Tomorrow morning, the Pima County Board of Supervisors will conduct the second of its two monthly meetings for March. These meetings occur on the first and third Tuesdays of every month.
At nine o’clock in the morning.
If you’re a typical taxpayer, you’re at work and your boss would have HR escort you out for spending your morning in the Board’s chambers instead of at your workplace. But imagine, if you will, that you were able to view the proceedings. What would you see?
First off, you’ll experience roll call, an invocation, and the Pledge of Allegiance. Then comes the obligatory “feel-good,” “soft” government stuff, like the dog of the week from the County animal shelter and the myriad meaningless proclamations. Expect also to hear public commentary, wherein Chair Sharon Bronson will use her discretion on holding speakers to the three-minute limit.
But you can’t plan to leave work for the business of the meeting, because you cannot predict when that will begin. It could be 9:30, it could be 12:30. Your guess is as good as mine.
Notice I said “the business of the meeting,” and not “the real business of the meeting.” Here is the Pima County game, about as fundamentally flawed as the original “Monopoly” board game submission is claimed to have been:
Take a bunch of items that will cost the county money, and lump them into one big mess to get one simple vote with a minimum of discussion. Then take a bunch more items and do the same. Finally, take a bunch of procedural things (like licenses and permits) and lump them together, too, so as to avoid spending undue time on the work the county should do for its constituents and their business–you know, the taxpayers. Then throw those procedural things out for a vote and rush through it all so nobody can ask questions.
Well, that’s what they try to do, anyway. Of the five Supervisors, only Supervisor Miller has the good sense to “divide the question” and pick out individual issues about which to request more detail or to debate. This, naturally, is the point in the meeting when Supervisor Elias wakes from his nap or returns to the dais from wherever he went so he can berate and belittle his astute colleague.
Richard Elias, you should know, comes off as a blowhard who very sincerely enjoys the sound of his own voice.
At the last meeting, on March 7th, all hell broke loose as Supervisor Miller asked for explanation of a $3 million expenditure outside the normal budget that would benefit Banner Medical. (This, unsurprisingly, was an expenditure from the pen of County Administrator and king of wasteful spending Chuck Huckelberry.) Remember, every dime of the $3 million comes from you as a taxpayer.
After blustering from Supervisor Elias and curt addressing of her opposing colleague from Chair Bronson (how uncivil of her), Sharon dropped an astonishing statement in defense of the county’s profligate and unquestioned spending:
“This is going to sound very Republican of me, but, uh, and I apologize to some of my constituents, um, you know, government is often accused of being over-regulatory and we want to make sure we, we do business efficiently. And so, I think adding more burdensome regulation is probably not the way to go, but trying in the interest of transparency providing backup information so if there is a concern it can be addressed properly by this Board.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa. She apologizes for sounding Republican?! To the far left and their legacy media lapdogs, perhaps the term “Republican” is a grave and offensive epithet. Ostensibly, she was apologizing to her base, the lefties who voted her back in for yet another term. In reality, she should apologize to the Republican (and other conservative) constituents in her district; her disregard for them in her vigorous pursuit of government growth is offense enough, so this comment is simply salt in the wound.
But her point is that questioning the transfer of money from the County to a private business under the guise of facility repairs–that should have been in the operating budget, if the Administrator was properly administering county-owned assets–is tantamount to imposing burdensome regulation on that business. And it proves that she hasn’t a bloody clue of the burden of regulation, how to conduct private business, or what the proper role of government actually is.
Shame on you (yet again), Sharon Bronson, shame!
How about allowing the roads of Pima County to fall into abject disrepair? How about propping up World View with massive subsidies, while small businesses without famous players struggle? How about conducting every meeting while private business owners and employees are at their jobs earning the money that the County later confiscates as taxes? Sharon Bronson cannot even begin to comprehend the meaning of burdensome regulation.
Or, perhaps, she believes her constituents are too ignorant to grasp the concept, and she believes she can curry favor with them through what she thinks to be a clever dig at the political right.
Civility my foot; this is disgusting. And that offensive quote is public record.
What’s on tomorrow’s meeting agenda, you might ask? Well, the possibility of holding one meeting a month in the evening, when more of the working public could attend. Expect Bronson to fight that. Then more debate about funding the January 8th memorial. Expect more shenanigans as Huckelberry works to use this to his advantage.
Oh, and zoning and permits and such. You know, legitimate county business.
You likely won’t have time to attend the meeting tomorrow to see how Chair Bronson sticks her foot in her mouth, or how she sticks her middle finger toward you. You can bet that the local legacy media won’t inform you there, either. But the Arizona Daily Independent will. We will make sure you witness Sharon’s shame.