The Daily Agenda: If you have nothing to hide...
The Daily Agenda: If you have nothing to hide...
Let Jimmy in ... Let's get ethical ... And hakuna matata.
The state won’t let the criminal justice reporter at the largest paper in Arizona observe an execution as a member of the press. Again.
And this time, the Republic is getting the lawyers involved.
We’ll use our limited bully pulpit today to call for the same: Gov. Doug Ducey, let Jimmy Jenkins, the reporter who’s covered state prisons with the most depth in recent years, watch Frank Atwood’s execution.
Under state rules, the Arizona Department of Corrections can invite up to five members of the media to observe an execution. For Clarence Dixon’s execution this month — the first Arizona execution in eight years — only three media representatives were allowed. And Jenkins was denied entry by the state.
Atwood is set to be executed on June 8. His attorneys said he would select death by gas chamber via nitrogen gas — a method which would use a refurbished gas chamber.
Arizona’s track record on executions isn’t great: The 2014 execution of Joseph Wood took two hours and 15 injections. And Dixon’s execution, while speedy once he received the drugs, came after a lengthy search for an IV insertion point.
The role of the media as third-party observers during this grave process is critical. Journalists serve a fundamental role as the public’s eyes and ears when the government literally takes a life. They monitor the process and report what it looks like, the ways it has gone wrong.
Because of the state’s continued obstruction, Jenkins found an alternative route to be in the room. He’s going as a guest of Atwood’s, not because he agrees with Atwood, but because it’s the only way in.
The Ducey administration took issue with this route, too, attacking Jenkins and trying to align him with Atwood and his crimes.
It’s clear the state doesn’t like Jenkins’ coverage — Ducey chief of staff Daniel Ruiz said as much on Twitter — but denying him access to executions shows the contempt with which the Ducey administration treats reporters who take their watchdog role seriously.
If the state believes its execution process is above board and that it can successfully carry out the execution, Ducey should invite his toughest critics in the press into the room to watch the process. Anything less is hiding.
Walk before they make you run: Tucson Weekly editor Jim Nintzel is retiring. A newsman who can smell bullshit from farther than a vulture smells a rotting carcass, Nintzel did everything “except sell an ad” in his 33 years at the Weekly, including driving papers around, cleaning the toilets and designing pages with an X-Acto knife, he wrote in his farewell. He also took countless cub reporters (including Hank) under his wings over the years, both as a professor and an editor, teaching them what he dubbed “the dark art” of journalism. We owe him several debts of gratitude, as he was among the smart minds we turned to for advice before launching this newsletter.
¿Dónde está Katie Hobbs?: Democratic gubernatorial frontrunner Katie Hobbs has been skipping forums and announced she won’t show up to the only televised debate of the primary season, raising campaign trail questions about why she won’t face voters and whether she’s fit to face Republicans, the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger notes.
No direction home: Grand Canyon University is pushing out about 100 residents of a mobile home community as it plans to use the land for student apartment housing. Residents, some of whom have been living there for decades, were given six months notice to move out of the park, which charges around $500 in rent compared to the valley average of $1,500, and told they can apply for state assistance and that GCU may help them on an individual basis. But residents say it’s not enough, the Republic’s Alison Steinbach reports.
“I don’t know why they can’t just leave us alone,” 28-year resident Gerald Suter told Steinbach. “I thought they were a Christian organization.”
Thielbucks are realbucks: Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel is putting another $3.5 million behind his protégé and former employee Blake Masters in the U.S. Senate GOP primary, bringing his total investment to $13.5 million so far. But Masters still hasn’t gotten the endorsement from Donald Trump, which could be “a potential game changer in a race where there has been little independent polling, and no clear front-runner,” the Washington Post reports.
Instead of investing in politicians, we urge Peter Thiel to invest in subscriptions to the Arizona Agenda. But since he’s not likely to do that, maybe you could just pay us $80?
It’s not a disc golf course, but it’ll do: With real estate prices skyrocketing, housing developers in Arizona and across the nation are looking to build on underutilized golf courses, but they’re running into zoning problems and NIMBY neighbors, the New York Times’ Keith Schneider reports.
Worst son ever?: An 81-year-old hospice patient is being evicted from her Casa Grande home by her landlord, who is also her son, after she failed to pay rent for two months following hip and heart surgeries, Pinal Central’s Melissa St. Aude reports.
Reminder: Arizona independents can vote in primaries: If you live in a one-party-dominated state or district, try voting in that party’s primary to rein in the extremists, two political analysts urge in The Atlantic.
“To be clear, we’re not talking about trying to throw the opposite party’s primary to the least electable candidate, which can easily backfire,” Jonathan Robinson and Sean Trende wrote.
Welcome to the circus: Votebeat launched its Arizona office today with reporter Jen Fifield holding down its Arizona operation. The newsroom, active in several states, will provide year-round coverage of elections and voting. In a column explaining her new role, Fifield, a veteran of the Arizona audit, said that she hopes her work will help “voters to be prepared to dismiss the next fake conspiracy, whether it emerges this year or in 2024.”
Search “Anthony Kern”: ABC15’s Dave Biscobing compiled a searchable spreadsheet containing all 1,800 Arizona police officers on the “Brady list” — a list of cops with a history of dishonesty, criminal activity and other integrity concerns. That’s up by 400 cops from the last time he compiled the list two years ago.
The other nursing shortage: A psychiatric nursing shortage is hammering some of the state’s main providers of inpatient care, forcing the providers to close beds and turn away people in need, the Republic’s Stephanie Innes reports.
The same teacher shortage: Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman went on KTAR yesterday to urge lawmakers to use the state’s $5 billion in surplus revenue to again boost teacher pay, saying schools are staring down another teacher shortage next year.
Everyone gets an ethics!: The Senate Ethics Committee is set to take up the three separate cases of alleged ethical impropriety from Arizona Sens. Wendy Rogers, Juan Mendez and Lisa Otondo today at 1 p.m. You can tune in here.
It’s just a little jab: About 140 of Arizona’s 6,600 Army National Guard and Air National Guard members face discharge for refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19, the Republic’s Ryan Randazzo reports. Others are seeking religious exemptions from vaccination.
Too prescriptive, too vague, just right: Neither Gov. Doug Ducey’s water authority plan nor Senate Republicans’ water plan is perfect, Republic columnist Joanna Allhands writes, but between the two is the glimmer of a plan that might actually work.
If you hate palm trees as much as Hank does: Blame a lawyer who brought palm tree seeds to the Valley in 1879 after a Hawaiian vacation, historian Steve Schumacher explains in a City of Phoenix history video that 12 News’ Hunter Bassler flagged. People used to take photos of the first palm tree here because it was so exotic, and the non-native trees eventually became a symbol of wealth in the desert.
The robot cars drive themselves. And they could have some new rules soon, if a bill regulating “neighborhood occupantless electric vehicles” gets signed into law.
These kinds of vehicles aren’t the Waymos you’re seeing drive in circles around your neighborhood. And it’s not the delivery bots on sidewalks on college campuses, either. It’s the small vehicles like Nuro that aren’t designed to hold humans at all, but serve as delivery bots for grocery stores like Fry’s. They’re already in operation here.
Senate Bill 1333, sponsored by Republican Sen. Tyler Pace, sets up the types of places these robot vehicles can operate, like roads where the speed limit is 45 miles per hour or less, which lanes the vehicles can travel in and how they can cross the street.
Under the bill, these tiny vehicles wouldn’t be able to transport hazardous materials.
The bill enjoyed strong bipartisan support in both chambers and awaits action from Gov. Doug Ducey.
This didn’t make us laugh, but it did make us smile.
A chihuahua and pig named Timon and Pumbaa are close friends and were rescued by the Arizona Humane Society, then rehomed together at a pig rescue called Better Piggies.
