Soon after he made the highly controversial removal of Rio Nuevo’s watchdog board members; Jodi Bain and Rick Grinnell, from the Rio Nuevo District Board, former senate president Steve Pierce scrambled into damage control and hoped for help from Governor Jan Brewer.
On Friday, a radio host revealed emails obtained from the Governor’s office which show a desperate Pierce trying to justify his decision to replace Bain and Grinnell; the watchdogs for the taxpayers, with a close associate of Tucson’s mayor Jonathan Rothschild; Fletcher McCusker, and former Rio Nuevo Board member Chris Sheafe. Both men have considerable financial ties to developers and development in downtown Tucson, which is the core of the Rio Nuevo District.
In an email dated June 20, Pierce writes the Governor that while there is “no urgency” the “sooner you appoint someone, the sooner, I will be out of the spot light with Senator Frank Antenori.”
Shortly thereafter, in an email to Antenori dated June, 22, 2012, Pierce attempted to take Antenori’s “spot light” off of him by offering a justification for his maneuver, “Already there are many things coming to the surface that you may or may not know…” Pierce then claimed, “Rio Nuevo owns a historic property that never paid its taxes and the property was sold at a lien auction.”
Pierce concluded the email with an admonishment, “wrongful accusations are not productive. I don’t need it nor does anyone else.”
However, in an interview with Grinnell on Friday discovered that it was Pierce who appeared to make nonproductive and wrongful accusations. According to Grinnell and other sources, Rio Nuevo did not lose any property in their control at a lien auction.
Grinnell, an advocate for small business in Southern Arizona said that shortly before he was removed from the Board he had attempted to talk to Pierce about Rio Nuevo’s budget, and “any other serious issues that needed to be addressed.” He wanted to tell Pierce what the Board “might be able to accomplish, and shortly after that we were removed.”
What Grinnell thought they might be able to accomplish was a full accounting of where the over $230 million in tax dollars went that was spent while the City of Tucson controlled the District. Rio Nuevo, a TIF (taxing) district, had little to show for the $230 million squandered that ended up mostly in the City’s General fund and crony consultants’ bank accounts.
Grinnell said that he believed that Rothschild and others wanted to maintain control and requested that the watch dogs be replaced with people who were friendlier to their interests and the City’s. It was in the interest of the City to make sure a full accounting never happened and leave the skeletons in the closet.
Grinnell said, “All we did was open up the coffin and started collecting the DNA and no one wanted that to happen.”
Grinnell discussed the character assassination of Bain by Tucson city councilman Steve Kozachik and others who were angry that, under her leadership, the Rio Nuevo District had filed lawsuits against the City to reclaim some of the District’s assets. Over the years, the City would spend Rio Nuevo money to develop assets that would then mysteriously become City assets.
“The real loser here is the taxpayers,” said Grinnell. “Fletcher McCusker has a vested interested in this, in my opinion, he should have never been appointed. The way they have cut the deals. The conflict with Fletcher, Chris Sheafe and Scott Stiteler,” Grinnell said were just a few of his concerns.
The conflicts of interest for Sheafe, McCusker and other Board members with developers have created a problem even for them. Due to the fact that they have to recuse themselves for their conflicts of interest. They can get their partner’s deals on the agenda, but at times have not been able to assemble a quorum of non-conflicted members to vote on the deals.
Since Pierce and the Governor’s attack on the senate leadership in their Medicaid expansion push, senate leaders have been unwilling or unable to address the concerns the taxpayers have had with the current Rio Nuevo Board. Grinnell said that Pierce’s “lie started because of their discomfort with the questions we were asking. Some people like Mr. Kozachik and one or two of the board members including Mark Irvin, Fletcher McCusker, and the mayor would want to use made up information to get us off the board.” Grinnell said the City of Tucson “benefitted the most from the lie and taking us off the board.”
The taxes earned within the Rio Nuevo District are not shared with the rest of the state unlike taxes collected by other cities and towns. Rio Nuevo’s waste has angered legislators and residents across the state who resent the waste of tax dollars. Legislators across the state have called for the Rio Nuevo District to be shut down and allow the taxes to pay off the tremendous bond debt left by years of looting by the City.
Grinnell concluded, “We have to elect people who know the issues and understand. The City of Tucson needs to be held accountable and the Legislature really needs to consider if this is worth keeping alive.”
Despite Pierce’s attempts to get the Governor to make her appointments, she still has not done so.