against all of South Tucson’s problems. This was a bad idea for many reasons, not the least of which was the retail giant’s noxious labor policies. Also, it would have been a problem for existing businesses, potentially leaving blighted, empty storefronts after substantial public investment in redevelopment.

More than anything, however, there was never any evidence that Wal-Mart was ever interested in South Tucson. This makes one wonder if the notion was ever sincere in the first place, or if it was just pushed for the sake of being contrary. At best, no one promoting this harebrained scheme seems to have taken the time to think it through.

So the critical question here is what is it that this new slate of councilmen intends to do? They seem to have no agenda other than opposition to the existing order. For instance, they have promised a housecleaning of staff (City Manager Enrique Serna has already announced his resignation), but it is difficult to see how they will easily find competent people to take these positions under these circumstances, particularly when the elected leadership seems to be capricious. This speaks to a certain naivete regarding the realities of governing.

Their rhetoric and attitude do not bode well in other ways. South Tucson’s successes as a community have largely depended on partnerships. The city actively participates in the Regional Transportation Authority to an extent they did not under the previous Mayor. Most of their initiatives as far as public health and economic development have been due to Mayor Eckstrom’s ability to effectively work with outside entities such as the University of Arizona and Pima County. The new slate has already made noise about taking on Supervisor Valadez. It is difficult to understand why anyone thinks such needless belligerence is going to be at all helpful or productive for a city that needs as many friends as it can find.

This being said, Mayor Eckstrom has much to be proud of. Business and even light industry are moving into South Tucson. Crime remains a problem, but it is generally in decline. Though things are far from perfect, South Tucson is improving by most measures. It is hoped that the new council will realize how much progress has been made and not, out of some sense of supreme crankiness, reverse the good work that has been done.

Meanwhile, I doubt that we have seen the last of Jennifer Eckstrom.

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After 42 Years, Pima County Attorney Still Won’t Admit a Mistake

Sunday, March 31, 2013

One would be hard pressed to meet an old-timer in Tucson who believes that Louis Taylor was guilty of setting the 1970 Pioneer Hotel Fire. One friend of mine who was raised in Barrio Viejo and knew Taylor growing up described him as a guy who would stick up for neighborhood kids who were getting bullied. He was hardly a model citizen, however. My friend, who later shared a cell with him at Florence, also told me about how he and Taylor used to shoplift from Woolworth’s and steal sneakers from another Downtown store.  Likewise, Taylor was hanging out at the Hotel that night in the hope of sneaking away with some dessert or liquor from a Christmas party. None of this, of course, speaks to a pathology which would lead one to set a fire that killed twenty nine people.

Tucson was a different place back then. Though the legendary Tom Price was leading a small band of reformers in the bureaucracy who were out to modernize city government, an old boy network was still in control and hostile to change. This was a city where building codes were often ignored and the fire department was ill-equipped to handle a blaze in an 11-story building. The same local leadership also wanted to find someone to blame for what happened,  and a black kid from Connie Chambers, even one who helped rescue people that night, was a convenient scapegoat.

The Old Pueblo has largely changed for the better since then. Unfortunately, some things remain the same.

Today, comes the news that Taylor is to be set free after forty two years in prison. Doubts have been expressed by people involved in this case from the very beginning, but it took over ten years of work by the Arizona Justice Project, Barry Scheck, and former State Supreme Court Chief Justice Stanley Feldman to get this result, largely because of the lack of cooperation and occasional stonewalling by the prosecutors. One wonders, at this point, why they would even bother.

This story provides a window into the special pathology of the insular decades-old political machine which is called the Pima County Attorney’s office. The insistence, for example, that “victims” be consulted on any deal in a case that dates to the Nixon Administration is not only absurd, but speaks to the same disturbing attitude that got Taylor arrested in the first place, namely that something bad happened, so someone, anyone, has to pay for it. Barbara LaWall’s own embarrassing performance on 60 Minutes, wherein she seemed unclear on the concept of reasonable doubt, she was unwilling to admit that her office or her predecessors might have gotten something horribly wrong, even in the face of questions about whether the fire was an arson at all.

There may be a good reason for this. It could be argued that they are simply looking out for the Pima County taxpayer in case Taylor decides to sue for the fact that we basically ruined his whole life. If this were true, then it would have been best to simply say nothing rather than sticking to a story which was discredited years ago. This is an office which has always been far more concerned about winning than justice. LaWall’s attitude in this case makes one wonder how many other Louis Taylors are stewing in prison because of her inability to admit that sometimes the wrong guy gets accused.

This community owes Taylor an apology, at the very least, and that includes LaWall along with the rest of us.

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It Is Well Past The Time To Stop Taking Shaun McClusky Seriously

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Contrary to what the Arizona Daily Star says, Shaun McClusky is not an “ex-mayoral hopeful.” Back in 2011, the failed former Ward 5 City Council candidate made some noise about running for Mayor on the Republican ticket, but failed to get enough signatures to get on the ballot. In other words, he was never actually a candidate.

This points to the central problem with McClusky and the Tea-party vibe that he represents. Just as Sara Palin argued that a gig as a talking head on cable teevee was somehow more noble and useful than being a Governor, McClusky’s inflated reputation as a community leader has more to do with his willingness to say outrageous things rather than anything he has actually accomplished. To folks like McClusky, having strong opinions and a big mouth are considered more important than having a real constituency, so it goes to follow that grand gestures and stunts are far more important than the grunt work of governing.

The latest stunt, which has gotten some national attention, is his plan proposal ill conceived notion of handing out shotguns to folks in “high crime” neighborhoods, by which he means Midvale Park and Pueblo Gardens. Of course, he never consulted the neighborhoods in question. He knows better than they do about what they want and need. After all, they only deal with these problems every day, while McClusky has an ideology.

The one redeeming thing about the Star’s coverage of this story is that they include comments from Joseph Miller, the president of the Midvale Park Neighborhood Association. Naturally, Miller is offended by McClusky’s proposal (as is the leadership in Pueblo Gardens). I have worked with Miller in the past and know him to be a sincere and dedicated man who has devoted a lot of sweat to the improvement of his neighborhood. In other words, he is everything that a shallow blowhard like McClusky is not.

It is unfortunate that the Star chooses to be so cynical and clueless about this town that folks like Miller who do good work in this community cannot get front page ink except in the context of a meaningless stunt from a preening exhibitionist like McClusky.

 

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Dr. Henry “Hank” Oyama, 1926-2013

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Dr. Henry “Hank” Oyama passed away on Tuesday.

The last time I saw Hank Oyama was about 2 years ago. I ran into him at an event Downtown and he asked me to walk him back to his car. It quickly became obvious that he really needed no particular help, but that he just wanted some company while he wandered around the heart of the city he loved to share some stories, and he was certainly someone who had more than a few stories to tell.

Hank was born and raised in Barrio El Hoyo. Though his parents were immigrants from Japan (via Mexico), Hank was Catholic and spoke plenty of Spanish growing up. He sometimes joked that he thought he was Mexican until the day in 1942 that he was sent, with his family, to a desolate internment camp for Japanese-Americans on the Colorado River.

Though such an injustice would be enough to sour most folks on the American experiment, it seems to have had an opposite effect on Hank. His great faith in his country drove him to work to make things better. He joined the Army toward the end of World War II, where he was assigned to the intelligence corps for his language skills, though, he joked that he thought at the time that this was due to some sort of misunderstanding as his Spanish was better than his Japanese. Eventually, he became an officer as the Army Air Corps was spun off into a military branch of its own. He remained in the Air Force Reserve until his retirement as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1985.

Having returned to Tucson to earn a degree at the University of Arizona, he became a teacher at Pueblo High School, where his students included numerous Tucson luminaries such as Art Eckstrom, former State Representative Phil Hubbard, and my mother. My mother tells me that at Pueblo, Hank told the largely Mexican-American student body that the language and culture that they learned at home was just as important and valuable as what they were learning in school. To a woman whose mouth had once been washed out with soap as punishment for the high crime of speaking Spanish on the playground, this sentiment was heartening.

(An ironic note here: The Tucson Unified School District named a school for Oyama in 2003. There is also a TUSD school named for the aforementioned teacher who punished my mother. Tucson is a complicated place.)

It was in this spirit that Hank worked with fellow Pueblo teachers Adalberto Guerrero and María Urquides to create what became one of the first bilingual education programs in the United States. Their revolutionary work became a national model, gave rise to an entire generation of Mexican-American leadership, and turned the public schools away from the idea that culture should be embraced and integrated rather than actively suppressed.

It was at about the same time that Hank got involved in another fight of national importance, though it seems now like it should have been a minor thing. In 1959, he tried to marry his college sweetheart, Mary Ann Jordan. It turned out that it was illegal in Arizona for a Japanese man to marry an Anglo woman, so they sued. They won in Pima County Superior Court, but the state was eager to appeal. The legislature, however, being a saner institution than it is now, was not eager for what promised to be a drawn-out battle that would likely lead to the law being declared invalid at the United States Supreme Court, repealed the statute. Had the legislature not been so ambivalent in this regard, Loving v. Virginia would have instead been Oyama v. Arizona and might have happened a few years earlier.

In 1970, Hank became an administrator at the infant Pima College, where he spent the remainder of his career. By the time he retired it was one of the largest and most well-regarded community colleges in the country.

Though Hank slowed down considerably over the last few years, he remained active and visible with regard to the causes he cared about, such as when he spoke out against the very misguided new admissions policy at Pima Community College. He always remained a humble, very principled man who was always available to dispense wisdom, encouragement, or a joke. In my own career in politics, I was always thankful for his support during difficult times (we shared a taste in guayabera shirts), and I know that I am not alone in this sentiment. He was a hero and example to me and many others.

Hank lived to see much of his work, perhaps too much, reversed in recent years. This did not seem to faze him, though it was clearly a disappointment. There are generations of Tucson leaders who are where they are because of the work he did, and this was his real legacy. I think he was quite happy with that, and that is why he always seemed to be smiling.

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Corporate Owners Once Again Show Cluelessness Regarding Local Needs

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

A college friend named Derek Kompare, who is now a well-published media critic and academic, once told me a story about visiting the Circle K at the ground floor of what was then its corporate headquarters in Phoenix. He was hoping that there would be some special Circle K souvenirs there, perhaps a T-shirt or something, but, in his words “they didn’t even have a key chain.” The clerk there was no help in this regard, because, to Derek’s surprise, he had no idea that the corporate headquarters were directly above him.

Nearly a quarter of a century later, such ignorance of one’s surroundings remains a problem for Circle K. The phenomenon is not restricted to its notoriously badly paid and ill-treated clerks, but seems to extend across the corporate culture to include upper-level management.

As witness: Circle K’s recent decision to stop carrying the Tucson Weekly and replacing it with something called Az Weekly in  exchange for some undisclosed sum from the publisher. Despite the all-encompassing name, and a boast of being “Arizona’s Best Entertainment Resource” the new publication has no Tucson content, its focus apparently being puff pieces about upscale bars and restaurants in Scottsdale. Apparently, the people behind this rag are of the school that holds that “The Valley,” “Maricopa County” and “Arizona” are synonymous.

Given the fact that this magazine is utterly worthless to folks in Tucson, it is difficult to see how the Old Pueblo is well-served by this decision. Circle K clearly has the right to do what it wants in this regard, but we all know that corporations like to brag about how much good they do for the community, particularly when they want something from local government. One hopes that our local elected officials remember this when Circle K inevitably comes to them when they need some kind of variance or other special favor from the City or County in their ongoing war with Quik Trip.

This stands in sharp contrast to today’s good news from the Legislature, namely, that Representative Andrea Dalessandro’s (D-Green Valley) memorial to Congress in support of the Cherrybell Mail Processing Center, is moving forward with bipartisan support. Circle K should be embarrassed that the Arizona Legislature is being less small-minded and provincial than they are.

There is an online petition to Circle K in support of the Tucson Weekly. Heck, it’s worth a try.

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Quick Take

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

The more complicated one makes the “path to citizenship,” the more likely that immigrants will say “screw it” (or “lo chinga!” as the case may be) and overstay their visas or otherwise remain here illegally, because doing so will remain easier than pursuing legal status. Tough talk about “the rule of law” sounds good on the stump, but from a practical standpoint, it may be counterproductive.

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Does Ben Affleck Deserve an Oscar for Pretending that He Wasn’t Playing a Mexican?

Sunday, February 24, 2013

I want to apologize for not having posted here in too long. There is actually a good reason for this, which is, oddly enough, related to the topic of this post.

Folks who know me are aware that for many years I have been researching the Native California Cavalry, a largely unsung band of Mexican-American soldiers during the Civil War. Last week, I heard from the University of Oklahoma Press that they want my manuscript, so I have been spending the greater part of my free time making what I have written suitable for submission. This is largely done, so I promise to be more diligent in the future.

By the time folks read this, Ben Affleck’s Argo might have won one or more Oscars. It deserves all the praise it has been getting, but it also deserves all the criticism, the most prominent of which has come from two quarters. First, the Canadians who took significant risks to help the American fugitives believe that the film portrays their role in the affair as passive at best. The other stinklet which has been making the rounds for the last few months is the criticism of Irish-American Affleck’s casting himself as Mexican-American CIA operative Antonio “Tony” Mendez and the director’s awkwardly dumb response.

I am not one of those people who believes that only Mexican-Americans can play Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. I still love Burt Lancaster’s portrayal of a humble but almost superhuman gunfighter who is dismissed as a stereotypical lazy Mexican by a bigoted Anglo-American rancher in Valdez is Coming. But it should be pointed out that Affleck would never have dreamed of casting a Latino actor as one of the Irish-American gangsters in The Town, and I suspect that it was not just because so many of them were too busy filming Machete. Hollywood has a long history of typecasting Mexican-American actors, which is why so many of them have anglicized or changed their names, or otherwise downplayed their ethnicity in an effort to avoid a career of playing petty criminals, prostitutes and housekeepers.

If some Latino actors fail to get juicy roles, this is a problem, but it is not nearly as big of an issue as the one articulated by award-winning producer and activist Moctesuma Esparza in his eloquent criticism. Esparza has been responsible for dozens of well-regarded movies. While many of them have told stories of Mexican-Americans, films like Gettysburg and Introducing Dorothy Dandridge show that he is not strictly ethnocentric in his focus. However, I am sure that the casting of the late Francesco Quinn in The Rough Riders as Rafael Castillo, a fictionalized stand-in for the handful of Mexican-Americans who served under Colonel Roosevelt in Cuba, was due to his involvement in the movie.

While it could be argued that Mendez’ ethnicity has little to do with the story, Esparza points out that Argo makes some effort at actively concealing the character’s background:

…His name (Mendez) is mentioned only once and the character says he is from New York (Tony was born in Nevada from a mining family with six generations in Nevada and raised in Colorado). Nowhere in the movie does the viewer get that the hero is Mexican American…

In the closing credits, the photos of the real people portrayed are presented side-by-side with the actors’ photos showing the very close resemblance and care that was taken in the casting process to cast actors who looked like the real people. Yet, for the key role of Tony Mendez, the director/producer Ben Affleck chose a single long shot of Tony with President Carter where his image was not distinct or recognizable, breaking the pattern he had chosen for all the other real people depicted.

Esparza compares this to the “whitewashing” of the story of PFC Guy Gabaldon, Mexican-American hero of the Battle of Saipan, who was played by not just one, but two, Anglo-American actors in the 1960 film Hell to Eternity, in which his name is anglicized and his ethnic background is downplayed. This was despite the fact that it would have contributed greatly to the understanding of how Gabaldon acquired his linguistic skills which were critical to the plot.

Hollywood still generally believes that middle America will never accept Mexican-American heroes, so they are anglicized through casting or outright fictionalizing of their stories. Ironically, by writing them out of the story, they perpetuate the very stereotypes that help assure that the public is less willing to accept such characters.

Most people’s perception of history comes not from scholarly work, but from popular culture, movies in particular. Much of what average folks know about Arizona’s history is at least colored by, if not totally derived from, western movies. One would be hard pressed to name a western which features Mexican-American characters as anything other than semi-literate drunks or bandits, in spite of a historical record to the contrary. This is not because of a lack of good material. The career of Enrique “Henry” Garfias, the badass first Town Marshall of Phoenix, would make an awesome movie, but Hollywood instead chooses to tell the same stories about Anglo heroes over and over and over again.

The result of this is that Mexican-Americans are not seen as part of the American story, and this has driven much of the bigotry behind the immigration debate. Despite the fact that most Mexican immigrants are here legally, and the fact that most Mexican-Americans are not immigrants at all, but are from well-established families that have been in this country for decades, the perception exists that Mexican-Americans are a wholly new community who have not yet properly earned their place at the table.

Governor Brewer took some flack for not mentioning the contributions of Mexican-Americans in her centennial State of the State speech. Her omission should come as no surprise. Mexican-Americans have been written out of history over and over again, and what follows from this is public policy that pretends that they are less American than others.

So, while it seems that Esparza’s complaint is of only minor importance, there have been real consequences to Hollywood’s dismissive treatment of Mexican-Americans and their contributions to the history of this country. Given this, is it any wonder why some people in this town have gotten so worked up about ethnic studies?

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Senator Reagan: Too Many Mexicans Are Voting. Please Make It Stop!

Thursday, February 14, 2013

A few weeks back, this here blog gave Councilman Kozachik some grief for what amounted to thinking out loud about the possibility of skipping Tucson’s 2013 election so the city could save money and to spare voters from “election fatigue.” Of course, it turned out that this was never a real proposal, as the councilman was quick to point out once folks started to take it seriously.

State Senator Michelle Reagan (R-Scottsdale) is similarly concerned about the expense and trouble of having elections, and her misguided proposal is only a little less disturbing than the councilman’s. Unlike the councilman, however, she is absolutely serious.

A two week delay in vote counting arising from Maricopa County’s inability to deal with the large number of mail-in ballots during the 2012 election made headlines all over the country and was yet another national embarrassment for Arizona. While most of us would think that the solution has to do with staffing or technology at county elections departments, there are others, like Reagan, who believe that the real problem is that too many people are voting. She has proposed cutting down these numbers by making it a class 5 felony to turn in someone else’s mail-in ballot.

The Senator’s initial stated reason for her bill was to address the work load that all these mail-in ballots cause. But it quickly became clear that the bill was about something else. Invoking typical practiced Republican umbrage, she claimed that she was “shocked” that groups like Mi Familia Vota were taking “laundry basket[s] full of ballots” to polling places. She further played at being dumbfounded that the issue was so “divisive.” On this point, she was either insincere or has not been paying attention to the national debate over Republican-led efforts to limit voting across the country.

It is almost goes without saying that this is really about the results of the last election. Vote-by-mail ballots accounted for the margins of victory for 3 of the 5 Democrats Arizona sent to Congress. Absentee ballots famously saved Senator Barry Goldwater’s career in 1980, but those days are clearly over. Now that vote-by-mail ballots are an integral part of the Democrat’s increasingly effective get-out-the-vote machinery, they are considered a problem.

Reagan’s proposal presents difficulties well beyond partisan considerations. Under this bill, staff or volunteers at a retirement community, for example, would be prohibited from collecting ballots from residents who cannot make it to the polling place themselves. Likewise, someone who works for a non-profit that assists disabled people would also be prevented from helping his or her clients. It would be difficult to call these “unintended consequences,” since limiting the ability of citizens to vote seems to be exactly what is intended.

Strangely enough, as Senator Steve Gallardo (D-Maryvale), the legislature’s leading expert on election issues, points out, Arizona state law allows a voter to bring any individual, not just a relative or someone who shares a residence, into the polling booth to assist in completing the ballot. It would seem that there is really little functional difference between this and handing your mail-in ballot to your neighbor to the polling place.

Nonetheless, though the bill goes way too far, there is a real possibility for fraud and abuse in the vote-by-mail system. Senate Democrats are working on amendments to narrow the bill to address these potential problems, by imposing a time limit on how long an individual can hold on to a ballot, for example. The degree to which Senator Reagan and the Republican majority entertain these fixes will be a test of their sincerity in this regard. Of course, these issues have largely not been part of the discussion, beyond Reagan’s free-floating outrage regarding the sanctity of the vote.

What has been part of the discussion is the fact that organizations like Mi Familia Vota have been far too effective in helping certain communities to vote, namely Mexican-Americans in low-income neighborhoods. The fact that this has been so central to the discussion so far tends to imply that this is largely about who has been voting, rather than concerns about process.

There was a similar effort to attack the vote-by-mail system in 2011. In that case, the sponsor, Senator Don Shooter (R-Yuma) was quite honest about the fact that his bill was about his annoyance that organized labor was turning out votes against him. However, it was shot down by the U.S. Justice Department as a violation of the Voting Rights Act. Given this precedent, there is no reason to think that this proposal would not meet a similar fate.

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Brevity

Thursday, February 7, 2013

From The New Republic:

Kyrsten Sinema, a new congresswoman from Arizona and the first openly bisexual person ever elected to the House, told me she wasn’t worried about trying to learn all the new names and faces. As a professor at Arizona State University for ten years, she’s had some practice. Her method? “I look at clothes–don’t write that down,” she said. Some members, like Texas Democratic Representative Pete Gallego, she notes, wear something distinctive, like cowboy boots emblazoned with the seal of Texas. Also: “Some men wear the same suit every day.”

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The Real Problem With TREO

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Tim Steller is doing an excellent job at The Arizona Daily Star, having given our community commentary backed up with real intelligence and insight in stark contrast to the knee-jerk smart-assery of his predecessor.

On Wednesday, the Star ran a Steller piece about TREO, (Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities), Southern Arizona’s most prominent economic development entity. Steller is a guy who has been reporting about these things for years and brought that historical perspective to the column. He argues that TREO serves a useful purpose and that if it went away, it would soon be replaced by something just like it.

Steller is right on this point, but I think he misses a very basic problem with TREO and its predecessors such as GTEC.

Back when I was in the legislature, TREO did a little presentation for the Pima County delegation. They had a map which showed the locations of the businesses that they ostensibly helped bring to Tucson, each one marked with the number of people employed there. A few of these markers had numbers, but no names. I asked why these businesses were not named, and a TREO official said “Some of these businesses would prefer to remain under the radar.”

I found this a tad disturbing. A business that wants “to remain under the radar” is unlikely to give to local charities, to support arts and culture, or to sponsor a youth soccer team. In fact, the desire to remain anonymous implies a certain footloose attitude, and that they would not give a second thought to abandoning Tucson at a moment’s notice when a better opportunity arises elsewhere. This does not advance the goal of creating a sustainable economic future for Tucson, nor does it build a better community.

TREO has a reputation for having attracted outfits such as call centers which provide employees with low wages, few benefits and no future. Some have attributed this to a lack of effort or competence, but I would argue that this is a result of a shortage of imagination. When your only idea is to sell your town as a place where you can pay low wages and low taxes, you attract businesses who pay low wages and who are cranky about their obligations to local schools and the community in general. This should go without saying.

But there is a systemic issue that extends well beyond this, something that has doomed every such economic development entity. The conventional wisdom is that such things must be put in the hands of the business community, as they have some special wisdom about these issues which is necessary to success. This has proven, however, not to be the case. The business leaders that are on their board are prominent because they are already doing very well for themselves, and therefore have little motivation, or arguably a disincentive, to do anything that would substantially change Tucson’s economy. A truly ambitious plan for economic development would ultimately lead an upsetting of the apple cart and is thus a potential threat to their leadership.

The business community in Tucson is surprisingly insular. They are organized into what seems to be dozens of chambers, clubs, councils, and other such groups that seem to exist largely to provide opportunities for chairmanships. They are very good at networking and talking to each other, but do very little to reach out to anyone else. There is no attempt to understand what Tucson values as a community, and a dismissive, sometimes hostile, attitude toward its elected leadership. They clearly do not get this town, and have no desire to do so. Recent elections have shown that this attitude may be slowly changing, which is good news.

While some cynics say that economic development in Tucson is a hopeless task, it should be pointed out that some efforts in the region are working. The Downtown Tucson Partnership has managed to bring a corporate headquarters to Downtown, which is 1 more than TREO has attracted to Southern Arizona, and by all accounts, this business has operated as a responsible corporate citizen. They have also managed to attract some $120 million in investment, a remarkable achievement in the face of a down economy and a meddling legislature. While what they have been doing is by no means a model for the region as a whole, it shows that success is possible if we stop doing the same thing over and over again.

Meanwhile, TREO itself may well be doomed, but as Steller points out, it is likely to be replaced by something else. Of course, this replacement will face a similar end unless we bring actual new ideas to our economic development strategy. This will require a very different kind of organization than we have seen in TERO and its predecessors, one that actively involves our elected leadership and the community as a whole rather than a relatively small clique of utilities, auto dealers, and their golfing buddies.

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