The residents of Pima County are well-known for their generosity. While they pay the highest taxes in the State, they are quick for support charities and other non-profit enterprises.
It is that generosity that gives community activists the confidence to demand that the Pima County Board of Supervisors return to the taxpayers the monies the supervisors spent on their own preferred charities and allow the taxpayers to choose to whom that money would be given.
Late last week, the Pima County administrator Chuck Huckelberry and the members of the Board of Supervisors received a letter from the Goldwater Institute regarding the County supervisors’ practice of donating tax payer dollars out of their office budgets to charities of their choice. Many of those dollars are then returned to the supervisors in the form of boots on the ground and/or money for re-election bids.
In their letter, Goldwater advised the supervisors that gifting money to groups without receiving adequate consideration in return would be in violation of State law.
The alleged illegal donations were discovered by Supervisor Ally Miller’s staff, after receiving complaints from County residents about the growing tax burden and persistent rumors of developers having to pay mordida and private interests receiving public funds for no apparent reason or services rendered.
A tally of the illegally donated monies could be in the hundreds of thousands and span at least the last seven years, according to sources. Miller’s staff found that “Elias has given more than $13,000 to Chicanos Por La Causa; Bronson gave more than $5,000 to Flowing Wells Unified School District, according to the Green Valley News.
In the Green Valley News article, Editor Dan Shearer writes that “Elias and Bronson don’t seem to understand the fuss, and notes that “Elias told the Star that a lot of non-profits have been hurting because outside and federal donations are down.”
Shearer notes, that Elias’s response is “funny given this line from an Arizona Republic story published Sept. 20: “At a time when many of Arizona’s largest charities are slowly getting back to pre-recession levels, Chicanos Por la Causa more than doubled its revenue over the most recent fiscal year, to a record $139 million.”
According to Miller, the money needs to be returned to the general fund on behalf of the taxpayers and used for core services such as roads or other infrastructure improvements. They believe that taxpayers should have the opportunity to donate to the charities of their choice.
“Grant funds are received from the federal government to donate to charities. It is not the role of the County board of supervisors to donate taxpayer monies,” said Miller. “Those taxes are to be used for core services such as public safety, roads and infrastructure. So there is no case where it is justifiable to give donations just because we want to.”
A call has gone out through social media encouraging the public to attend the Pima County supervisors’ meeting on Tuesday morning.