The Daily Agenda: Local news > cable news

We run down the most critical local dramas to watch ... The tamale bill comes back today ... And 10/10 would watch that movie.

Monday was a wild day for cable TV news anchors, with the ousters of Fox’s Tucker Carlson and CNN’s Don Lemon.

Who cares, though, honestly? The two rich men will continue to be rich men. We’re sure they’ll find a new podcast or something.

More importantly, there’s consequential local drama happening at school boards, cities and counties around the state. We’d rather talk about that instead. 

We routinely include these kinds of stories in our daily Other News section, but we wanted to give them a bigger voice today to make a point: You’ll see a million headlines about Carlson and Lemon. You’ll read too many tweets and articles about what it all means. That’s all fine and good. 

But you might miss these more local stories — that ones that undoubtedly affect your day-to-day community much more than a TV anchor. There are far fewer local journalists than there once were and than our communities need to stay informed. The least we can do is highlight their work so you all know where to find it.

Here’s a rundown of some big stories happening below the federal and state level that you should keep an eye on:

• Cochise County supervisors, who you’ve undoubtedly heard more about in the past year than you did in the decade previous, will meet today to potentially name a new elections director while an effort to recall County Supervisor Tom Crosby nears the deadline for gathering signatures. The board, which offshored elections duties to County Recorder David Stevens, could appoint La Paz elections director Bob Bartelsmeyer to the same role in Cochise, where he’d report to Stevens. (The county previously told us today’s meeting would include an item deciding whether county taxpayers or Crosby and fellow hand count enthusiast Peggy Judd would have to pay recent court sanctions, but we don’t see that on today’s agenda.) Crosby recall organizers say they have more than half the signatures they need by the first week of May and that they’ve encountered hurdles from Stevens and others while trying to finish up, the Republic’s Sarah Lapidus reports. 

• In Tempe, ballots are out for the city election to decide the fate of an Arizona Coyotes arena and surrounding entertainment district. This battle has gotten heated and ugly, with a lawsuit from the City of Phoenix against Tempe and a countersuit from the Coyotes against Phoenix. Just yesterday, former Tempe Mayor Neil Giuliano (who along with some other former mayors supports the project) feuded online with former Tempe Vice Mayor Lauren Kuby (who opposes the project). And there have been conflicting studies of the development’s economic impact released recently, Cronkite News’ Jake Seymour reports. Ballots are out now for the city election, which concludes on May 16.

  

• People who live in the Rio Verde Foothills area are still without a water supply in an issue that spread far beyond the wildcat subdivision into the pages of national news outlets. A recently unearthed email among Scottsdale officials from last October showed that a solution where Scottsdale would treat and transport water from private company EPCOR to feed the area was near, but then fell apart, the Scottsdale Progress’ Tom Scanlon reports. Several people pointed the finger at Scottsdale Mayor David Ortega for the deal’s demise. Maricopa County, Scottsdale, the Rio Verde Foothills community and now the Arizona Corporation Commission have failed to come to a solution, while some residents are rallying this week at the Arizona Capitol to try to get Gov. Katie Hobbs to step in. 

• And finally, the school board battles we’ve warned and written about multiple times now have become too numerous to track. Thankfully, the Republic’s Madeleine Parrish has a list of the Valley districts that recently saw superintendent turnover, which can signal big changes and clashes between school boards and administrators. 

We could’ve gone on forever with all the niche dramas that deserve your attention, but these four storylines are critical to watch right now. We’ll round up the rest in the next section. 

This is a good time for us to remind you to pay for local news so that it sticks around. Pay for your local paper, donate to your local nonprofit news orgs and, of course, become a paid subscriber to the Agenda.

The tamale bill won’t die: There will be an attempt today to override Gov. Katie Hobbs’ veto on the so-called “tamale bill,” House Bill 2509, but Democrats in both chambers say they won’t be voting in favor of it, despite their earlier support for the bill. Senate Democrats said last week they wouldn’t be part of a political game between the GOP and Hobbs, and House Democrats said they’d instead like to work together on improved policies for cottage food businesses this session rather than roll the governor. Democratic Rep. Alma Hernandez said she intends to break with her caucus and vote in favor of the override, though, saying “there are other Dems who are with me.” An override would need two-thirds support in both chambers; without most Dems, that won’t be possible. Senate Republicans, meanwhile, are planning “Tamale Tuesday” today, where vendors will sell cottage foods outside the Arizona Capitol Museum. 

We don’t think they’re friends: Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes received a threatening phone call in January and wanted a 24/7 security detail, but Hobbs wouldn’t grant it, saying a safety assessment didn’t warrant it, the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger reports. The two top Dems also disagreed on who would pay for increased security, so Fontes instead is paying for private security through his campaign while seeking more money for office security in the state budget. Fontes wouldn’t tell Barchenger what the threat was, but it led him to tell staff to work outside the office just in case. Hobbs got a temporary security detail granted by former Gov. Doug Ducey after getting threats during the audit. 

A fight worth having: The Arizona Capitol Times said it will fight the restraining order Arizona Sen. Wendy Rogers got against reporter Camryn Sanchez, who has been investigating Rogers’ residency and use of per diem. Cap Times publisher Michael Gorman said Rogers received the order without informing Sanchez or giving her a chance to fight it, so the paper will challenge the “baseless” and “unconstitutional” injunction.

A unanimous one: Ben Henry, Hobbs’ nominee to lead the Arizona Department of Liquor Licenses and Control, easily cleared the Senate’s director nominations committee in a relatively uneventful hearing the likes of which the committee is not known for. 

The view inside: Longtime Phoenix journalist Michael Kiefer and former head of the Capital Habeas Unit at the Federal Defender’s Office in Arizona Dale Baich launched a series of stories in the Arizona Mirror about the modern history of Arizona’s death penalty. In the first installment, they write about what it’s like to witness an execution and the opaque process that leads to someone’s death, detailing executions replete “with guesswork and last-minute changes, with nameless executioners paid in cash to avoid a paper trail and with medical support teams of dubious competence.”

As Bob Barker always said: Facing overcrowding in its shelters, the Maricopa County Animal Care and Control is using COVID-19 recovery funds to finance mobile pop-ups clinics to spay and neuter animals in ZIP codes that surrender animals most frequently, the Republic’s Sasha Hupka reports. The pop-ups come after a shelter outbreak of distemper and the departure of director Michael Mendel after claims he had bullied staff. 

You can always turn the channel: Professional podcast guest Kari Lake said she saw MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski at the Palm Beach airport in Florida and introduced herself “because you guys spend a lot of time badmouthing me on your show and I just wanted to put the human being the face that you guys kind of go after,” she told Steve Bannon’s podcast. 

A legal win, but that’s about it: After the massive settlement between Fox and Dominion that ended Dominion’s lawsuit against the cable giant, places that use Dominion voting machines say it’s a victory but not likely to end the misinformation campaigns they regularly face, the Guardian’s Kira Lerner reports. Maricopa County, which has used Dominion, doesn’t expect the problems to let up, and County Recorder Stephen Richer said he has “concerns over my own personal security if we re-enlist Dominion” in the next contract for machines. 

“We still, every single day, hear questions about vote switching, connectivity to the internet, and it doesn’t matter how many studies, how many reports, how many outside audits, how many election technology companies come in and look at this, those haven’t been able to go away,” Richer said.

A strike force by any other name: If Hobbs gets her way, the state would end Ducey’s signature Border Strike Force that doesn’t work much at the border or as a force and repurpose the money for other border-related purposes. Some border sheriffs say they didn’t support the Strike Force and could use the money for other things, while other sheriffs say the force funds have helped them combat border-related crimes, KJZZ’s Alisa Reznick reports. Still, even if Hobbs repurposes the funds, the only real change to the program would be the name. 

Lawsuit forthcoming: Pima County faces a $50 million legal claim from the family of a property manager who was killed by a tenant while going along with an eviction last year, the Republic’s Sarah Lapidus reports. Angela Fox went with Constable Deborah Martinez-Garibay to serve the eviction, during which tenant Gavin Lee Stansell shot and killed Fox, shot Martinez-Garibay and then shot himself. The family claims Martinez-Garibay wasn’t properly trained for the job, knew Stansell owned a gun, should not have been able to hold the constable position and had drugs in her system at the time of the shooting. 

Would be wild if she got her job back: The Gilbert Sun News’ Ken Sain dives into the connections expelled lawmaker Liz Harris has to the other two nominees to take her spot in the Arizona House and shows how the Legislative District 13 GOP has gotten even more riled up over election denialism since Harris’ expulsion. It’s not clear, Sain notes, if Harris could be legally appointed to her own seat again, though the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors are unlikely to pick her.

A bill with bipartisan support would allocate $5 million toward a program that allows small churches to get grants for security costs. 

Senate Bill 1713, sponsored by Republican Sen. David Gowan, would set up the Arizona State Nonprofit Security Grant Program to help them cover security costs if they experience issues like hate crimes or threats, the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy reports. 

Larger churches can already access a similar federal program, but it’s difficult for smaller churches to use. 

Congregations of various faiths say they’ve faced threats and could use the help to improve security, and the bill has the support of the Arizona Faith Network.

The Senate approved the bill 20-9 in March. It passed the House Appropriations committee on a 13-1 vote and awaits a full vote of the lower chamber. 

Remember when Local Man Will Novak accidentally got invited to a Vermont guy’s bachelor party and decided to go, then let people follow along on social media a few years ago?

Well, Novak’s adventure at Angelo’s Bachelor Party could become a movie. The producers who own Novak’s life rights (sounds ominous!) tapped a writer for the film, dubbed “Reply All,” as the story is resurfacing again on TikTok.