Pour another one out for Republican Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, who appears to owe more than $5,000 in fines — and counting by the day — to the county.
That’s because Heap’s candidate committee, which is active, has not filed a required annual campaign finance report.
It was due on January 15.
The last time Heap’s committee had filed anything was April 2025, when it submitted a report that said it had not raised or spent any money during the first three months of that year.
The last time Justin Heap filed a campaign finance report was 2025.
Until January 31, the fine for not turning the report in was $15 per day. And after that, each rising sun has brought Heap an additional $25 penalty.
By our calculation, the total Heap owes has now climbed to more than $5,300.
It’s unclear whether or not the county has made any attempt to get Heap to pay his outstanding late fees — the elections department’s spokesperson, Jennifer Liewer, did not respond to our questions about the fines Heap continues to rack up.
Nor did Heap respond to an inquiry sent to his personal email account, which is listed under his contact information in a filing with the county.
Heap is Maricopa County’s chief elections officer, which makes his decision not to file his own campaign finance reports especially concerning. Then again, concerns about his office are hardly new.
But per the Maricopa County Elections Campaign Finance Handbook, unless his committee pays the fine, Heap won’t be eligible to run for reelection in 2028.
“Filing officers shall not accept the nomination paper of a candidate if the person is liable for an aggregation of $1,000 or more in fines, penalties, late fees, or administrative or civil judgements that have not been fully satisfied at the time of the attempted filing of the nomination paper, except in cases where the liability is being appealed,” the handbook reads.
Perhaps campaign finance ineptitude just runs in the family.
His father, Republican Arizona Corporation Commission candidate and Rep. Ralph Heap, has been in hot water over questions about how his campaign managed to pay for a bunch of roadside signs despite having almost no money in its account.
That was particularly problematic because ol’ Ralph is running as a “Clean Elections candidate,” meaning that he gets funding from the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission — so long as he follows the rules that come with receiving the money.
To be clear, that’s hundreds of thousands of dollars in public campaign funding.
His failure to explain how he paid for the signs put that funding in jeopardy.
In response to an ongoing investigation from Clean Elections, the elder Heap said that the sign shop gave him the signs on a line of credit — a claim the owner of the shop backed up with a sworn affidavit. Therefore, Heap asserted, he wasn’t breaking any campaign finance laws because he didn’t need to report that line of credit.
Or so he thought. The Clean Elections Commission disagreed, with Executive Director Tom Collins noting that Heap’s campaign finance reports were still inaccurate because he didn’t report the debt — and anyway, that taking on such debt would violate Clean Elections rules.
“Dr. Heap’s campaign finance reports suggest that his campaign committee did not have sufficient cash to pay Mesa Sign (Shop) when he placed the order in late April, when the sign order was completed in late May or at any point prior to qualifying for Clean Elections funding,” Collins wrote. “Dr. Heap has not provided any information that would counter this.”
But ultimately, Heap got his cash from the commission after it voted 3-1 to release funding to him — even as it voted 4-0 for a further investigation, since there was reason to believe Heap violated the rules.
In addition, there’s another similar complaint against Heap in the air alleging that he didn’t report spending on petition circulators.
At least the Heap father-son duo can feel some solidarity with each other in their Sisyphean struggle with extremely basic campaign finance requirements.
The state of Nevada has fired the opening salvo in litigation that could consume the Colorado River Basin, asking a judge to halt implementation of a new federal river management plan that could bring sweeping cuts to the state and its Lower Basin neighbors of California and especially Arizona.
The plan could, over the next decade, cut Lower Basin allocations of Colorado River water by up to 3 million acre-feet a year.
“Under the proposed plan issued by the Department of the Interior, southern Nevada could lose more than 70 percent of its already meager Colorado River allocation while the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming are not required to contribute a drop,” Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo said in a press release. “This isn’t about political posturing; this is a matter of survival for a community that represents about two-thirds of our state’s citizens and the lion’s share of its economy.”
The suit, filed in federal court in Las Vegas, alleges that Interior’s plans for the Colorado are arbitrary and capricious, that they violate the 1922 Colorado River Compact and other key pieces of river law, and that the department failed to consider viable alternatives that would lead to less severe cuts, among other causes of action.
Any of the three Lower Basin states could probably mount the same case against those cuts — and there have certainly been preparations made for a lawsuit from Arizona — but Nevada was first to the courthouse. For now, Arizona is keeping its powder dry, and state officials have been circumspect about exactly what would motivate them to sue, even as they accuse the federal government of ignoring the 1922 Colorado River Compact.
“We’ll proceed with however we think we need to proceed,” Brenda Burman, the general manager of the Central Arizona Project, said at a meeting of river stakeholders in Arizona this week.
The lawsuit adds an additional layer of complication to the years-long process of developing new guidelines for managing the river. The guidelines need to be in place by the start of the next “water year” in October.
On a brighter note, yesterday, we announced that the Tucson Agenda hired longtime reporter and water nerd Arren Kimbel-Sannit as our water policy and politics reporter, with a special focus on Southern Arizona. So the Tucson Agenda will host most of our water coverage moving forward.
Like water news, updates and deep-dives? Subscribe to Tucson Agenda to stay in the loop.
Fake Greens faking green: Three statewide candidates could be forced to repay $4.7 million in public campaign funding over allegations they used fake $5 donations to qualify for the Clean Elections money, the Mirror’s Caitlin Sievers reports. The Mirror spoke with six people listed as donors to Green Party gubernatorial candidate Risa Lombardo, Green Party secretary of state candidate Duwayne Collier and Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Neely. All six said they never made any contributions to the candidates, despite being listed as donors in the candidates’ campaign finance reports. A months-long Citizens Clean Elections Commission investigation found similarly suspicious activity, and the commission will consider Thursday whether to begin proceedings requiring all three candidates to repay the money.
Finder’s fee: Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman’s political communications firm has made more than $200,000 from statewide candidates he recruited to run, Axios’ Zach Buchanan reports. So far, Hoffman’s Forged Communications firm received $121,000 from the campaigns of Republican superintendent of public instruction candidate Kimberly Yee and $90,000 from Republican secretary of state candidate Alexander Kolodin. Hoffman said the contenders are “the most qualified candidates in their respective races” and accused Axios of “cooking up wild conspiracy theories about phantom conflicts of interest.”
Not again: U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon visited Arizona Tuesday to pressure Gov. Katie Hobbs to opt into a new federal school scholarship program, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer reports. The “One Big Beautiful Bill” created a federal tax credit for people who donate up to $1,700 a year to scholarship groups, which then give the money to students for public or private school expenses. But governors have to opt their states into the “Education Freedom Tax Credits” program, and Hobbs says she wants to see stronger guardrails first so it doesn’t turn into another universal-voucher-style mess.
Scroll toll: Arizona has $223 million on the way after Attorney General Kris Mayes joined a multistate lawsuit to secure a $17.1 billion settlement from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, for using addictive features that harmed kids’ mental health, Mayes’ office announced. Meta is also required to implement safety measures such as daily time limits for minors and age-appropriate content controls.
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Let the voters decide: After several years of failed short-term rental reform, the League of Arizona Cities and Towns plans to push a ballot referral next year that would ask voters to let cities regain more control over Airbnbs, the Capitol Times’ Jakob Thorington reports. The League outlined its priorities for the next legislative session at its annual conference last week, and half of those bullet points are aimed at expanding municipalities’ authority over short-term rentals through things like higher licensing fees and better tools to collect unpaid fines.
Arizona is seeing a politically widespread reckoning with Flock license plate readers.
At Tuesday night’s Arizona Police Association forum, Gov. Katie Hobbs said decisions about the cameras should be left to local governments, while GOP gubernatorial challenger Andy Biggs called them a “gross violation … of a free society,” per the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger.
And both liberal Tempe and decidedly less liberal Cave Creek canceled their contracts with the surveillance company.
In its explanation for the shutdown, Tempe cited “recent misuse of automated license plate reader systems.” Cave Creek similarly pointed to “several high-profile abuse cases.”
But in a bit of poetic justice, Cave Creek also cited “a recent theft of a FLOCK camera at 32nd Street and Carefree Highway” as a reason for discontinuing its Flock contract.
So whoever stole that single Flock camera can justifiably take some credit for shutting down the entire town’s network.