The Big Reveal by Rex and Regina

Rex Scott is the chairman of the Pima County Board of Supervisors.  Regina Romero is the mayor of the city of Tucson.  On the same day, in separate opinion pieces, in separate local publications, both of them unwittingly revealed what’s wrong with the Tucson metropolis.

They revealed why Tucson is an economic laggard for a Sunbelt city, why it has serious socioeconomic problems, why so much of it is so seedy and unkempt, why its road network stinks, why talented young people leave for better opportunities, and why, in spite of being the home of the University of Arizona, a supposed research university, it isn’t a business incubator or a magnet for high-wage companies and venture capital.

What’s wrong is the political monopoly in the two jurisdictions headed by Romero and Scott.  Nearly 90 percent of the Tucson metropolis—a metropolis of almost 1.1 million people—falls under the jurisdiction of either the city of Tucson or Pima County.  Specifically, about 54 percent of the metropolis is the city of Tucson, and a whopping 36 percent is unincorporated county.

While a few Republicans have held local offices, both the city and the county have been de facto Democrat monopolies for decades.  That is not to say that Republicans are geniuses, but it is to say that the lack of political competition has brought hubris, myopia, and provincialism.

It’s as if Tucson has looked south to Mexico for a model of one-party governance, cruel economics, and a two-class society marked by political aristocrats at the top and a lot of poor people below.

Rex Scott’s big reveal was in his August 10 op-ed in the Tucson Sentinel, titled, “Tucson city meetings on Project Blue were unproductive spectacles.”

He tried to justify why he had voted for the Project Blue data centers, which would have consumed staggering amounts of precious water in water-starved Tucson, as well as driving up residential electricity rates by consuming vast amounts of electricity.  He also claimed that the data centers had been under study for a long time, and, in spite of the county signing a non-disclosure agreement with the developers, were not cloaked in secrecy.

Then, to add baloney to a truckload of manure. Scott chastised the public for being vocal and discourteous at public meetings on the data centers—meetings that were held late in the game and thus left citizens feeling as if they had been railroaded.

Scott showed that he doesn’t understand the problems stemming from 36 percent of metro Tucson being unincorporated county.  Covering 9,000 square miles or so of southern Arizona, Pima County is too large and too rural in orientation to meet the needs of urban and suburban residents.  It is an amorphous blob without a center, a soul, or clear political accountability.  Even if it were a model of good governance, the county couldn’t provide the amenities, service levels, upkeep, and responsiveness that a well-run municipality can provide.

As a former resident of well-run municipalities elsewhere in the state and nation, and as a current resident of unincorporated Pima County, I can attest that county supervisors are so removed, unapproachable, and uncommunicative that they might as well have their offices on Mars.  It shouldn’t have been a surprise to Scott that residents didn’t trust the Martians to represent their interests over the interests of Amazon Web Services when it came to the data centers.

Regina Romero’s big reveal was in her August 10 op-ed in the Arizona Daily Star (behind a paywall).  To her credit, she actually admitted that economic development was broken in southern Arizona, that there is too much poverty in Tucson, and that local leaders from various constituencies and from the private and public sectors need to come together to set priorities.

Those thoughts are from a mayor of the largest jurisdiction in metro Tucson, a role that puts her in a leadership position to do just that.  And she is the same mayor who has threatened to pull the city of Tucson out of the Regional Transportation Authority, although the Tucson metropolis is fifty years behind the Phoenix metropolis in planning and coordinating transportation improvements that cross jurisdictional lines.

She then revealed that she has bought into the tired and increasingly discredited idea among urban planners that prosperity will come to a city by redeveloping its downtown into a hip scene of bars, restaurants, entertainment venues, and apartments, all connected by a streetcar line, to appeal to hipsters and the so-called creative class.

Such downtown revitalization has worked in some cases and failed in others.  It has tended to work in metro areas that already had a lot going for them, such as a diversified economy, a good transportation network, a major airport, a monied class with a philanthropic bent, nationally renowned institutions, and top-notch schools, if not in the inner-city then in the surrounding suburbs.

It has tended not to work in cities that don’t have those attributes and are afflicted with crime, squalor and poverty.  In those cases, downtown is often redeveloped through tax schemes that are essentially a zero-sum game, in which downtown flourishes at the expense of surrounding neighborhoods.

Regarding streetcars, one of my proudest accomplishments as an activist and columnist was joining with others in stopping the Phoenix light-rail line, or streetcar if you will, from being extended into Scottsdale.  It’s not that I was opposed to public transportation, per se.  After all, I commuted by rail for the ten years I lived in Chicago and worked in the Loop.  It was that the proposed extension was a financial boondoggle that would have caused traffic havoc and changed the character of Scottsdale.

Another proud accomplishment was joining with others in stopping the Phoenix Coyotes hockey team from building a stadium at McDowell and Scottsdale roads in Scottsdale.  A research center associated with Arizona State University was built at the location instead, and the Coyotes would go on to build a stadium in Glendale, a city that would later regret being snookered by the team.

In all of the talk in Tucson and in other cities about downtown redevelopment, the importance of car-centric suburbs is often overlooked and even impugned.  Suburbs are the preferred place to live and work for many people, especially parents with children, who want good schools, safety, and a yard.  Many executives, professionals, and members of the creative class share this preference.

Take Silicon Valley.  It is one of the most creative and entrepreneurial places on earth, but it is not in downtown San Francisco and does not have a streetcar.

Or go back in time to the glory days of Bell Labs, which was the Silicon Valley of its time.  Most of its facilities and scientists were in suburban New Jersey, near where my wife and I lived for several years in Basking Ridge, about 35 miles west of Manhattan.  Likewise, most of the headquarters’ staff for AT&T was located at its large campus in Basking Ridge and not at its Manhattan address.

I used to work as a corporate executive in Edison, NJ, which is named after the famous inventor Thomas Edison, whose lab was nearby and not 37 miles away in Manhattan.

Let’s fast-forward to today and return to Arizona.

The Phoenix suburb of Peoria is 13 miles from downtown Phoenix and doesn’t have a streetcar or hip downtown.  But the city of 200,000 people just landed a $2 billion microchip packaging facility, to be built by Amkor Technology, which has 30,000 employees worldwide and is headquartered in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe.

Amkor probably chose Tempe as its headquarters because Arizona State University is located there—a university that started as a teachers’ college but has surpassed the University of Arizona in national and international renown.

Carvana is also located in Tempe.  The entrepreneur who founded the company got his start by buying a used care lot in Tucson but chose not to stay in the Old Pueblo.

In far north Phoenix, near the intersection of Interstate 17 and Loop 303, far from downtown Phoenix, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is building a semiconductor complex, for a staggering total investment of something like $165 billion.

See a trend here?

A much smaller company, Fox Restaurant Concepts, got its start in Tucson, where it has several restaurants.  But it is headquartered in Scottsdale, not downtown Tucson.  Mayor Romero might want to find out why.

She also might want to drive to the suburban area of Vail, well to the east of Tucson, or to the suburban town of Marana, well to the north of Tucson.  Both are booming with new developments, including master-planned communities.  Yet neither has a hip downtown or a street car.

Vail is about a 25-minute commute for executives, managers, engineers, and other professionals who live in Vail but work at the Raytheon division of defense contractor RTX in south Tucson.  Why do they live in Vail instead of downtown Tucson or central Tucson, either of which would be a much shorter commute?  First, the Vail public schools have a much better reputation than the Tucson Unified School District.  Second, Vail has planned communities, where crime is virtually non-existent, where the private streets are nicely landscaped and maintained, and where the private parks are not overrun with the homeless.

It’s a similar story in other parts of metro Tucson.  Residents are willing to endure a long commute and/or pay HOA fees to get away from the misgovernance and mismanagement of the political monopoly that controls the city of Tucson and Pima County.

Maybe Rex and Regina will come to this realization someday and change their thinking accordingly.  Or better yet, maybe the residents of the city and county will realize that the monopoly needs to be overturned.

Mr. Cantoni can be reached at craigcantoni@gmail.com.