When Senate President Steve Pierce sent a letter from Rio Nuevo District Board Chairman Fletcher McCusker updating the Legislature on the District’s progress on behalf of the Legislature, not everyone was pleased. Pierce and Andy Biggs are in a power struggle over the control of the State Senate and Pierce seized upon Rio Nuevo’s progress to brag to his fellow senators and claim that he was right all along.
Pierce, who is known for undermining key portions of the conservative platform such as tort reform and healthcare reform by withholding bills from the floor at the request of special interests, seemed to crow in the letter that he was right in his selection of McCusker. But everyone else knows that Pierce rarely gets it right in terms of fiscal responsibility and accountability.
Pierce’s delivery of the update to his fellow senators was his brag that he was right to replace former watchdog Board members Jodi Bain and Rick Grinnell with McCusker and Christopher Sheaf. Some believe that the right move would have been to fill the two vacant seats on the District Board with McCusker and Sheaf and leave Bain and Grinnell in place.
Then the public could see Pierce’s move as a sincere attempt to completely create a watchdog Board even if Mark Irvin remained.
While Biggs and Pierce duke it out for the soul of the Senate, the Legislature is not helping the Rio Nuevo District Board hold the City’s feet to the fire. Senator Al Melvin’s Memorial was a good start, but it had no teeth.
McCusker and his fellow non-politicians on the Board are trying to navigate the political waters of the City of Tucson and the Legislature. They are asking for help from all corners in order to do what the Legislature asked them to do; make progress towards developing business opportunities for Tucsonans, while not having people according to McCusker “take the money for a project and run.”
The call has gone out for the Attorney General to step up the investigation and hold people like City Attorney Mike Rankin accountable for the $230 million in wasted taxpayer blood, sweat, and tears. It was Pima County Board of Supervisors candidate Ally Miller who prompted the original demand for an investigation according to former watchdog Board member Jodi Bain.
Many have expressed disappointment that McCusker was not as forceful as he should have been in his letter to Pierce about the lawsuits with the City. They view the lawsuits as the only way left to hold the City responsible. But McCusker sees the lawsuits, as an asset, but not as desirable as a monetary settlement with the City, an admission of responsibility, and those responsible held accountable.
“The issue with lawsuits as the only course is that Rio Nuevo can’t survive long enough to be the only plaintiff, if the AG wants to sue, or the Auditor General, someone with some life span, but Rio Nuevo is a short term project by design,” said McCusker. “It doesn’t mean the COT gets off the hook from us; we have tripled the auditing budget, the true leverage right now is with the auditors and in the hearts and minds of the public. We have to resolve this without exhausting all of Rio Nuevo’s resources on attorneys when the COT can stall and weave through the court systems for years. I have often wondered why the Auditor General or some state funded organization isn’t leading the legal challenge.”