By STEPHANIE SNYDER
Cronkite News Service

WASHINGTON – It’s been more than a year since Arizona voters banned preferential treatment in state services based on race, ethnicity and gender – but little has changed on the state’s university campuses in that time.

Undergraduate enrollment officials say they never considered race in the first place – others say the schools were never selective enough for race to make a difference – and that minority enrollment has actually increased slightly.

The state’s professional schools have seen a slight dip in minority enrollment, but say it’s too early to tell if it’s because of the law. In the meantime, they said they have found other ways to maintain a diverse class. And campus programs targeting specific groups still operate under their original intent to “serve an underrepresented population” but officials say they meet the new law.

“We, some time ago, took a look at all programs, services, selection process and the like to ensure there aren’t any concerns regarding participations or selections and involvement on the basis of race,” said James Rund, senior vice president of educational outreach and student services at Arizona State University. There are not, he said.

The university’s long-standing priority of “inclusivity” and its custom to not “limit enrollment or participation” made it fairly simple for ASU to comply, said Rund, who added he is confident the school is “in a safe harbor” under the new law.

“The goal of the legislation is to create equity and parity and we certainly don’t quarrel with that if that is the goal,” Rund said.

Proposition 107 passed with 60 percent of the 1.6 million votes cast in November 2010. It added a section to the Arizona Constitution to prohibit programs that grant “preferential treatment to or discriminate against any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting.”

The measure’s sponsor, Rep. Steve Montenegro, R-Avondale, did not respond to repeated calls seeking comment on the impact of the measure.

For Arizona’s universities, complying with the law was easy: Officials said race, ethnicity and gender were never considered in undergraduate student admissions, even though schools are committed to having a diverse student body that reflects the state’s overall demographics.

“We want to be accessible,” Rund said. “We clearly want our student population to reflect the population of the state. We regard that as a high priority for the institution in every respect.”

But the man behind a similar 1996 California law challenged the notion that campuses should reflect the demographics of the overall state population or that universities should make that a priority. Ward Connerly, founder and president of the American Civil Rights Institute, said university demographics should not be representative of the state “anymore than you have equal representation on the basketball team or the football team.”

“People pursue different things based on individual treatment,” Connerly said. “Kids that are, quote, minorities are no different than any other set of kids. They want different things and their goals in life – they will vary.”

California universities saw a “dramatic drop in the number of underrepresented minorities” following the ban there because “there was an enormous academic performance gap between blacks and Native Americans and Hispanics,” Connerly said.

In Arizona, by contrast, overall undergraduate enrollment of minority students has slightly increased since the ban was implemented.

Connerly suggested that is due to the fact that Arizona schools were less selective to begin with. When a school is “not worried about having to choose between an A-minus student and a C-minus student,” it does not have to take race into account in admissions and would be less affected by a ban on preferential treatment.

“I don’t think Arizona’s universities have to be as selective as Berkeley and UCLA because the demand for admission is not as great,” Connerly said. But that does not lessen the need for a ban on preferential treatment, he said.

Before the law was passed, Arizona’s public law schools and its medical school did use race as a factor to create a diverse class of students.

“Race was considered, and validly so by the law,” said Shelli Soto, assistant vice provost and associate dean of admissions at the ASU Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law.

Her school, along with the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law and its College of Medicine, were committed to reviews of prospective students that included academic performance, work experience, personal statements, family background, socioeconomic status, and, previously, ethnicity.

The admissions process has remained largely the same for those programs, but race and ethnicity information is no longer shared with the admissions review committee, officials said.

In the one class that has been admitted since the ban took effect, both law schools saw about a 3 percent drop in minority student enrollment while the medical school stayed the same. But it might be too early to tell if there will be a long-term effect on minority student enrollment, said James Kerwin, interim associate dean at the medical school.

“I don’t think there’s enough evidence to see if there’s been a change, but time may tell,” Kerwin said. “I hope we’ll continue to get a diverse student body and I think we will. We’re still committed to diversity, at the same time as we’re committed to following the mandate of Prop 107.”

Kerwin said the medical school had to change enrollment procedures “to some extent” and consider other factors that can still contribute to diversity – “socioeconomic status, coming from a rural environment, being a first-generation college student, being multilingual, overcoming barriers in the process of their education up until medical school, disabilities.”

“We don’t choose those because they would be more common in a certain race or ethnicity,” Kerwin said. “We chose them because it promotes diversity in the class and that we’re more likely to have students from different backgrounds.”

Paul Bender, a constitutional law professor and former dean of the ASU law school, said he does not think considering race or ethnicity to create a diverse class would be a violation of the ban on preferential treatment.

“They (Arizona voters) voted for something much narrower than that,” Bender said. “Don’t treat people badly, don’t discriminate. I think it ought to be read that way. There is no law in Arizona about what this means.”

It was not “just a chance thing” that the words “affirmative action” were not included in the language of the law, Bender said. Banning the use of enrollment policies that help create a diverse class would have failed at the ballot box, he said.

Arizona is not the only state that has followed California’s lead – Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Washington have similar laws banning preferential treatment and the Supreme Court said this spring that it will hear a University of Texas case where race was a considered factor in student admissions. But Arizona is the only one of those states making headlines for another racially tinged policy, the SB 1070 immigration-enforcement law considered by the Supreme Court last week.

ASU Vice Provost Delia Saenz and other university officials said even though the university’s day-to-day operations were not greatly affected by the ban on preferential treatment, it still brings negative publicity to the state.

“There was concern probably throughout the state in terms of perception of diversity and how they’re treated at different levels of government and education,” she said. “They raise eyebrows as to what the politics of Arizona are about.”

ASU and other institutions have to argue that “what happens at the state legislature doesn’t necessarily reflect the sentiments of everybody in the state,” Saenz said.

“Diversity is actually a driver of innovation and economic development,” she said. “(The ban) constrains the full use of human capital from all diverse backgrounds and tends to give the state more of a black eye.”

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Web links:

_ Constitutional Amendment: http://www.azleg.gov/FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/const/2/36.htm

_ Proposition 107: http://www.azsos.gov/election/2010/info/pubpamphlet/english/prop107.htm

_ Election Results: http://www.azsos.gov/election/2010/General/Canvass2010GE.pdf

_ American Civil Rights Institute: http://www.acri.org/index.html

_ ASU Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law: http://www.law.asu.edu/Default.aspx

_ UA James E. Rogers College of Law: http://www.law.arizona.edu/

_ UA College of Medicine: http://medicine.arizona.edu/

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Officials at Arizona State University, above, said their long-standing policy of “inclusivity” in admissions meant a new law banning racial or other preferences had little impact. Minority enrollment is actually up slightly in the last year. (Cronkite News Service photo by Stephanie Snyder)

Minority enrollment at the state’s law and medical schools dipped slightly, but campus officials are not sure yet if Proposition 107 is the cause. At University of Arizona, the medical school no longer considers race in admissions but looks at other factors to ensure a diverse student body. (Photo by Ken Lund via Creative Commons/flickr)

By STEPHANIE SNYDER
Cronkite News Service

WASHINGTON – Opponents of Proposition 107 had a favorite warning in the debate leading up to the vote.

Pass the ban on racial preferences, they said, and it would mean the end of programs like Arizona State University’s Hispanic Mother-Daughter Program, which aims to increase the odds for Hispanic women who would be the first in their families to attend college.

The proposition passed, but the program still exists. And officials say the Hispanic Mother-Daughter Program is, theoretically at least, open to more than just Hispanic mothers and daughters.

“It’s important to underscore that any student can participate in any program even though it might have a target population,” said James Rund, senior vice president of educational outreach and student services at Arizona State University.

Rund said the mother-daughter program is still around because there are “specific programs that have an emphasis on certain populations.” He pointed to other targeted student-services programs, like African-American Men of ASU, and said all comply with the state’s ban on preferential treatment.

“Latinas are still underrepresented at the institution, though we’ve made great progress,” Rund said of the mother-daughter program. “We want to ensure that we have a program that signals to the specific population that it is a priority for the university, at the same time making it available for all that want to participate.”

But just because the program is open to everyone doesn’t mean everyone’s applying.

The program has never told a male student he couldn’t apply, for example, but it has never received an application from one either, said Anita Tarango, ASU’s director of outreach for educational outreach and student services. That may be because it does not appeal to them, she said.

“It’s not necessarily going to be appealing to a broad spectrum of people,” Tarango said. “The audience is primarily Hispanic females – not exclusively, but predominantly.”

Rund called it “unlikely” that a male would want to be part of the program: “We won’t prohibit their participation, but the program is clearly focused.”

Program Director Jo Ann Martinez said being Hispanic is not a requirement, either, but she could not say if any non-Hispanic students are enrolled in the program, even though they are asked to identify their ethnicity on the application. While that information is “on hand,” it is not tallied, Martinez said.

The nearly 30-year-old Hispanic Mother-Daughter Program admits more than 100 students annually. Phoenix and East Valley school districts refer eligible seventh-grade students: Those who would be the first in their families to go to college, who are performing at grade level for English and math, and have at least a 2.75 grade-point average.

Prospective mother-daughter teams go through an “extensive” application process to whittle 500 students down to 140 teams that will start the program this fall, Martinez said.

Students have to be referred by their schools to apply. But the schools themselves interpret the program differently.

“If you say it’s the Hispanic Mother-Daughter Program – why would you identify anyone else?” asked Gracie Barraza, community service liaison for Roosevelt School District – which has 18 schools with seventh-grade classes.

Barraza said the schools have different approaches in reaching eligible students, but “the teachers know exactly who they can approach on that.”

Cesar Chavez Community School – a Roosevelt District school – passes out fliers to all seventh-grade classes and invites interested students to attend a meeting on the program. Chavez Principal Ivette Rodriguez said she has seen non-Hispanic girls admitted into the program at other schools, but has never seen interest from a male student.

“Because of the name of the program there might be an assumption on their (the boys’) part,” Rodriguez said. “Obviously, I think it would be great to have the same opportunities for all of our students – maybe one of our young men would like to apply for this.”

But in other school districts, recruitment is more targeted.

Debbie Fast, English Language Development coordinator at Chandler Unified School District, said the program has “qualifying factors of race or gender” and participants “have to be Hispanic and female.” Guidance counselors at the district’s seven participating schools approach Hispanic girls who might be first-generation college students and let them decide if they’re willing to make the time commitment, Fast said.

The ASU program wants schools to continue targeting the students with “the greatest need and have the greatest benefit for the program,” which Tarango said are Hispanic females.

“There are limited spots,” Tarango said. “They (schools) want to assure that the people that will get the most benefit are the people that are applying. That is what the hope would be.”

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Web links:

_ Proposition 107: http://www.azsos.gov/election/2010/info/pubpamphlet/english/prop107.htm

_ ASU Hispanic Mother-Daughter Program: http://promise.asu.edu/hmdp

_ African-American Men of ASU: https://students.asu.edu/mss/aamasu

_ Participating School Districts: http://promise.asu.edu/hmdp-participating-districts

_ Roosevelt School District: http://www.rsd.k12.az.us/

_ Cesar Chavez Community School: http://www.rsd.k12.az.us/Chavez.cfm

_ Chandler Unified School District: http://ww2.chandler.k12.az.us/site/default.aspx?PageID=1

By SALVADOR RODRIGUEZ
Cronkite News Service

WASHINGTON – Don Zobel was at home on his computer when he read the news: The Supreme Court had sided with him after more than a decade of fighting to stop the Carlota Mine at Pinto Creek, near Globe.

“Wow, you know? It felt good,” Zobel said. “We finally won. We had a lot of other legal challenges and never prevailed, but we finally prevailed, and it was a big deal at the time.

“Or at least it seemed to be.”

Seemed to be, because three years after the Supreme Court refused to hear the Carlota Mine case, handing Zobel an apparent victory, the only thing that has changed at the mine is the company extracting the copper.

Mining began a month before the high court decision that so excited Zobel and it has not stopped since. The mine’s owners adjusted their operations plan so that it complied with regulations and court rulings, said an official with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.

“Our compliance inspectors have been out there many, many times,” said Linda Taunt, deputy director of ADEQ‘s water-quality division. “We have not found them in violation.”

The mine’s opponents disagree. They say Carlota is not in compliance and continues to act as if the court case had never happened.

“We won the Supreme Court, but the regulatory bodies just ignored the ruling and allowed them to go right ahead and destroy the area,” Zobel said.

The mine’s owners declined to comment on the fight, now almost two decades old.

A “spectacularly beautiful desert creek”

The fight began in the early 1990s, when residents and environmentalists first became alarmed at plans that called for the Carlota Mine to displace an entire mile of Pinto Creek to construct an open pit.

“Pinto Creek is a spectacularly beautiful desert creek,” said Don Steuter, a longtime opponent of the mine and the conservation chair of the Sierra Club‘s Grand Canyon Chapter. It “is one of the last remaining examples of what desert creeks should look like. I mean, it’s just spectacular.”

The creek west of Miami, Ariz., starts south of Highway 60 and runs 30 miles through the Tonto National Forest before emptying into Roosevelt Lake.

“Pinto Creek was one of the few, last free-flowing streams from source to the lake, and it went through a very . . . scenic nice area,” Zobel said. “They wanted to destroy this area for a very short-term, limited project.”

No less an Arizona icon than former Sen. Barry Goldwater cited the need to preserve the creek, after it landed on a list of the nation’s most endangered waterways in 1996.

“Maybe we need copper, but we also need exceptional places like Pinto Creek,” the Arizona Republic quoted Goldwater as saying. “We’ve lost a lot of little gems like Pinto Creek in Arizona over the years for various reasons. How many more can we afford to lose?”

Original plans called for the mine to discharge copper into Pinto Creek, which was already impaired by the metal. Because of the proposed creek discharge, the mine needed a permit from the Environmental Protection Agency certifying that the project met standards under the Clean Water Act.

Opponents worried that the mine would destroy the area, and that high copper levels in Pinto Creek would harm its aquatic life, but they could not act until the permit – a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit – was issued.

The permit was issued in 2000 and the opponents began mounting challenges, eventually ending up in court with their fight.

In 2007, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the NPDES permit, ruling that the EPA incorrectly allowed discharge of a pollutant into water already impaired by that pollutant. The court said the Clean Water Act requires that any permit include a plan to actually improve polluted waters, not just maintain them.

“Do we allow people to add more pollutants to (impaired waters) or do we clean them up?” asked Roger Flynn, the attorney who argued the case for the Friends of Pinto Creek. “That was the main issue.”

Two years later, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the 9th Circuit ruling, handing Zobel an apparent victory and potentially raising environmental protections for the country’s more than 41,000 impaired waters.

“We were going up against $500-an-hour attorneys and all we had was Roger (Flynn), and Roger won,” Zobel said.

The ruling’s impact – elsewhere

Some believe the ruling in Friends of Pinto Creek v. EPA has affected the way EPA and industry lawyers approach such cases.

“Pinto Creek has had an enormous influence on water-quality policy, I think, nationwide,” said Rick Parrish, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “I consider it one of the most important Clean Water Act decisions ever.

“Regulators and dischargers and environmental groups are all significantly attuned now in the wake of the Pinto Creek decision,” he said.

Craig Johnston, a professor at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Ore., notes that only a handful of cases have cited Pinto Creek. But he said that may be a sign the EPA changed its procedures after the decision.

“I think EPA is very aware of this opinion nationally,” he said. “At least until EPA decides what to do about it nationally, I suspect it’s saying, ‘Let’s live with it, and let’s follow it.’”

But while the Pinto Creek ruling may have had an effect elsewhere, it had little apparent impact on Pinto Creek.

“We thought that they would have to have a permit . . . and that that would trigger a cleanup,” Steuter said. “But they avoided that.”

Between the time that Carlota applied for its permits and the time of the circuit court decision, the EPA largely handed the responsibility for issuing and enforcing water permits over to the states. And the Carlota Mine reworked its plan, building impoundments to retain wastewater instead of discharging into Pinto Creek.

“As long as a facility doesn’t discharge, theoretically it could operate,” said Taunt, of ADEQ. “That’s what Carlota is doing, is trying to internalize all of their discharges. All of their discharges go back to the pit essentially.”

She said state inspectors have checked the site multiple times and have only found discharges into Pinto Creek tributaries – Haunted Canyon and Powers Gulch -  which are permitted.

The mine now operates under a Multi-Sector General Permit, issued in 2000 by the EPA and up for renewal now with the state. Taunt said the state expects to send a letter shortly renewing the MSGP permit, but that there have been some concerns, the biggest being whether the mine is discharging wastewater from points that were not approved in the 2000 permit.

Taunt said it is unlikely that all the discharge points on the new application will be approved, “so we just need to make sure that we tell them the ones that are. And then they’re going to have to do probably what they did before and make large impoundments in these other ones to make sure they never discharge.”

Another concern is the temperature at which Carlota pumps water back into Haunted Canyon.

Carlota pumps water from wells at Haunted Canyon for mine operations. Because that can reduce Pinto Creek flows, the mine has to pump the used water back into Haunted Canyon, and that water eventually flows to the creek.

“At certain times of the year that pumped water is warmer than the ambient stream temperature,” Taunt said. “So we need them to do something to make it more like the stream temperature so it doesn’t cause any more problems.”

Another fight, or a moot point?

For mine opponents, who thought the circuit court ruling would lead to a cleaner Pinto Creek, the continued operation of the mine has been a disappointment. They believe the state has been too lenient and has given Carlota too much time to comply with standards.

“Who knows if the EPA would have done a better job – we’ll never know – but ADEQ, obviously, we feel is not enforcing the law properly,” Flynn said. “They have to protect the stream, and that’s what they’ve been dragging their heels on.”

Flynn, who first raised concerns about the Haunted Canyon water-temperature issues last July, now charges that the state is letting the mine pump the put-back water without a permit. He argues that the mine needs an NPDES permit for the put-back water, but that state officials “just ignore it, and look the other way in hopes the mine will continue.”

“They have yet to enforce the 9th Circuit’s decision,” Flynn said. “They’ve been dragging their heels.”

Taunt agrees that pumping put-back water is not covered by the 2000 permit, but she said the state does not believe that requires an NPDES permit.

“It’s surface water to surface water as far as we’re concerned,” Taunt said. “It has very low levels of copper, if any, so it’s well below the surface-water standard. So we’re looking at authorizing it as an ancillary discharge.”

Taunt said that even though opponents are “disappointed that the mine is operating,” the state is doing its job, by inspecting and interacting with Carlota and the other mines in the Globe area.

“Our role is to make sure they’re operating within the permits we issue. That’s our job,” she said.

In the meantime, opponents are waiting for the state’s next move before they decide what to do, which could include filing another lawsuit.

“We’re waiting to see what Arizona does about all these permitting issues . . .  if ADEQ ever gets around to issuing these permits,” Flynn said. “They’ve been dragging their feet for years to avoid having Carlota comply with the law.”

But any action at this point may be moot.

Quadra FNX, the company that took control of the Carlota Mine from Cambior Inc. in 2005, said in its 2011 annual report for Carlota that it plans to end mining operations there in 2013. Quadra FNX was acquired earlier this year by another company, KGHM International.

In the last two years, more than 30 million pounds of copper were extracted from Carlota, bringing in almost $200 million in revenue, the annual report said. But it reported an operating loss of $66.8 million as a result of production costs and other expenses during that two-year period.

While pleased with the news that mining could stop in 2013, for Carlota’s opponents “the damage is done.”

“They took this pristine area . . . for a little bit of copper, only half of which they ever got,” Zobel said.

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Web links:

_ Circuit court ruling: http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2007/10/03/0570785.pdf

_ Arizona Department of Environmental Quality: http://www.azdeq.gov/

_ ADEQ MSGP information: http://www.azdeq.gov/environ/water/permits/msgp.html

_ Friends of Pinto Creek: http://sites.google.com/site/pintocreek/

_ Quadra FNX: http://www.quadrafnx.com/en/

_ Quadra FNX 2011 Annual Report: http://www.quadrafnx.com/en/docs/Q4%202011%20QuadraFNX%20MDA.pdf

_ Sierra Club, Grand Canyon chapter: http://www.arizona.sierraclub.org/

_ Mine timeline: https://www.facebook.com/carlota.pinto.history

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SIDEBARS:

A Carlota Mine timeline

Planning for the Carlota copper mine began almost two decades ago. It has since operated through several owners, different regulators and administrative and court challenges, and is currently slated to close in 2013. Click here for a timeline of the mine.

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A water and copper primer

Like other copper mines, the open-pit Carlota Mine requires a large amount of water to operate, for everything from flushing toilets to getting copper ore out of the rock it mines.

On a daily basis, Carlota uses 590 gallons of water per minute, according to multiple documents from federal regulatory agencies. A small amount is used for dust control, to water down roads used by trucks on the mine site, and for “general production purposes,” which Don Zobel described as “toilets and such.”

A large amount of water has to be kept in storage at all times, said Tom Sonandres, of Friends of Pinto Creek, to respond to fires and to continue operating in winter months when the mine does not have access to as much water as other times of the year.

But most of the water is needed to extract the tiny portions of copper that are locked away in the rocks.

To get at the ore, mines crush and grind rocks into very small pieces.  There are various techniques that can then be used to extract copper from the crushed rock. Carlota uses sulfuric leaching, in which acidic water is pumped through ore piled on a leach pad, to leach the copper from the rocks.

To do all those jobs, the Carlota Mine pumps water from wells in Haunted Canyon, a tributary of Pinto Creek. Because that has been known to have reduced flows of Haunted Canyon, the U.S. Forest Service required Carlota to put back some of that water into Haunted Canyon. That water eventually flows into Pinto Creek, through a mitigation system, according to Linda Taunt at the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.

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Former Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater asked how many “little gems like Pinto Creek,” shown here, the state could afford to lose, when the creek was placed on an endangered waterways list in 1996. (Photo courtesy Michael Brady)

Haunted Canyon, a short distance from its confluence with Pinto Creek. State officials recently expressed concern about the temperature water being pumped back into the canyon by a nearby mine. (Photo courtesy Don Steuter/Sierra Club)

Pinto Creek, near Globe, has been called a “spectacularly beautiful” example of a desert creek and one of the few free-flowing examples left. (Photo courtesy Michael Brady)

State officials say some discharges into two main tributaries of Pinto Creek – Haunted Canyon, shown here, and Powers Gulch – are permitted. (Photo courtesy Michael Brady)

TODAY’S NEWS

A year after preferential treatment ban, little change on state’s campuses

WASHINGTON – It’s been more than a year since Arizona voters passed Proposition 107 banning preferential treatment in state services based on race, ethnicity and gender – but little has changed on the state’s university campuses in that time. Undergraduate enrollment officials say they never considered race in the first place – others say the schools were never selective enough for race to make a difference – and that minority enrollment has actually increased slightly. The state’s professional schools have seen a slight dip in minority enrollment, but have found other ways to maintain a diverse class. And campus programs targeting specific groups still operate under their original intent to “serve an underrepresented population” while complying with the new law. Eds: Can run with BC-CNS-Mother Daughter.

Slug: BC-CNS-Affirmative Inaction. About 1,300 words. By Stephanie Snyder.

File photos available (thumbnails, captions below)

Hispanic Mother-Daughter Program still going strong under new law

WASHINGTON - Opponents of Proposition 107 had a favorite warning in the debate leading up to the vote: Pass the ban on racial preferences, they said, and it would mean the end of programs like the Arizona State University’s Hispanic Mother-Daughter Program, which aims to increase the odds for Hispanic women who would be the first in their families to attend college. The proposition passed, but the program still exists. But now, officials say the Hispanic Mother-Daughter Program is, theoretically at least, open to more than just Hispanic mothers and daughters. Eds: Accompanies BC-CNS-Affirmative Inaction.

Slug: BC-CNS-Mother Daughter. About 700 words. By Stephanie Snyder.

After 20 years of fighting, opponents of Pinto Creek mine wonder what’s next

WASHINGTON – The fight began in the early 1990s, when residents near Globe became alarmed at plans for a copper mine on the pristine Pinto Creek. They thought their administrative and legal battles were over in 2009 when the U.S. Supreme Court handed them an apparent victory that some believed would change the way water-quality rules were enforced across the country. But while the legal fight over one point was dragging on, the Carlota Mine changed its operating procedures and got the go-ahead to start mining, which it’s still doing today. “We finally prevailed, and it was a big deal at the time,” said mine opponent Don Zobel of the court ruling. ”Or at least it seemed to be.”

Slug: BC-CNS-Pinto Creek. About 1,700 words. By Salvador Rodriguez.

Sidebars: Mine timeline, facts on mining and water.

Photos available (thumbnails, captions below)

SPECIAL REPORTS

Sacred ground? Citing significant views, tribe pushes back against solar plant

QUARTZSITE – A fisherman lies in the foothills of the western Arizona’s Plomosa Mountains, an image scraped into desert soil by prehistoric Native Americans and protected from tourists’ tennis shoes by a Bureau of Land Management fence. The Bouse Fisherman Intaglio is said to represent Kumastamo, a god who thrust his spear into the ground to make the Colorado River flow. For centuries, members of Native American tribes along the river have had a spiritual connection to the La Posa Plain, which unravels across the bleak desert toward distant mountains. Dig a hole and you’re likely to find prehistoric artifacts. “It can be as small as stone flakes to make a stone tool or as big as a village site,” said John Bathke, historic preservation officer for the Quechan Indian Tribe. “There were many tribes that came here to trade, live, sing, worship.” The undisturbed landscape stretching between mountains, known as a viewshed, is as precious to tribes as the fisherman itself. According to the BLM, seven of 18 viewsheds on or around La Posa Plain are sacred to various tribes.

Slug: BC-CNS-Sacred Ground. 1950 words. By Jessica Testa.

Photos available (thumbnails, captions below)

When giving to political candidates, higher ed employees favor Democrats

PHOENIX – When they open their wallets for congressional and presidential candidates, professors, administrators and staff at Arizona’s public universities and colleges are far more likely to donate to Democrats than Republicans, a Cronkite News Service review found. Of the $733,000 this group donated in elections since 2008, about 85 percent went to Democrats, according to Federal Elections Commission records. That runs counter to overall giving by Arizonans, which ran about 2-1 for Republicans.

Slug: BC-CNS-Academy-Donations. 1200 words. By Nicole Gilbert.

Sidebar: Giving by type of election.

NOTE: Lists of donors by type of election are posted on our site.

WEEKEND SPECIALS

Arizona’s federal feuds as old as state – but sharper and more frequent than ever

WASHINGTON – Lots of states feud with the federal government, but Arizona has become something of a poster child. For the second time in as many years, the state was defending itself before the U.S. Surpeme Court last week, and a third case could be coming. State lawmakers want state land back from the federal government and a proposed state initiative would let voters reject federal laws they don’t like. Gov. Jan Brewer’s finger-wagging tarmac tiff with President Barack Obama led Time magazine to say “Arizona has faced off with the federal government like no other state in recent memory.” Other governors tell off the president, other states want federal lands back and Arizona’s not even the leader in litigation against the feds: Texas and Florida have more suits. But no other state gets Arizona’s notoriety. And political observers from both sides of the aisle agree that while the feuding is not unusual, the recent level of anger is. “In my lifetime, government officials are taking the most extreme positions I have ever seen,” said former state Attorney General Grant Woods. Eds: Can run with BC-CNS-Feud Side.

Slug: BC-CNS-Federal Feud. 1,420 words. By Dustin Volz.

Photos available (thumbnails, captions below)

One option in ongoing feud with the federal government: Tell the feds to go away

WASHINGTON – Jack Biltis moved to Arizona from Montreal at age 16 to “escape” from Canada’s government and he’s not about to take marching orders from an overreaching central government in his adopted home. The Phoenix businessman is pushing a ballot initiative that would let Arizona voters “reject any federal action that they determine violates the U.S. Constitution.” It’s one of two measures being consided in Arizona that would let the state tell the federal government to buzz off, the other being a bill that would make the federal government hand over the millions of acres of land it holds in Arizona by 2014. While the measures may be popular in Arizona experts say they would stand little chance of holding up in court if passed. Eds: Accompanies BC-CNS-Federal Feud.

Slug: BC-CNS-Feud Side. 640 words. By Dustin Volz.

Photos available (thumbnails, captions below)

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PHOTOS: Click a thumbnail for full-size image.

SACRED GROUND

John Bathke, historic preservation officer for the Quechan Indian Tribe, looks toward the horizon where a planned 653-foot solar tower would appear. (Cronkite News Service Photo by Jessica Testa)

The view from the Bouse Fisherman Intaglio near Quartzsite. For centuries, Native Americans have been connected to the La Posa Plain. (Cronkite News Service Photo by Jessica Testa)

Tourists circle the Bouse Fisherman Intaglio. (Cronkite News Service Photo by Jessica Testa)

A Bureau of Land Management fence protects the historic Bouse Fisherman Intaglio. (Cronkite News Service Photo by Jessica Testa)

FEDERAL FEUD

A flag outside last week’s Supreme Court hearing on SB 1070 sums up the feelings of some in Arizona toward the federal government. (Cronkite News Service photo by Stephanie Snyder)

Russell Pearce, the architect of Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law, carried copies of the law and the U.S. Constitution outside the Supreme Court, the scene of the latest in a series of fights between the federal and state governments. (Cronkite News Service photo by Stephanie Snyder)

FEUD SIDE

Federal land ownership is one source of Western states’ frustration with the federal government. Less than 30 percent of land in Arizona is held by private individuals or state or local governments. The rest is federal or tribal land. (Map courtesy Arizona Department of Transportation)

Phoenix businessman Jack Biltis has launched the Checks and Balances in Government initiative to give state voters the right to reject any federal law they they deem violates the U.S. Constitution. (Photo courtesy Jack Biltis)

Sen. Al Melvin, R-Tucson, says it is “blatantly unfair” for the federal government to hold so much land in Western states, which is why he’s sponsored a bill that would take back some of that land in Arizona. (Photo courtesy Al Melvin)

AFFIRMATIVE INACTION

Officials at Arizona State University,  above, said their long-standing policy of “inclusivity” in admissions meant a new law banning racial or other preferences had little impact. Minority enrollment is actually up slightly in the last year. (Cronkite News Service photo by Stephanie Snyder)

Minority enrollment at the state’s law and medical schools dipped slightly, but campus officials are not sure yet if Proposition 107 is the cause. At University of Arizona, the medical school no longer considers race in admissions but looks at other factors to ensure a diverse student body. (Photo by Ken Lund via Creative Commons/flickr)

PINTO CREEK

Former Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater asked how many “little gems like Pinto Creek,” shown here, the state could afford to lose, when the creek was placed on an endangered waterways list in 1996. (Photo courtesy Michael Brady.)

Haunted Canyon, a short distance from its confluence with Pinto Creek. State officials recently expressed concern about the temperature water being pumped back into the canyon by a nearby mine. (Photo courtesy Don Steuter/Sierra Club)

Pinto Creek, near Globe, has been called a “spectacularly beautiful” example of a desert creek and one of the few free-flowing examples left. (Photo courtesy Michael Brady.)

State officials say some discharges into two main tributaries of Pinto Creek – Haunted Canyon, shown here, and Powers Gulch – are permitted. (Photo courtesy Michael Brady.)

By JESSICA TESTA
Cronkite News Service

QUARTZSITE – A fisherman lies in the foothills of the western Arizona’s Plomosa Mountains, an image scraped into desert soil by prehistoric Native Americans and protected from tourists’ tennis shoes by a Bureau of Land Management fence.

The Bouse Fisherman Intaglio is said to represent Kumastamo, a god who thrust his spear into the ground to make the Colorado River flow.

For centuries, members of Native American tribes along the river have had a spiritual connection to the La Posa Plain, which unravels across the bleak desert toward distant mountains. Dig a hole and you’re likely to find prehistoric artifacts.

“It can be as small as stone flakes to make a stone tool or as big as a village site,” said John Bathke, historic preservation officer for the Quechan Indian Tribe. “There were many tribes that came here to trade, live, sing, worship.”

The undisturbed landscape stretching between mountains, known as a viewshed, is as precious to tribes as the fisherman itself. According to the BLM, seven of 18 viewsheds on or around La Posa Plain are sacred to various tribes.

But unlike the fisherman, sacred viewsheds aren’t protected.

By this time next year, a 653-foot solar tower – an industrial pipe taller than the Washington Monument – will rise from La Posa Plain if the Quartzsite Solar Energy Project earns BLM approval this summer. The top of the tower would be visible from Bouse Fisherman Intaglio and in other sacred viewsheds.

“You’re looking at having this alien structure dropped down in the middle of our traditional spiritual area,” Bathke said.

Solar plants and wind farms are spreading quickly throughout the American Southwest; so far in Arizona, the BLM has identified more than 237,000 acres of public land as optimal for renewable energy developments.

While there are laws that can preserve sites with Native American artifacts, none are devoted to protecting viewsheds. Tribes have little power to halt or stop developments on land they don’t own and are only consulted by the BLM about their connection to a potential project’s land, be it historical or spiritual.

But to Bathke and his tribe, whose reservation lies along the Colorado River near Yuma, that consultation is little more than a formality.

“Many of us – not just Quechans – feel like our concerns aren’t being taken seriously,” Bathke said.

By the time applications for renewable energy developments go through BLM and get to the tribes, they’ve become massive binders – or sets of binders – that include environmental impact statements. Tribes are asked to read through these 500-page studies and respond with comments within 30 days.

“It took two years for them to develop it. How are we supposed to respond in a month?” Bathke said.

After watching the federal government go forward with a series of wind farms and solar plants that various tribes of the Southwest opposed, the Quechans are beginning to fight back, calling for a more meaningful consultation process – one that better acknowledges their religious beliefs.

“We always have to justify our spiritual experience,” Bathke said. “What if someone wanted to put solar panels on the Vatican? Would that be acceptable?”

‘Sensitive viewers’

Bathke’s office is in a trailer atop a hill on the Quechan reservation, close to the police station and other government buildings. The fluorescent-lit room, lined with maps, doesn’t have enough shelf space for all of the binders with proposals to review.

The Quartsize Solar Energy Project on La Posa Plain is one of three major solar developments that the Quechans currently oppose.

For Bathke, the biggest irony is that Native Americans actually support renewable energy initiatives.

“Renewables are in agreement with a lot of traditional Native American values, such as developing a responsible relationship with the earth,” Bathke said. “But ideally we’d like to see projects on disturbed land that doesn’t disrupt traditional viewsheds.”

Most developers look first at land that has already been dug up, built on or used for agriculture. But such land only accounts for a fraction of Arizona’s desert.

“It’s kind of like the land rush of the 1800s,” Bathke said. “If we let one in and then the next, soon this area will just be one big solar panel.”

Like all environmental impact statements, the document for the Quartzite project includes reports of cultural resources found by archaeologists. These resources include anything associated with history or prehistory, from artifacts indicating significant historical events to sacred or religious sites.

The statement also includes a list of viewsheds in the project area and “sensitive viewers” – groups that would be affected by a change in a viewshed.

As a result of consultation with tribes, the environmental impact statement expanded the distance for consideration of potential harm to views from three miles to 25.

Of the 18 notable viewsheds surrounding the project, tribes are listed as sensitive viewers for seven of them, including the view from the Bouse Fisherman Intaglio.

The final environmental impact statement on the Quartzsite project is expected to be released this summer, with a decision to follow in short order.

Cultural geography

Contact with the Quechans was first recorded in the late 1700s by Spanish explorers. The tribe lived and traded near the Colorado River and fought against the U.S. in the Yuma War of the 1850s.

The word “colonization” comes up often in conversation with Bathke and Lorey Cachora, a consultant to the culture committee that advises the Quechan Tribal Council.

“If you have a cultural site, that’s one thing that wasn’t taken away from you in the way of law,” Cachora said. “You have your sacredness, and that’s yours.”

In response to the tribes’ frustrations over consultation, the BLM has asked them to draw maps of their sacred landmarks. Many have resisted.

“Maps have historically been used against the tribes,” Bathke said. That applies to public information as well as battles over territory, he said; if these maps were to be released, sacred sites could become tourist destinations.

While most of the battles over viewsheds play out in the Southwest, the flat, hot heart of renewable energy country, disputes between tribes and the federal government can happen anywhere, said Steven Moore, an attorney with the Native American Rights Fund in Colorado.

“When you’ve got a landscape with 10,000 years of occupation, there is always the potential for disturbing archaeological sites,” Moore said.

The problem stems, in part, from BLM’s hurry to get projects approved, Moore said. Tribes may be more willing to help the federal government and provide critical information about their cultural geography if the BLM spent more time building up a relationship of trust and respect.

“These conversations between tribes and the BLM need to occur over a period of years, not months,” he said. “Hit-and-run conversation does not play well with the tribes.”

The BLM view

Connie Stone, an archaeologist with the BLM in Arizona, couldn’t agree more that tribes and the agency need to make communication an ongoing process.

“We need to figure out a better way to do this,” she said. “There has to be some level of trust.”

However, she said that maps – or any sort of deeper information about the viewsheds that tribes want to protect – would be exponentially more useful in the application and planning process.

“For good reason, they might not want to disclose that to us. But in order to do a good environmental analysis and to find ways to mitigate potentially bad effects, we need that information,” said Stone, who works in BLM Arizona’s Renewable Energy Coordination Office, another office with binders stacked to the ceiling.

“Is the view only important when looking out from a peak? Or is to a peak? Or between peaks?” she said.

The Quechans maintain that it’s impossible to encompass a tribe’s culture or spirituality with a pin on a map.

“People outside this area view the desert as a dry wasteland,” Bathke said. “When you go out there, there’s cultural material everywhere.”

In a statement to Cronkite News Service, the Quechan Tribal Council explained what it ultimately wants from BLM: to be approached much earlier in the application process and “to not be treated as an afterthought,” as well as the opportunity to review with the federal government how current consultation laws are being implemented.

In response, Stone said her office has examined ways to bring the tribes in before the environmental impact study begins.

As for the second request, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, an independent federal agency, has made it a 2012 priority to develop policy and guidance to deal with cultural landscape issues.

Stone said she would like to see more conversations between officials on the level above her and Bathke – among BLM managers and tribal councils. Archaeologists are the first point of contact for tribes, but they aren’t trained in diplomacy.

“I do wish we had professional help to handle dispute resolutions. You know, bring in Hillary Clinton or something,” said Stone, laughing. “Some days I feel like, am I an architect or an attorney?”

While Bathke and Stone said they respect each other’s work, Bathke characterizes the Quechan-BLM relationship as a “David and Goliath-in-the-desert kind of fight.”

Stone says the Quechans live up to their heritage.

“They were warriors traditionally” she said. “In a way, I think they’re warriors again.”

Changing dynamics

The Quartzsite project isn’t the first solar farm to be opposed by Native Americans in the Southwest.

In November 2011, construction halted at the Genesis Solar Power Project, a $1 billion plant near Blythe, Calif., when workers dug up grinding stones, indicating the area may have been used for cremation in ancient times. The National American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act requires federal agencies to return these artifacts to the proper tribe, which can often delay a project.

Tribes opposing further development of the project included the Quechan, Fort Mojave, Agua Caliente, Torres Martinez, Soboba and the Colorado River Indian Tribes.

The Quechans have also opposed the Ocotillo Express Wind Project, a site located near the bottom of a California mountain that figures in the Quechan creation story. Construction hasn’t begun, but the Quechans predict that developers will find artifacts there too.

Despite their issues with the consultation process, the Quechans have won a few battles with the federal government.

In 2010, the Quechans were granted an injunction against the Department of the Interior in a case that found that the BLM hadn’t properly consulted the tribe on an Imperial Valley solar project.

Meaningful consultation was a requirement for that project under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, which requires that the government go through a review process for all projects eligible for or listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Sara Bronin, director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Law at the University of Connecticut School of Law, teaches the case in her classes. Although today’s consultation processes are still flawed, she said, the 2010 case forced the federal government to involve tribes in decision-making, changing the dynamic of government-to-government relationships.

“This is an emerging and important area of law. As we try and build more large scale projects in rural areas, we’re going to keep hitting up against the issue,” Bronin said. “We’re going to, as a nation, grapple with how we want to solve it.”

The National American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and the National Historic Preservation Act don’t outright protect sacred viewsheds or lands, but they are powerful tools in delaying projects or changing the development plans to lessen cultural impact.

“These laws don’t necessarily have the means to stop development, but they’re fairly effective mitigation tools,” she said.

Environmentalists and tribes have also formed a unique partnership in fighting some of these high-impact projects. The Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Protection Act can be used to delay or halt projects when development has the potential to damage wildlife or ecosystems.

For example, biologists believe that at the Genesis construction zone near Blythe repellents used to push animals away from the area weakened the immune systems of kit foxes, contributing to the outbreak of canine distemper and the death of more than eight foxes.

“We can have solar energy, we can have wind energy and we can still respect the cultural and natural values of the land,” said Sandy Bahr, director of the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter. “Not everything translates easily into an environmental impact statement. If a tribe is saying that this is really significant and will harm their cultural values, the federal government needs to listen to them.”

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John Bathke, historic preservation officer for the Quechan Indian Tribe, looks toward the horizon where a planned 653-foot solar tower would appear. (Cronkite News Service Photo by Jessica Testa)

The view from the Bouse Fisherman Intaglio near Quartzsite. For centuries, Native Americans have been connected to the La Posa Plain. (Cronkite News Service Photo by Jessica Testa)

Tourists circle the Bouse Fisherman Intaglio. (Cronkite News Service Photo by Jessica Testa)

A Bureau of Land Management fence protects the historic Bouse Fisherman Intaglio. (Cronkite News Service Photo by Jessica Testa)

By DUSTIN VOLZ
Cronkite News Service

WASHINGTON – Lots of states feud with the federal government. But Arizona has become something of a poster child of late.

Gov. Jan Brewer’s finger-wagging tarmac confrontation with President Barack Obama made national news in January. Her subsequent nomination to a Time magazine online poll of the 100 most influential people in the world was evidence, the magazine said, that “Arizona has faced off with the federal government like no other state in recent memory” under her leadership.

The state was in the Supreme Court last week defending itself against a Justice Department lawsuit over Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law – just a year after it won another Supreme Court case the feds had filed over the state’s E-verify employer sanctions law.

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne – who said earlier this year that his office is enmeshed in eight lawsuits with the federal government – is vowing to press another case to the high court, after a circuit court rejected part of the state’s voter registration law this month.

And state lawmakers just passed a bill demanding that the federal government hand back the millions of acres it owns in Arizona, while a Phoenix businessman is pushing a ballot initiative that would let voters flat-out reject any federal law they disagree with.

“We are commonly known as being very Western strong,” Brewer told Cronkite News in January. “We have always been kind of a leader in states’ rights. We have been affected immensely by some of the (federal) policies and we just can’t sit back and let that happen to Arizona.”

Still, other governors tell off the president. Other states have threatened to take back their federal lands. Arizona’s not even the leader in litigation against the feds: Attorneys general from Texas and Florida said this spring they are handling about a dozen and at least 10 lawsuits, respectively, against Washington.

But no other state gets the same notoriety as Arizona.

“The reason these ideas take root in Arizona more than other places is because Arizona really is the last vestige of the American spirit that bristles at the notion of federal bureaucrats running everything from Washington, D.C.,” said Nick Dranias, director of the Center for Constitutional Government at the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix.

And longtime political observers from both sides of the aisle agree that while the feuding is not unusual, the current level of anger is.

“In my lifetime, (Arizona) government officials are taking the most extreme positions I have ever seen,” said former state Attorney General Grant Woods, a Republican and one-time chief of staff to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. “SB 1070 and a few other things have gone too far.”

“Cemented in Arizona’s culture”

Fights between Arizona and the federal government trace back long before illegal immigration and border security became the top combustible political issues. They trace back, even, to before Arizona was a state.

The territory of Arizona was initially denied statehood when President William Howard Taft vetoed its proposed constitution over a provision that would have let Arizonans recall judges. The territory struck the provision, reapplied and, with Taft’s blessing, Arizona became a state on Feb. 14, 1912.

Later that year, Arizonans put the authority to recall judges back in the state constitution.

“This is your first example of Arizona fighting back against federal overreach,” said Christina Sandefur, a staff attorney also with the Goldwater Institute. “It’s something that is cemented in Arizona’s culture.

“From the very beginning, Arizona has been very, very protective of the rights of states, and really the rights to go its own way,” Sandefur said.

Arizona’s anti-establishment tradition is not unique among states in the interior West. The region has a long, entrenched history of antagonism toward Washington, said Gregg Cawley, a political science professor at the University of Wyoming.

“You’d be hard pressed to find anyone in the Mountain West who hasn’t had some expression of animosity toward the federal government,” Cawley said.

Much of that animosity stems from disputes over federal land management, said Cawley. His book “Federal Land, Western Anger” explores the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s and 1980s, in which a coalition of Western states demanded the federal government give state and local authorities more control of Western lands.

“The basic problem is the amount of federal land that is located out here, which gives the federal government more of a presence,” Cawley said. “The perception of a lot of Western states is that autonomy … is constantly in jeopardy.”

In most states, the federal government typically owns less than 5 percent of the land. In Western states, that number is closer to 40 or 50 percent.

In Arizona, a state of almost 73 million acres, federal agencies own about 44 percent of the land, said Joseph Feller, a natural resources and property law professor at Arizona State University. Another 27 percent is allocated to Indian reservations.

Only about 14 percent is private or municipally owned and the remaining 15 percent – just 11 million acres – is owned by the state.

Most suggest that Arizona’s culture of independence is also a basic characteristic of the people who settled there – and who continue to do so today.

“If you can imagine what type of person moved out here in the late 1800s or early 1900s, when it’s 120 degrees and no air conditioning, you had to have a hearty soul, and didn’t care about what was going on back in Washington,” Woods said.

“Just as other states have certain themes running throughout its history, Arizona has always had an anti-establishment mentality and we continue to attract those same kind of people,” he said.

An anti-Washington “perfect storm”

But the state’s historic anti-establishment animosity has hardened in recent years, most observers say.

To some, mostly Democrats, Arizona’s recent clashes with Washington are the result of years of political, economic and cultural changes at the national and state levels.

Republicans gained strength in the state legislature. Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano left to take over the Department of Homeland Security in 2009, handing the seat to Brewer, a Republican. With Brewer’s decision to stake her re-election on being tough on immigration, conservatives were able to push through bills such as SB 1070, said Randy Parraz, a Democrat who unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate in 2010.

“It was a perfect storm for them to appeal to the xenophobic, anti-Latino sentiment,” Parraz said. “When did the federal government become the enemy?”

Others reject the notion that bills like SB 1070 are only matter of partisan politics.

“People in general are feeling the need to draw the line with greater passion because there’s so little left to defend from federal overreach,” said Dranias of the Goldwater Institute. “The federal government is reaching out and literally trying to take away the last vestiges of authority states have.

“We’re fortunate to be in a state where people aren’t going to stand for that,” he said.

But the federal government hasn’t always been “the enemy,” as Parraz says. There have been moments in Arizona’s 100-year history of “tremendous cooperation” with Washington that are usually to the state’s benefit, said former state Attorney General Terry Goddard.

Past cooperation led to the creation of partnerships such as the Salt River Project, began in 1903, and the Central Arizona Project, began in 1968, said Goddard, a Democrat.

“Those would not have happened without major federal leadership and cooperation with state authorities,” Goddard said in March. “Ninety percent of the time we got a lot more with sugar than an attack.”

But Horne sees it differently. He believes Arizona is targeted by the Obama administration for lawsuits because the state is under the jurisdiction of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which he called the “most liberal circuit in the country.”

Horne said the federal government is out of touch with Arizona, and that many Washington policymakers are entrenched in age-old perceptions of the state.

“They live with the kind of East Coast myth about people in Arizona being against Latinos, being against immigrants,” Horne said in March. “None of that is true. We’re only against illegal immigration.”

Regardless of who’s to blame for the strained relationship, observers agree it is not likely to change anytime soon.

“Where does it end? I don’t know,” said Woods, the former Republican attorney general. “You think we have every possible gun law in place and then they come up with another one. You think they’ve passed every possible abortion law and they come up with another one.”

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Web links:

_ Jan Brewer Time 100: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2107952_2107953_2109973,00.html

_ SB 1070: http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/summary/s.1070pshs.doc.htm

_ Arizona Attorney General’s Office: http://www.azag.gov/

_ Goldwater Institute: http://goldwaterinstitute.org/

_ “Federal Land, Western Anger”: http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/cawfed.html

_ Salt River Project: https://www.srpnet.com/

_ Central Arizona Project: http://www.cap-az.com/

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Russell Pearce, the architect of Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law, carried copies of the law and the U.S. Constitution outside the Supreme Court, the scene of the latest in a series of fights between the federal and state governments. (Cronkite News Service photo by Stephanie Snyder)

A flag outside last week’s Supreme Court hearing on SB 1070 sums up the feelings of some in Arizona toward the federal government. (Cronkite News Service photo by Stephanie Snyder)

By DUSTIN VOLZ
Cronkite News Service

WASHINGTON – Jack Biltis moved to Arizona from Montreal at age 16 to “escape” from what he said was Canada’s more-socialized government. He’s not about to take marching orders from an overreaching central government in his adopted home.

That’s why the Phoenix businessman is pushing a ballot initiative that would let Arizona voters “reject any federal action that they determine violates the U.S. Constitution.”

“It’s a very simple proposal,” Biltis said. “It gives the Arizona people the right to check-and-balance the federal government.”

His Checks and Balances in Government initiative is one of at least two measures currently being considered in Arizona that would let the state tell the federal government to buzz off.

The other is a bill from state Sen. Al Melvin, R-Tucson, that would require the federal government hand over to the state the millions of acres of land it holds in Arizona by 2014, or start paying property taxes. The bill, SB 1332 has passed both the House and Senate and is awaiting action by Gov. Jan Brewer.

“It’s really blatantly unfair,” how much land the federal government owns in Western states, Melvin said. “I believe, and others believe, that the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and others are totally mismanaging these federal lands.”

While the measures may be popular in Arizona – Biltis is so confident he can get the 250,000 signatures needed to put his initiative on the ballot that he is mortgaging his house for the campaign – experts say they would stand little chance of holding up in court if passed.

Melvin’s bill in particular is a legal “non-starter” because both the federal Constitution and Arizona Constitution make it “crystal clear” the lands are rightfully federal possessions, experts say.

“It makes a good scapegoat,” said Joseph Feller, a property law professor at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law. “You have this huge amount of land out there and it’s easy to say, ‘Wow, our economy would be booming if only the state could grab vast amounts of federal land.’

“But these lands are not filled with gold,” he said with a laugh.

To Gregg Cawley, a political science professor at the University of Wyoming, proposals like Biltis’ and Melvin’s are little more than ploys that conservatives use to ratchet up anti-federal sentiment anytime they want to gin up political support. Cawley has written about the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s and 1980s, in which some Western states demanded control of their federally held lands.

“What’s intriguing to me is how that animosity spreads from issue to issue,” Cawley said, noting immigration as an obvious example of federal-state friction. “It just gets repeated over and over again and people just nod their heads.”

But Biltis, for one, is not nodding his head along with other Arizona conservatives. He does not support SB 1070, the state’s controversial immigration enforcement bill, for example, saying he considers immigration to be a federal matter.

But he still thinks Washington has overreached its authority in many other areas, and hopes the Supreme Court will strike down President Barack Obama’s health-care reform law.

If it doesn’t, his Checks and Balances in Government initiative would let Arizona voters decide.

An initiative like his might have little shot of becoming law in most other states, but Arizona is not like most other states. Biltis said that early polls have indicated strong support for his measure.

Biltis, the president and owner of TAG Employer Services, hopes his initiative will inspire other states to seek similar remedies to push back against an overreaching federal government.

Arizona – and the country – needs more checks and balances than just the Supreme Court, Biltis said.

“As good as they are, they don’t always get it right,” he said of the Supreme Court’s justices. “They’re on the salary of the federal government.”

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Web links:

_ Checks and Balances initiative: http://www.azsos.gov/election/2012/General/BallotMeasureText/C-04-2012.pdf

_ Checks and Balances website: http://checksandbalancesaz.com/

_ “Federal Land, Western Anger”: http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/cawfed.html

_ TAG Employer Services: http://www.tagpay.com/

_ SB 1332: http://www.azleg.gov//FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/legtext/50leg/2r/bills/sb1332h.htm&Session_ID=107

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Federal land ownership is one source of Western states’ frustration with the federal government. Less than 30 percent of land in Arizona is held by private individuals or state or local governments. The rest is federal or tribal land. (Map courtesy Arizona Department of Transportation)

Phoenix businessman Jack Biltis has launched the Checks and Balances in Government initiative to give state voters the right to reject any federal law they they deem violates the U.S. Constitution. (Photo courtesy Jack Biltis)

Sen. Al Melvin, R-Tucson, says it is “blatantly unfair” for the federal government to hold so much land in Western states, which is why he’s sponsored a bill that would take back some of that land in Arizona. (Photo courtesy Al Melvin)

By NICOLE GILBERT
Cronkite News Service

PHOENIX – When they open their wallets for congressional and presidential candidates, professors, administrators and staff at Arizona’s public universities and colleges are far more likely to donate to Democrats than Republicans, a Cronkite News Service review found.

Of the $730,000 this group donated in elections since 2008, about 85 percent went to Democrats, according to Federal Election Commission records. That runs counter to overall giving by Arizonans, which ran about 2-1 for Republicans.

Higher education officials often come under fire from conservative politicians and commentators who claim that instructors – if not the instruction – favor Democrats or liberal causes. Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said the breakdown of donations suggests that most college professors are political liberals, something he said creates at least a subtle, unintentional bias.

“It deprives students of political diversity, and I find it disturbing,” said Kavanagh, who is a professor of justice studies at Scottsdale Community College.

But Terence Ball, an Arizona State University professor of political ideology, said that despite his donation of $200 to Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008 it would be “highly unethical” to impose his political beliefs on his students.

“If you come into my classroom as a conservative, I want you to leave as a more thoughtful and reflective conservative, not a socialist or liberal,” he said.

The review included donations from Arizona public university and college professors, administrators, librarians, physicians, teaching assistants and associate faculty.

In all, 1,060 people in those groups donated to presidential and congressional campaigns for 2008, 2010 and 2012. The donors from ASU, the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University accounted for about 3 percent of total faculty and staff at the universities.

For this year’s presidential election, 52 percent of donations through March 31, as GOP candidates have faced off in primaries, have gone to Democrats while 48 percent have gone to Republicans. For the 2008 presidential election, the breakdown was 89 percent for Democrats and 11 percent for Republicans.

For congressional elections in 2008 and 2010, 86 percent went to Democrats against 14 to Republicans. In 2010, 32 percent of donations went to U.S. Sen. John McCain’s re-election campaign against 68 to Democrats.

Rep. Tom Forese, R-Gilbert, who this year sponsored a successful bill aimed at prohibiting discrimination in higher-learning institutions based on a professor’s religious or political beliefs, said the figures suggest the need for a diversity of opinion in higher education.

“There’s a line somewhere, and my hope is that line isn’t getting crossed,” he said.

Policies at universities and community colleges don’t forbid political giving, though each institution has a policy against using school resources to advocate for candidates and causes.

Institutions are also required to abide by standards set by the Arizona Board of Regents like not allowing political participation to affect the objectivity of their teaching.

“We don’t restrict people from donating, but they don’t do it in the name of the university,” said Katie Paquet, spokeswoman for the Arizona Board of Regents.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Elizabeth Capaldi, the ASU provost and executive vice president who notifies employees about the university’s policy on political activity, contributed the maximum allowed for individuals – $2,300 at the time – to Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Capaldi declined requests for an interview but said in an email that ASU employees are free to make political contributions as individuals.

Eugene Sander, currently the University of Arizona’s interim president but a dean at the time, donated $520 to Democrat Rodney Glassman’s 2010 Senate campaign and $700 to Republican congressional candidate Timothy Bee in 2008.

“I do not support candidates one way or another unless it’s something so egregious you just can’t ignore it,” Sander said, adding that Glassman is a friend but that he normally votes Republican.

About 90 percent of the donations were by employees of ASU, UA and Northern Arizona University, while 10 percent came from community college employees.

Sharon Keeler, media relations director for ASU, said “there’s nothing impermissible” about faculty donating to political campaigns.

University of Arizona’s policy prohibits the wearing of campaign buttons during on-duty hours or off-duty hours while in a classroom or “other instructional setting.” Northern Arizona University’s policy prohibits employees from advocating for a candidate in the name of the university.

Clara M. Lovett, who retired as NAU’s president in 2001, donated $1,000 to the 2008 re-election campaign of Democratic U.S. Rep. Harry Mitchell but said she votes and donates money based on the candidate, not the party.

She added that people who are active politically tend to donate to Democratic candidates more.

“Helping the campaigns is very much a part of our freedom of speech as citizens,” she said. “As long as the money comes from your own personal checkbook and not the organization you work for, that’s your right to do so.”

At Maricopa County Community Colleges, spokesman Tom Gariepy said faculty cannot act on behalf of a community college district to influence an election.

“What this does not do is say anything about what people can do on their own time,” he said. “We don’t try to influence that in any way.”

Tiffany Andersen, a public speaking professor at Chandler-Gilbert Community College, said she doesn’t tell her students that she gave $500 to Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign or that she is conservative.

“When I was going to school for my undergraduate … I had a lot of professors who really seemed to push their liberal agenda so I kept quiet and didn’t participate,” she said. “I told myself I did not want to push any sort of agenda in the classroom.”

Self-proclaimed libertarian Dan Klein, a professor of economics at George Mason University, said that while students may not be directly influenced by their professors’ ideologies they aren’t being exposed to enough diversity of opinion.

“The people who are more collectivist or statist have just dominated,” he said.

University of British Columbia sociologist Neil Gross, who has done research on political leanings in certain occupations, said teaching at the college level is the most liberal occupation in the U.S.

“Very few have the goal of converting students from one political camp to another,” he said.

Rep. Tom Chabin, D-Flagstaff, a member of the House Higher Education Committee, said that given funding cuts by the Republican-controlled Legislature he isn’t surprised Arizona university and college faculty supported Democrats.

“If educators are concerned about increases in tuition … they’d better open up their pocketbooks and make an investment in next year’s election,” he said.

Beverly Jenkins, a professor and director of Phoenix College’s accounting program, donated $2,300 in 2008 to Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. She said she has experienced a very one-sided workplace in the past.

“Academia has always been more liberal,” she said. “They don’t understand the free market because they haven’t had to deal with it.”

Jonathan Penner, a retired professor from the University of Arizona, was teaching English when he donated $2,000 to 2008 Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards.

“I don’t think there is overall a very big influence on students,” he said.

Penner has seen policies about political activism change over his years of teaching. He was politically active and outspoken during the Vietnam era.

“I did work on campus with students and faculty who wanted to protest the war,” he said, adding “I never introduced politics in a class setting.”

^___=

The donations:

President: 2008
• Dem: $352,601
• GOP: $45,332

U.S. House races: 2008
• Dem: $96,629
• GOP: $10,925

U.S. House races: 2010
• Dem: $127,102
• GOP: $18,340

U.S. Senate: 2010
• Dem: $21,170
• GOP: $10,150

President: 2012 (through March 31)
• Dem: $24,988
• GOP: $23,075

By VICTORIA PELHAM
Cronkite News Service

WASHINGTON – Pedro Lopez drove more than 41 hours from Phoenix to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he took part in a 48-hour prayer vigil this week asking God to strike down Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law.

The 19-year-old was one of hundreds of singing, chanting – but mostly civil – demonstrators who gathered Wednesday in front of the high court to make their voices heard as the justices weighed arguments on the law.

“We’re here today to send a message,” said Lopez, one of 12 members from the faith-based group Promise Arizona who showed up for Wednesday’s hearing. He said the law has had a real and damaging impact on his community.

On the other side of the plaza in front of the court, SB 1070 supporter JoAnn Abbott, 53, said she came out “to support fairness.”

Abbott, a Virginia resident who lived in Fort Huachuca when her husband was stationed there, said undocumented immigrants are straining the education and health systems. Arizona has had to step in, she said, because the federal government is not doing its job of enforcing immigration law.

“Why’s the federal government getting in their way?” asked Abbott, who was waving U.S. and Arizona flags amid a group of supporters on the steps of the Supreme Court.

Faith played a big role in the demonstrations on both sides.

Opponents staged an interfaith “Jericho Walk” around the court that began with the blowing of a shofar. Catholic clergy walked alongside United Church of Christ leaders and Jewish groups, many in religious vestments, making calls to “welcome strangers” as their religions call them to do.

Noel Anderson, a former pastor for the United Church of Christ Southwest in Tucson, spoke about the conditions he said many undocumented immigrants face in the community.

Anderson, a Washington-area resident who was in Arizona when the law was passed and who has lived in Mexico, said he understands the “root causes” of illegal immigration.

A smaller group of supporters on the other side of the steps wielded signs, including one that read, “God so loves us He gave us Arizona’s SB 1070.” They performed a song with the line, “God save Arizona from our own federal government.”

There was another song with lyrics about English proficiency among immigrants, while others carried signs with messages like, “SB1070 supports federal immigration law, President Obama doesn’t.”

The bill’s backers said the issue for them wasn’t one of human rights, but of enforcing the law.

“The federal government is ignoring the federal law and has done so for a while,” said Mary Lynne Bebee, a member of the American Council of Immigration Reform.

“There’s nothing wrong with immigration law,” she said. “What’s wrong with it is lack of enforcement by our government.”

Bebee said undocumented immigration has taken away jobs from many qualified Americans.

Some people reportedly showed up before dawn to get in line for tickets, and the crowd eventually reached 400 to 500 people by the time arguments began at 10 a.m.

The sides remained cordial, with the most obvious conflict being the battle to see who could sing the loudest as each side struggled to have its music heard.

Phoenix resident Patricia Rosas, 48, said she made the trip because she is afraid police will decide whether or not she or others like her are pulled over because of the color of their skin if the law stands.

But if the court upholds the law, she said, she will not give up the fight. If the law is not stopped in Arizona, similar laws will be passed in other states.

“I came to ask God that they remove this law and that He move the hearts of the judges who will be there,” Rosas said in Spanish. “If the community is united, whether they have papers or not, that is how things get done.”

^ ___=

Web Links:

_ Promise Arizona: http://promiseaz.org/

_ American Council for Immigration Reform: http://www.ancir.org/

_ SB 1070: http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/summary/s.1070pshs.doc.htm

^ ___=

JoAnn Abbott, a former Arizona resident who now lives in Virginia, came out to support SB 1070, which she said is needed because the federal government is not doing its job. (Cronkite News Service photo by Stephanie Snyder)

Pedro Lopez, 19, drove from Phoenix to Washington where he and others participated in a prayer vigil to pray for the rejection of Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law. (Cronkite News Service photo by Stephanie Snyder)

Clergy from various religions opposed to SB 1070 took part in a “Jericho walk” around the Supreme Court during hearings on the law. (Cronkite News Service photo by Stephanie Snyder)

As many as 500 demonstrators showed up outside the Supreme Court during its hearing on SB 1070 during a day of largely civil protests on the emotional issue. (Cronkite News Service photo by Stephanie Snyder)

By DUSTIN VOLZ
Cronkite News Service

WASHINGTON – Supporters of Arizona’s SB 1070 were buoyed Wednesday after a U.S. Supreme Court hearing in which most justices appeared skeptical of the federal challenge to central parts of the immigration law.

Most of the debate focused on the law’s requirement that Arizona police check the immigration status of people during routine stops, and whether that is an unlawful pre-emption of federal authority or the state helping enforce federal law.

Gov. Jan Brewer and former state Sen. Russell Pearce, the bill’s architect, both expressed confidence the court will uphold some, if not all, of the law.

“The hearing went very, very, very well,” Brewer said outside the court building. “I feel very confident as I walked out of there that we will get a favorable ruling in late June.”

Pearce characterized the hearing afterward as “just awesome.”

The 2010 law makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally. It requires that police check immigration status if they have reasonable suspicion to believe someone is here illegally.

Similar laws have since passed in a handful of states.

But a federal judge blocked parts of Arizona’s law after the Justice Department sued, claiming the state was trampling on federal authority to regulate immigration.

Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, who argued the Justice Department’s case Wednesday, appeared to have a hard time convincing the court Arizona was unlawfully trying to enforce federal immigration policy.

“It (S.B. 1070) is not an effort to enforce federal law. It is an effort to let you know about violations of federal law,” said Chief Justice John Roberts, who also made it clear the court was not reviewing concerns about racial profiling.

“It seems to me that the federal government just doesn’t want to know who is here illegally and who’s not,” Roberts said.

Verrilli seemed to struggle to convince even the court’s more liberal justices that the federal government has exclusive authority over immigration matters. Some noted that the checks required by SB 1070 are checks that police routinely make already.

“You can see it’s not selling very well,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said to Verrilli. “Why don’t you try to come up with something else?”

Verrilli argued the Constitution gives the federal government exclusive authority over immigration because it can affect foreign relations, but the justices appeared skeptical of that reasoning, too.

“What does sovereignty mean if it does not include the ability to defend your borders?” Justice Antonin Scalia asked.

“What’s wrong about the states enforcing federal law?” Scalia asked. “There is a federal law against robbing federal banks. Can it be made a state crime to rob those banks? I think it is.”

Pearce, the Mesa Republican whose support of SB 1070 sparked his recall last year, said that “even the liberals thought their arguments were weak.”

He declared it “a great day for Arizona and a great day for America,” and reiterated his belief that SB 1070 is only doing the job the federal government has failed to do itself.

“We will not apologize for demanding our border is secure and our laws are enforced,” he said.

Even some opponents conceded Wednesday that the court might uphold the law.

State Sen. Steve Gallardo, D-Phoenix, admitted the court raised some “serious questions” about sections of SB 1070 and he said the federal government erred in not making racial profiling an element of its case.

“It’s hard to read some of the justices,” said Gallardo, a strident opponent of the law. “At the end of the day, regardless of what the court says, SB 1070 needs to be repealed.”

Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Tucson, told hundreds of SB 1070 opponents after the hearing that the court has a “tremendous responsibility” in deciding the law’s fate.

“In times of crisis, this court has been a refuge for the American people and for decency, fair play and equality,” Grijalva said. “I hope that is the court we are going to hear from in the next few months.”

Some in the crowd, which erupted in cheers and began chanting ‘Si se peude!’ in response to Grijalva, began to boo moments later when Brewer came out to address the press.

Justice Elena Kagan, one of the court’s liberal justices, recused herself from the hearing. She had been involved with the case during her time as solicitor general in the Obama administration before being named to the bench.

A decision is expected this summer. In the event of a 4-4 split, the lower court ruling blocking portions of SB 1070 would stand.

^___=

Web Links:

_ Oral arguments: http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/11-182.pdf

_ SB 1070: http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/summary/s.1070pshs.doc.htm

^___=

A smiling Russell Pearce, foreground, called the Supreme Court’s reaction to SB 1070 “just awesome.” The former state senator, a Mesa Republican, was the prime sponsor of the immigration law. (Cronkite News Service photo by Stephanie Snyder)

 
State Sen. Steve Gallardo, D-Phoenix, said the high court justices raised “serious questions” about the challenge to SB 1070, but reiterated his opposition to the law. (Cronkite News Service photo by Stephanie Snyder)

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said she believes the state’s immigration enforcement law, SB 1070, will be upheld after the Supreme Court hearing went “very, very, very well.” (Cronkite News Service photo by Stephanie Snyder)

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is surrounded by reporters after the Supreme Court’s hearing on SB 1070. (Cronkite News Service photo by Stephanie Snyder)

By SALVADOR RODRIGUEZ
Cronkite News Service

WASHINGTON – The House overwhelmingly passed a bill Wednesday to correct a decades-old surveying error that put part of some people’s homes inside the boundaries of the Coconino National Forest.

Under the bill, the government would sell 2.67 acres of the forest for $20,000 to owners of 26 homes, parts of which were located on federal land after a 1960 government surveying error that was only discovered in 2007.

Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Flagstaff, who sponsored the bill, called it a “no-brainer.”

“We can’t make victims out of the homeowners,” he said before the vote. “We got to restore that integrity.”

Gosar said the bill is critical. Without it, he said, the affected homeowners can’t sell their homes or make improvements because the homes are currently in the national forest.

“It’s common sense, and it shows that we can still get something done up here in Congress,” he said.

The bill, which passed the House on a 421-1 vote, still needs Senate approval.

“This is fair,” Gosar said of the sale price, “even though I don’t feel it’s fair because this is a problem of the federal government, not of these land owners.”

That feeling was echoed by Esther Stewart, one of the homeowners, who said that while she looks forward to the bill ultimately becoming law, she is not happy at having to pay for what she feels is already hers.

“I want my property back, and I don’t want to have to pay for it,” she said Tuesday after the House concluded debate on the bill. “Justice is a no brainer, give people what is their due. We bought it, we paid for it, we pay our taxes, we keep it up.”

Stewart, 74, was the homeowner most affected, losing more than 90 percent of her property to the forest. While she doesn’t want to pay, she said she would do so for the sake of speeding up the process.

“This isn’t over with yet, but we can’t do the next step until Congress gives the Forest Service the right to convey our property back to us,” she said.

Coconino County Supervisor Matt Ryan said he won’t breathe a sigh of relief until the bill makes it way past the Senate as well.

“It’s critical to get it through the Senate next and to get it on paper so that it can be signed off by the president and that they (the homeowners) can move forward and just have peace with their own personal ownership with the property,” he said.

Ryan said Tuesday he and others have been in contact with the offices of Arizona Sens. Jon Kyl and John McCain, keeping them up to date on the issue.

“We have a positive relationship with them on this issue, and we’ll continue to work with them toward moving this forward,” he said.

Gosar said he does not think there will be a problem getting the bill through the Senate, but the question is how fast.

“Always what they say is, ‘You may not like the Democrats, but your enemy’s the Senate,’” Gosar said. “The Senate can move extremely slow or they can move extremely fast. It’s up the Senate.”

^ ___=

Web Links:

_ HR 1038: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1038rh/pdf/BILLS-112hr1038rh.pdf

_ Residents’ video: http://youtu.be/9HMLynTFc-0

^ ___=

Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Flagstaff, said a bill allowing homeowners bordering the Coconino National Forest to fix a surveying error by buying a small parcel of land from the federal government is a “no brainer” that is sure to pass. (Cronkite News Service photo by Salvador Rodriguez)

By CONNOR RADNOVICH
Cronkite News Service

PRESCOTT – “Fire everywhere!”

Phillip “Mando” Maldonado, a squad leader, shouts instructions as a dozen hotshots, firefighters trained to combat wildfires in extreme conditions, face a nightmare scenario: flames rushing in from all sides and their survival hinging on successfully unfolding and wrapping themselves in thin sheets of heat-reflecting material.

“Get down! Heads toward center!” Maldonado yells, the urgency in his voice rising.

Diving to the ground, crew members attempt to form a tight circle and point their feet toward the approaching flames. That will deflect heat and help protect their torsos. They clamp down on the edges of their emergency shelters to make sure fire, smoke and heat can’t get inside, and they keep their faces near the ground to breathe cooler air that won’t damage their lungs.

There’s nothing to do now but wait.

Walking among the shelters several minutes later, Maldonado and another squad leader, Clayton Whitted, see that first-year hotshot Shane Arollado has made a fatal mistake: His head pointed toward the approaching fire.

Suddenly the survivors ask playfully if Arollado’s girlfriend is now available.

“Like hell!” Arollado shouts.

Members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, one of 112 Interagency Hotshot Crews around the country, have never had to use shelters during a wildfire. But working in remote locations to get ahead of the most dangerous sections of fires makes knowing how to do so a matter of life and death.

Training is crucial, especially for the four rookies on the 22-member squad.

“If we’re not actually doing it, we’re thinking and planning about it,” said Eric Marsh, superintendent of the Granite Mountain Hotshots.

“When we get out there, it’s a completely different ballgame,” said Daniel McCarty, another squad leader. “It’s the real deal. We have to look out for each other.”

The crew, one of 13 hotshot teams in Arizona, has eight full-time members. The rest work from April until September.

Brady Higgs, in his second year with the crew, said the camaraderie and opportunity to travel drew him to this job.

“I couldn’t work inside, I don’t think,” Higgs said. “I enjoy the work, I enjoy getting to go outside and see the country.”

Being on a hotshot crew means one is on call throughout fire season, staying close enough to head out on short notice.

Fire duty can mean staying in the forest rather than returning to base camp for the night. Members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots sometimes have to spend up to two straight weeks in the wilderness, getting supplies by helicopter.

“These guys kinda become my family,” said Maldonado, the squad leader. “I saw them more than I saw my girlfriend last year.”

Last year, the Granite Mountain Hotshots fought some of the biggest fires in Arizona — Wallow, Horseshoe Two and Monument – as well as blazes in states such as Colorado, New Mexico and Minnesota.

Having to operate in the wilderness with little support, training is a way of life. On a recent weekday, preparing for fire season, members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots practiced setting up fire shelters as well as cutting fire lines.

The day included watching a video on how to use emergency shelters and what conditions crew members might face if overrun by fire.

The video featured survivors of the 1990 Dude Fire near Payson, in which six firefighters died despite wrapping themselves in shelters.

For training, crew members used green tarps shaped and packaged like fire shelters. Once the hotshots got inside, other crew members yanked on the tarps to simulate the high winds they could face.

After running the exercise once, they did it again.

When Arollado “died” during both run-throughs – it was his first time using a shelter – squad leaders Maldonado and Whitted pulled him aside to give tips.

“They were really great at showing me where I went wrong,” Arollado said. “There’s always someone trying to point you in the right direction.”

The crew also dug 1,000 feet of 3-foot-wide fire line, with some hotshots wielding chainsaws to cut down down trees and bushes.

Marsh, the crew’s superintendent, said later that everyone was rusty with training just under way. It’s particularly difficult for rookies who only have classroom experience, he said.

“It’s not uncommon to have a rookie die,” Marsh said. “Fake die, of course.”

But better to have mistakes happen here, where training can correct them, than in a real fire.

“In any other job you don’t have to worry about your life day in and day out,” said McCarty, the squad leader. “But in this job you have to watch your buddy too.”

^___=

Hotshot facts:

• Hotshot crews were first used in Southern California after World War II.

• The name “hotshot” comes from the hottest part of the fire, the place where these crews are usually work.

• Crews can be sent across the country, often hiking or taking a helicopter into rugged terrain.

• Crews are required to remain on call during fire season, which can last up around six months.

• Because of their demanding jobs, hotshots are required to maintain a high fitness level.

• Interagency Hotshot Crews (IHC), the umbrella organization for hotshot crews, was created in the early 1980s.

Source: U.S. Forest Service

^___=

Phillip Maldonado, a squad leader with the Granite Mountain Hotshots, helps crew member learn the finer points of setting up emergency fire shelters. Training is key as the crew prepares for what’s expected to be a busy wildfire season. (Cronkite News Service Photo by Connor Radnovich)

Members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots run during training on the use of emergency fire shelters. (Cronkite News Service Photo by Connor Radnovich)

Members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots practice cutting fire lines. (Cronkite News Service Photo by Connor Radnovich)

By DUSTIN VOLZ
Cronkite News Service

WASHINGTON – Former state Sen. Russell Pearce defended his SB 1070 immigration law before a highly partisan Senate subcommittee Tuesday on the eve of a U.S. Supreme Court hearing on the law.

Pearce was the only defender in a room full of Democratic opponents: Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl boycotted the hearing, calling it “political theater,” and Gov. Jan Brewer rejected a request to appear.

Pearce said SB 1070 does not racially profile Latinos and is necessary to stop illegal immigration, because federal authorities have failed to enforce immigration laws.

But former U.S. Sen. Dennis DeConcini called the bill “ill-founded, mean-spirited and divisive,” and said he was embarrassed for his state because of it.

“Instead of trying to find legitimate solutions to the problem of people coming into our country illegally, we have let rhetoric and political advantage cloud sound judgment,” said DeConcini, a three-term Democratic senator from Arizona.

Pearce, a Mesa Republican who sponsored SB 1070, rejected charges that the law pre-empts federal authority, saying it simply “mirrors federal objectives.”

“This common-sense law is fully within the authority of Arizona – and any other state – as it protects Arizona citizens from the effects of illegal immigration and upholds the rule of law,” Pearce said.

The 2010 law makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally and requires law enforcement officials check immigration status during routine stops if there is reasonable suspicion an individual is here illegally. Similar laws have since passed in a handful of states, including Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina.

But a federal judge blocked the bill’s most controversial sections, a decision that will be reviewed Wednesday by the Supreme Court.

Kyl, in announcing his decision to skip the hearing, noted its timing “one day ahead of the Supreme Court’s review of the law suggests that its purpose is either to influence the court’s decision or to garner publicity.”

Pearce spent almost two hours parrying attacks on SB 1070 from Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the only two senators on the 11-member Judiciary subcommittee to attend the hearing.

The hearing became most contentious when Schumer suggested that SB 1070 would lead to racial profiling, asking Pearce repeatedly whether someone’s clothing can inform a police officer of the person’s immigration status.

“What does an illegal immigrant dress like?” Schumer  asked.

Pearce responded that wardrobe is one of many factors an officer can take into account to gauge whether someone is suspicious.

“It’s a compilation of issues that tend to raise the level of suspicion to the level of probable cause, not any one isolated incident,” Pearce said. “This is just a list of things that lead you to ask questions.”

Schumer shot back: “Sometimes questions are a dangerous thing because they lead to profiling.”

Pearce was flanked at the hearing by DeConcini, state Sen. Steve Gallardo, D-Phoenix, and Todd Landfried, executive director of Arizona Employers for Immigration Reform.

Gallardo said SB 1070 has given Arizona a negative reputation and that the law “has unfairly subjected Latino citizens to racial profiling and harassment.” He said the only way to remove the “black cloud over Arizona” is to repeal the law.

Schumer announced Tuesday that if the Supreme Court does not overturn SB 1070 he will introduce legislation this summer seeking to reject the law.

Schumer expressed agitation at Republicans who skipped the hearing, but thanked Pearce for his appearance.

“You’ve had the courage and integrity to come here and defend your views and that’s very much appreciated,” Schumer told Pearce.

Pearce also said he was disappointed by Kyl and Brewer’s absence.

DeConcini pointed to the increase of Border Patrol agents and a sharp drop in illegal immigrant apprehensions as evidence the federal government is working to secure the border. But facts and numbers are being lost in political rhetoric, he said, and he holds little hope that a high court ruling can change Arizona’s current political climate.

“Regardless of how the Supreme Court holds, discrimination is happening. I’ve seen it,” DeConcini said. “I’m a native son and Arizona is filled with good people, and then we have some politicians that just go off the deep end.”

^___=

Web Links:

_ Arizona Employers for Immigration Reform: http://www.azeir.org/

_ SB 1070: http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/summary/s.1070pshs.doc.htm

^___=

From left, state Sen. Steve Gallardo, D-Phoenix, former state Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, and former U.S. Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., listen at the opening of a U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law. (Cronkite News Service photo by Dustin Volz)

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., grilled former Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce on SB 1070, asking about a section that says police officers determining reasonable suspicion can consider a person’s dress. “What does an illegal immigrant dress like?” Schumer asked. (Cronkite News Service photo by Dustin Volz)

State Sen Steve Gallardo, D-Phoenix, speaks during a Senate subcommittee hearing in Washington about SB 1070, as bill author and former state Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, listens. Gallardo said SB 1070 has “put a black cloud” over the state of Arizona. (Cronkite News Service photo by Dustin Volz)

Former state Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, testifies about his bill, Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law, before a U.S. Senate subcommittee as Sen. Steve Gallardo, D-Phoenix, listens. Pearce said the legislation mirrors federal law and is a successful deterrent to illegal immigration. (Cronkite News Service photo by Dustin Volz)

By TARRYN MENTO
Cronkite News Service

PHOENIX – Arizona’s topography, climate and history of military contracts position it as a good place to test the emerging technology of unmanned aircraft, a state lawmaker says.

“Arizona is prime – it is the perfect place to test unmanned aircraft, it is the perfect place to move that technology forward,” said Rep. Tom Forese, R-Gilbert.

This legislative session, Forese championed a successful resolution, HCR 2024, that encourages Arizona to compete to host one of the test ranges to be established by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Under the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 and the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2011, the FAA must develop standard operating and safety procedures for unmanned aircraft to share the skies with manned planes by 2015. To do this, the agency will identify six U.S. locations, such as an airport or military base.

Forese said his resolution was intended to educate lawmakers and leaders about this opportunity.

“What really needs to be done is to get leadership all on the same page to make sure everybody understands the issue and that’s the purpose of this resolution,” he said.

The Arizona Commerce Authority is spearheading a state effort to secure a testing location.

Retired Air Force Gen. John Regni, engaged by the agency as a technical consultant, noted that unmanned aircraft already are being tested at Arizona bases through military contracts.

“This is big for the state of Arizona because there’s so much that is happening already in the military environment,” Regni said. “And in the defense contractor world, there’s a lot of unmanned systems that are already working here.”

The FAA is seeking public suggestions through May 8 for testing facility requirements. The comment period will help the FAA decide what characteristics should be required of testing ranges, Regni said.

“What types of climate the ranges need to be in, elevations, obviously good operating weather, also bad operating weather and how much air space the range would physically need to do this safely,” he said.

The FAA will then review suggestions establish testing facility requirements. Public and private organizations may then submit applications that detail how they best fit the official requirements.

Bringing the testing to Arizona would equate to many high-paying jobs, Forese said.

“I think we owe it to the people of the state of Arizona to make a best effort,” he said.

^___=

A demonstration model of an MQ-1B Predator is shown at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson in 2007. (Cronkite News Service Photo by Sonu Munshi)

NASA’s Ikhana unmanned aircraft flies over Southern California. (Photo by Jim Ross, NASA)

Rep. Tom Forese, R-Gilbert. (Cronkite News Service Photo by Tarryn Mento)

By SARA SMITH
Cronkite News Service

PHOENIX – Arizona is one of 13 states that lead the nation in evaluating the effectiveness of state tax credits intended to boost business, according to a recent study.

The Pew Center on the States singled out Arizona for praise because of the scope of its review: A state legislative committee examines tax credits annually and recommends continuing, changing or eliminating them.

However, the report said Arizona lags in measuring the economic impact of tax credits and determining whether they are achieving the state’s goals.

“States are spending billions of dollars on tax incentives,” Jeff Chapman, one of the study’s authors, said in a telephone interview. “If they’re not using effective incentives, they could miss opportunities to create jobs, and with states trying to rebuild their economies and their budgets right now, those are mistakes they can’t afford to make.”

In Arizona, the Joint Legislative Income Tax Credit Review Committee has reviewed tax credits every year since 2002 and made formal recommendations to the Legislature. It’s up to lawmakers to decide whether to sponsor legislation to change or remove the tax credits.

The committee reviews individual and corporate income tax credits, which include credits for employing National Guard members placed on active duty, installing residential solar energy devices or constructing an environmental technology facility. Each credit reduces the total amount a person or business pays in income taxes and is often used to attract specific industries to the state.

Individuals and corporations claimed approximately $254 million of Arizona income tax credits in 2009, according to a 2011 state report.

Dennis Hoffman, economics professor at Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business, said policymakers need to consider tax incentives alongside current tax policies to avoid overdoing the cuts.

“You’re going to be challenged budget-wise if you give massive credits and tax incentives to businesses without having a tax code in place that allows employees of those businesses to pay for public service needs,” he said.

More than half of states don’t have any systems in place to assess whether their tax incentives are financially worthwhile.

The Pew report said states such as Connecticut and Oregon do a better job than Arizona of assessing the effectiveness of tax credits.

“What we didn’t see was an effort in those reports to say how many jobs were created or moreover how many jobs wouldn’t have been created were those tax credits not in place,” said Chapman, the study’s co-author.

Georganna Meyer, chief economist for the the Arizona Department of Revenue’s Office of Economic Research and Analysis, said the state reviews tax credits at least once a year and lets the legislative committee know how much each type of credit is used.

“Whether that’s a gauge of their effectiveness or not is probably a point for debate,” she said.

Rep. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, co-chairman of the Joint Legislative Income Tax Credit Review Committee, said members assess the data but mostly view each tax credit from a public policy standpoint.

“I think it’s an exercise in making a statement, and statements can be the beginning of discussions that need to occur on tax credits,” he said.

Lawmakers don’t always follow the committee’s advice.

In 2010, the committee recommended halting a tax credit for multimedia productions that come to Arizona, including movies, television series and commercials. The credit expired that year.

An attempt to bring back the credit stalled this session but was revived as a strike-everything amendment to HB 2127. The Senate approved it last week, sending it back to the House for a final vote.

Serena Unrein, a public interest advocate for Arizona Public Interest Research Group, said taxpayers deserve more information on tax credits than state law currently allows. To avoid identifying companies claiming credits, the number of recipients and the dollars involved are kept confidential when few companies receive a particular credit.

“Right now until Arizona actually has all of the information on the table I think it’s really tough to know if these tax credits are a good thing for our buck,” she said.

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Leading the way:

States that excel in the scope of tax credit evaluations and-or the quality of evaluations, according to the Pew Center on the States:

• Arizona
• Arkansas
• Connecticut
• Iowa
• Kansas
• Louisiana
• Minnesota
• Missouri
• New Jersey
• North Carolina
• Oregon
• Washington
• Wisconsin

Recommendations:

• Build evaluation of incentives into policy and budget deliberations to ensure lawmakers use the results.

• Establish a strategic and ongoing schedule to review all tax incentives for economic development.

• Ask and answer the right questions using good data and analysis.

• Determine whether tax incentives are achieving the state’s goals.

Source: Pew Center on the States

By IVY MORRIS
Cronkite News Service

PHOENIX – In conjunction with National Crime Victims’ Rights Week, a collaboration among state, federal and local agencies brought in 251 fugitives in four days.

David Gonzales, Arizona U.S. marshal, said Operation Justice IV is just one way law enforcement is working to clear outstanding warrants in the state and Maricopa County in particular.

“We’re all diligent about trying to narrow it down and reduce the number of warrants in the county, to make this a safer community,” he said.

Outstanding warrants have been reduced from about 38,000 in July of 2009 to about 30,000 today, according to the U.S. Marshal’s Service in Arizona.

In the latest operation, more than 100 law enforcement officers from 30 agencies throughout Maricopa and Pinal counties cleared 325 warrants. The fugitives were wanted for crimes including assault, aggravated DUI, burglary, kidnapping, fraud, theft, weapons offenses, theft and various drug offenses.

“Two hundred and fifty were responsible for thousands of crimes,” Gonzales said. “We feel we prevented thousands of crimes.”

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said that officers in the county averaged 45 arrests per day during the operation thanks to cooperation among offices and jurisdictions.

“The success of this operation cannot be underscored enough,” he said.

Agencies have worked together on operations similar to this before. Tracy Montgomery, assistant chief of the Phoenix Police Department, said that it doesn’t always take big events to team up.

“Some of the smaller crime situations that we face here in law enforcement, as a whole, we address collaboratively,” she said. “Our efforts over the last week really are exemplary of how we operate throughout the year, communicating and bringing fugitives to justice.”

There will be more operations to round up thos with outstanding warrants, said Matthew Allen, special agent in charge of investigations for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Phoenix.

“We want them to remain uncomfortable about being fugitives from justice and fugitives from the law,” he said. “We want them to be looking over their shoulders every day, hopefully hearing the pitter-patter of the feet of law enforcement officers coming after them.”

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By the numbers:

• Fugitives arrested: 251

• Warrants cleared: 325

• Sex offenders arrested: 7

• Assault warrants cleared: 14

• Robbery suspects captured: 6

• Narcotics warrants cleared: 114

• Weapons offenses: 9

• Firearms seized: 16

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Officials displayed posters with some of those arrested for outstanding warrants as part of Operation Justice IV, a collaboration of federal, state and local officials in Maricopa and Pinal counties. (Cronkite News Service Photo by Ivy Morris)

By BRITTANY SMITH
Cronkite News Service

PHOENIX – Heather Grossman can no longer brush her hair, hold a bottle of water to her lips, hug her three children.

That’s because 14 years ago, when she lived in Florida, Grossman was shot through her spinal cord by men hired by her ex-husband, who later was sentenced to life in prison.

“As the bullet entered my spinal cord it shattered many of my hopes and dreams,” Grossman said at an event marking Crime Victims’ Rights Week.

Eight days before the shooting, Grossman attempted unsuccessfully to have a judge jail her husband, who was behind on child support, saying she was afraid he was planning to kill her.

“From my personal experience, the criminal justice system does not take victims’ complaints seriously,” she said at a luncheon outside the State Capitol.

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, another speaker at the event sponsored by the U.S. Office of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime, praised a resolution co-sponsored by Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., that would add a Federal Victims’ Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The amendment would give victims the right to speak at any plea or sentencing hearing, to be given reasonable notice of the release or escape of the person who harmed them and to restitution.

Arizona law already has similar provisions, dubbed the Victims’ Bill of Rights, but Montgomery said a federal constitutional amendment would change the the way crime victims are treated nationally.

“We have a criminal justice system that over time has become concerned with criminal defendants’ rights but has lost sight of victims’ rights,” Montgomery said.

Bill Marling, executive director of the National Organization for Victim Assistance, a nonprofit group that promotes victims’ rights, said Arizona has been on the cutting edge of victims’ rights legislation but that enforcement of those laws has lagged.

“A U.S. constitutional amendment would give Arizona laws more weight to be enforced,” Marling said. “Plus, most people already assume that there are victims’ rights in the federal Constitution.”

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National Crime Victims’ Awareness Week:

• Sponsored by the U.S. Office of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime.

• Promotes victims’ rights and honors crime victims and those who advocate on their behalf.

• Held each April since 1981. This year, Crime Victims’ Awareness Week is April 22-28.

• The theme this year is “Extending the Vision: Reaching Every Victim.”

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Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery supports efforts to create a U.S. constitutional amendment with rights for crime victims. (Cronkite News Service Photo by Brittany Smith)

By JORDAN MOON
Cronkite News Service

PHOENIX – Since the days of Harry S. Truman, only one Democratic presidential candidate has won in Arizona: Bill Clinton, seeking a second term in 1996.

But despite the state’s reputation as a GOP bastion and Mitt Romney’s advantages here, including appealing to the sizable Mormon population, President Barack Obama’s campaign is suggesting that it can win Arizona in November.

“We think we have a real shot at winning the presidential race here in Arizona,” Vice President Joe Biden said at a fundraiser in Phoenix last week, adding that campaign organizers will set up operations here.

So is this standard election-year posturing or a claim grounded in political reality?

According to experts on Arizona politics, an Obama win is possible but depends in large part to the answers to two questions:

QUESTION ONE: Which way will political independents lean?

A poll released Monday by Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy suggests that the presidential race is a statistical dead heat in Arizona. Independents appear to break slightly for Obama over Romney, but 34 percent of independents were undecided, the poll showed.

About one-third of Arizona’s registered voters aren’t affiliated with either major party.

“That group will probably decide who wins Arizona, depending on what way they go,” said David Daugherty, the institute’s director of research. “The Republicans will vote for the Republicans, the Democrats will vote for the Democrats, so it’s really a battle over who can convince the independents.”

By electing and re-electing former Gov. Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Terry Goddard, for example, Democrats have shown they can win statewide elections by appealing to independent voters.

In many ways, experts say, whether or not Obama can follow suit depends on how the state’s economy is doing come November after years of deep recession, high unemployment and plunging home values.

Bruce Merrill, a political scientist who conducted the Morrison Institute’s poll, said the Obama campaign still has a long road ahead to win Arizona, in part because the president would likely struggle if the economy remains in the doldrums.

“A lot can happen between now and November, particularly with the economy,” he said. “So it’s just really too early to say, but if the election were held today I don’t think Obama would win.”

Daugherty said the economy likely will sway the election.

“If the economy improves, it tends to favor the party in power,” he said. “So the Obama campaign stands to gain from an improved economy.”

Merrill said Arizona voters may blame Obama for the weak economy, even though he said it’s not fair to do so.

“The president is like a college quarterback,” Merrill said. “When things go well the president gets a pat on the back, but when things go bad the president’s to blame.”

Zack A. Smith, regents’ professor in Northern Arizona University’s Department of Politics and International Affairs, said Obama could make inroads among Arizona’s independent voters by continuing to cast Romney as flip-flopping on issues.

“Romney has been on both sides of a lot of issues, and going after Romney will certainly help draw in some independents,” he said. “I don’t know how effective it’ll be.”

QUESTION TWO: Will Latino voters turn out?

Independent of SB 1070, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s immigration crackdowns, immigration-reform proposals and other issues that have captured national attention, experts said a key for Obama is whether Latinos will turn out and which issues are most important to those who vote.

Latinos account for about 30 percent of Arizona’s population, but because many are too young to vote they make up a smaller share of the state’s 3.2 million registered voters. According to the William C. Velasquez Institute, a nonpartisan research group focusing on Latinos, 14.3 percent of Arizona’s registered voters were Latino in 2008 and accounted for 11.7 percent of the overall turnout.

Merrill said Democrats have put considerable effort toward registering Latinos but have yet to be rewarded in terms of turnout.

“Hispanics tend to vote 75 percent Democratic, and so it’s very important, particularly in Arizona, where you have a growing Hispanic population,” he said.

Merrill said concerns about the GOP’s “very sharp and critical” stance toward illegal immigration should help Obama among Latinos and could increase Latino turnout in November.

“My guess is that with the DREAM Act and all the stuff that’s gone on with Joe Arpaio, there will probably be a little more interest in the Hispanic community this time than normal,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s going to be massive or enough to really be a major factor in how the election turns out.”

Meanwhile, Merrill said, the top issue among Hispanics may well be what it is for other Arizonans.

“In general, the economy is still the biggest issue within the

Hispanic community,” he said. “As a group, Hispanics are … hit harder by the recession.”

Richard Herrera, an associate professor in ASU’s School of Politics and Global Studies, said the Obama campaign is more optimistic about Arizona than it might otherwise be because Richard Carmona, a former surgeon general who is of Puerto Rican descent, is running for U.S. Senate here.

“They think that that will turn out a large number of Latinos, which only helps them,” Herrera said. “So if it were a different candidate, they might not think Arizona was in play.”

By CALE OTTENS
Cronkite News Service

PHOENIX – As owner of Del Sol Furniture, with four locations in the Valley, Rosa Macias has a clientele that’s almost entirely Hispanic. Many of her customers speak only Spanish.

As a Latina and a member of Local First Arizona, Macias wants members of the Hispanic community to understand the value of buying from locally owned businesses, starting with the way money recirculates in the local economy.

“We are strong. We spend a lot of money,” she said. “And we need to let them know the difference if they buy local versus at a national company.”

That’s the goal of Fuerza Local, which is Spanish for Local Force, an effort by Local First Arizona to reach the Spanish-speaking community.

Built around a website, the effort includes seminars for businesses and customers in the Spanish-speaking community, said Macias, who is a board member for Fuerza Local.

“They need to get a lot of information and see the difference why they have to buy here,” she said.

Addressing competition from chain competitors is an ever-present challenge, Macias said. She has lost some customers when chains moved in near her stores.

“When our business competitors came from California, the people were excited and they tried to go and see the new stores and the new things they were trying to sell,” she said.

Kimber Lanning, founder and director of Local First Arizona, called Fuerza Local a natural extension of what her group has been doing since 2003.

“It’s the exact same thing, only in Español,” she said. “Fuerza Local is about empowering the locals to move things in a positive direction.”

According to a study by Local Works, a national organization campaigning to promote sustainable communities, 73 percent of every dollar spent at locally owned businesses stays in the local economy, while 43 percent remains when consumers buy from business owned elsewhere.

About 11 percent of Arizona businesses are owned by Latinos, and most of them locally owned, said James Garcia, spokesman for the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce spokesman. And at 30 percent of the population, Latinos as a whole are an economic force, he added.

“And it’s growing at a faster rate, so the overall impact is growing as well,” he said. “We play a significant role.”

Lanning said she hopes Fuerza Local will help members of the Spanish-speaking community better understand that where they buy can help lift Arizona’s economy.

“We’re more interested in making sure the message resonates within their community and they change their lifestyles, because the more they spend at big boxes, the more of their wealth will exit their community,” she said.

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Local First Arizona:

• Mission: Nonprofit group that promotes the benefits of buying from locally owned businesses.

• History: Founded in 2003 as Arizona Chain Reaction; changes its name to Local First Arizona in 2007.

• Latest Initiative: Fuerza Local (www.fuerzalocal.org), which takes its buy-local message into the Spanish-speaking community.

• More Information: www.localfirstaz.com.

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Rosa Macias, owner of Del Sol Furniture in the Valley, says competition from out-of-state chains makes it important for businesses catering to the Spanish-speaking community to promote the benefits of buying from locally owned merchants. (Cronkite News Service Photo by Cale Ottens)

By VICTORIA PELHAM
Cronkite News Service

WASHINGTON – Tribal leaders Thursday pushed for greater input on government decisions over “fracking” and stressed the importance of eliminating red tape from energy resources programs on Indian lands.

In testimony at two congressional hearings, representatives of tribes from across the country, including a Navajo official, reminded Senate and House lawmakers that tribal land is not “public land.”

“We take the protection of resources on our nation very seriously,” said Wilson Groen, president and CEO of the Navajo Nation Oil and Gas Co.

Groen called for greater consultation with the Bureau of Land Management over its recently proposed regulation of hydraulic fracturing. “Fracking,” which boosts production by cracking gas-bearing rocks, has come under fire recently for its reported environmental impact.

Other tribal leaders echoed Groen’s concerns about being heard on the regulation of fracking, which is practiced on some tribal lands.

“Tribal consultation requirements are not just a formality,” said Tex Hall, chairman of the Mandan Hidatsa Arikara Nation.

“Since BLM has not fulfilled the department’s and the administration’s requirements for consultation with Indian tribes, BLM must withdraw the draft hydraulic fracturing regulations,” he said in a prepared statement. “Or … exclude the application of these regulations to any permits on Indian lands until proper and meaningful consultation with tribes can occur.”

Hall said the Interior Department needs to make sure the bureau is consulting with the tribes.

A bureau official conceded that there are things his agency could do better. But he told a House Natural Resources subcommittee that the agency takes its “trust responsibility” with tribes seriously and wants to work with them.

“I think we can say that BLM is learning how to do this consultation,” said Tim Spisak, the bureau’s deputy assistant director for minerals and realty management.

He reiterated the Obama administration’s goals of clean domestic energy, pointing to newer technologies and the environmental concerns of fracking, such as water contamination.

Irene Cuch, chairwoman of the Ute Tribal Business Committee, said the Ute share concerns about the impact of fracking, but that they still want a more direct say on the issue.

But Hall, Groen and others minimized environmental concerns, calling fracking a “necessity” and an economic boon to reservations.

Tribes got a sympathetic ear from House lawmakers, who peppered Spisak with questions.

“We still treat these lands as ours and that’s wrong,” said Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska. “I’m not very fond of … letting BLM manage Indian lands.”

Young said the bureau is not giving tribes the full respect of a sovereign nation.

In a later Senate hearing before the Indian Affairs Committee, tribal leaders praised a bill from Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., that would change the Indian Tribal Energy and Self-Determination Act to make energy project rules easier and more predictable for tribes.

The bill would approve tribal projects that are not acted on by the Interior Department within 270 days, would allow nontribal investors in Indian energy projects and eliminate some obstacles to hydroelectric project approval.

“For far too long, bureaucratic red tape has prevented the pursuit of tribal economic development opportunities, especially energy development opportunities,” Barrasso said.

While they applauded the bill, tribal witnesses said it needs to go further.

Hall pointed to tax-code challenges and Cuch cited as many as 32 areas of the law that the bill could address to put tribes “on the same playing field.” This includes eliminating fees BLM charges for oil and gas work on tribal lands.

Cuch said in her testimony that the bill is a good start but, “More is necessary.”

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Web links:

_ Senate bill: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112s1684is/pdf/BILLS-112s1684is.pdf

_ Senate hearing: http://www.indian.senate.gov/hearings/hearing.cfm?hearingID=224a058c8ef0dc33aff44240a3003c35

_ House hearing: http://naturalresources.house.gov/Calendar/EventSingle.aspx?EventID=289030

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Navajo Nation Oil and Gas Co. CEO Wilson Groen said federal regulations on “fracking” would result in even more red tape delaying tribal projects. (Cronkite News Service photo by Victoria Pelham)

Larry Decoteau, left, of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, National Congress of American Indians Vice President Scott Russell and Wilson Groen, president and CEO of the Navajo Nation Oil and Gas Co., asked Congress for for more flexibility on their lands, reminding lawmakers that tribal lands aren’t “public lands.” (Cronkite News Service photo by Victoria Pelham)