Carroll Slacks, Pima County Media Attacks, Watchdogs Censored

Pima County Supervisor Ray Carroll is using his waning time in office to travel the country and take out his political nemesis Ally Miller. With a complicit press, Carroll is not serving his constituents or the truth.

Dubbed “Sugar Ray” by his sycophants at the Tucson Weekly and Explorer, records show that between them and Dylan Smith at the Tucson Sentinel, Carroll has a bevy of writers willing to help him take out Miller, the lone watchdog on the Pima County Board of Supervisors.

For his part, Smith was willing to publish the false accusation by her Republican Primary opponent, John Winchester, that Miller was involved in “an elaborate scheme” with a 19 year old staffer, Tim DesJarlais, to “deceitfully” obtain information regarding my campaign. As a result of the charge that a cybercrime had been committed, Miller had no choice but to report the matter to federal authorities.

Later, despite the fact that DesJarlais admitted to making a fake news site and denied that Miller had any part in it, Carroll with his stooge Smith continued the attack in a meeting of the Pima County Board of Supervisors. Unfortunately for Carroll, his histrionics fell flat when he claimed that Miller had scrubbed her computers and the director of Pima County’s IT department denied the charge.

Side note: A recent review of Carroll’s office computers show that either his staff has scrubbed them of metadata, or more likely, other than shopping his staff does little real work on County computers on County time.

All of that would be disturbing enough. Relying on political enemies to bolster your prose is fairly typical in the Old Pueblo. It reaches a whole new level of unprofessionalism when the media attempts to censor the residents’ elected officials.

In a recent opinion piece, Local prosperity is not a political football, in the Explorer, Winchester is allowed to play fast and loose with the “facts” again. However, when it came time for the subject of his screed; Miller, to refute his claims, editor Mari Herreras became quite circumspect:

From: Mari Herreras <mari@tucsonlocalmedia.com>
Date: Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 10:39 AM
Subject: Re: Supervisor Ally Miller opinion piece for NW Explorer
To: Ally Miller <allyforsupervisor@gmail.com>

Supervisor Miller:

Thanks for your patience. I’d like to be able to run your piece next issue, but I delayed because of some facts that I’m concerned with in your op-ed.

Your vote on the Caterpillar deal came about after we ran Winchester’s op-ed. I believe at previous BOS meetings you had questioned the incentives to bring them to the area, but didn’t speak out in support of them at previous meetings. Regarding World View, the court is still deliberating on the gift clause issue. It might be best to say this is as you think, rather than fact–a safer bet at the moment. On Accelerate, you voted against it in 2013, then for it in 2015 and 2016, but you don’t mention that history or your previous concerns.

I’d be happy to explain that in an editor’s note at the end of the editorial, but thought I’d provide additional time to look at this again. Please let me know your thoughts.

Thank you,
Mari Herreras
Editor
Tucson Local Media
520.834-2155

Miller’s original piece makes it clear that Winchester’s and Herreras’ facts and reckonings are anything but reliable. It reads:

Time for a Fact Check

It’s election time and the heat is turned up! On June 1, 2016, John Winchester, the republican challenger for the District 1 Board of Supervisor seat, submitted a factually incorrect opinion piece to the Explorer.

Winchester stated that he was recruited to run against me in the District 1 race and this is the reason he recently moved to District 1 from Supervisor District 5.

In his article, Winchester stated I had not supported the Caterpillar deal as well as stating I didn’t vote for the taxpayer subsidized lease for Accelerate Diagnostics, which is housed in a county owned building known as the Abrams Building. The first correction is that I did, in fact, vote for the Accelerate Diagnostics lease. Did I ask how long taxpayers would be subsidizing a company that had just done a successful IPO raising more than $110 Million? Yes, I absolutely did and I was assured this was the last lease term with taxpayer subsidized rent for Accelerate.

Now, on to the Caterpillar deal. He accused me of not supporting them in his June 1st opinion piece. Again, Winchester seems to have trouble with the facts and it is clear he didn’t understand the deal. Rio Nuevo Tax District, an entity that is independent of Pima County is building the $50 million facility for Caterpillar. The Pima County portion of the deal is to lease space to Caterpillar for the next 4 years until the building is completed. The Pima County Board of Supervisors didn’t consider this lease until June 7th, a full week after Winchester made his false statement regarding my support. Mr. Winchester attended his first board meeting and witnessed the vote. I voted yes for the lease.

All votes are public record and easily obtained, if one is actually interested in the facts.

He accurately reported that I voted against the World View deal. The role of a supervisor is to advocate for the taxpayers. I believe in performing due diligence to ensure every proposal is in the best interest of taxpayers.

First, the employment clause in the contract doesn’t have the language to hold the company accountable to meet the job creation numbers (400). Second, allowing World View to purchase the $20 million facility for $10 at the end of the lease violates the gift clause of the state constitution. Finally, the construction contract was awarded via the declaration of an emergency which means the competitive bid process was bypassed. It is my opinion this is nothing more than “Crony Capitalism”. Picking winners and losers by government entities is a recipe for failure in the long run.

The role of a supervisor is to protect taxpayer interests and to ensure monies are spent wisely. This is accomplished by careful analysis and understanding the details of each contract. Asking the right questions and having the political courage to stand alone when you believe something is wrong isn’t for everyone. While I vote with the board majority approximately 85% of the time, I have a duty to stand against the board majority and special interests when they are wrong.

I was the only supervisor to vote against putting the $815 Mil bond package on the ballot last November. It was clear to me that Bond package was full of giveaways to special interests and was not focused on the core services that benefit the entire community. I educated myself and then disseminated that information to the voters. The voters soundly rejected the bonds because they no longer trust that their money is being spent wisely.

I make no apologies for doing the job voters entrusted me with when they elected me in 2012. My record is clear and available for voters to review. There is no need to distort the truth. Voters will have a clear choice on August 30th. “Going along to get along” is the mantra of Mr. Winchester and his rhetoric makes it abundantly clear that he is exactly the kind of colleague the rubber stamp, tax and spend board majority is looking for.

Unfortunately, given the clear agenda of the Explorer and its sister tabloid the Tucson Weekly, it is not at all surprising that voters in Miller’s district would be denied an open discussion of the “facts.” The coordinated efforts of Pima County administrator Chuck Huckelberry’s network of “news” hounds has taken a toll, and Miller must rely on a rag tag group of taxpayer defenders, who are anything but coordinated in their efforts.

Given Winchester’s history of dishonesty, one would hope that Herreras had fact checked his work:

Clearly she did not.

In the end, what is clear is that Carroll and his cronies are more interested in biding time until they can replace him with their anointed representative; Steve Christy and take out Miller to boot.

Adoring press will continue to proudly gin out propaganda and share it with Carroll –