The Daily Agenda: Thank a government worker
The Daily Agenda: Thank a government worker
We love to pick on them, but we do need them ... Failed profiles are the best profiles ... And if you're doing a hit piece, be sure to use Comic Sans.
No matter who you are, you’ve interacted with a government worker.
They’ve signed you up for a driver’s license. They’ve helped you sign up for unemployment insurance or register your businesses. They’ve put you on the state’s Medicaid rolls.
Given their broad reach and direct impact on people’s lives, we should all care about the state of the state’s workforce.
We’re suckers for government reports. We want to file a public records request for all the reports agencies and other public bodies are required by law to submit to the Legislature or Governor’s Office. They’re an endless source of story ideas. And they’re required by law, so we figure someone should at least make sure they’re being submitted and read. Why not us?
Each year, we look forward to the state’s annual workforce reports because they tell us how each agency is doing. The workforce report is probably second only to agency budget requests, submitted in September to the Governor’s Office. Those provide frank assessments of agencies’ financial needs and outstanding problems.
The report shows you which agencies are seeing high turnover, which gives an indication of who may need raises or improvements to working conditions. It helps us understand the lay of the land and where to start asking questions.
And it lets us clock the overall size of state government. During Gov. Doug Ducey’s tenure, the size of state government declined — until the pandemic. But the increases in state workers in Fiscal Year 2020 declined by Fiscal Year 2021, to just a bit above Fiscal Year 2019.
And some state workers got raises last fiscal year, the report notes, “surpassing growth in the private sector for the first time in seven years.” In fact, for the first time, the average state worker salary cracked $50,000. Last year saw the largest raises to state workers overall in more than 20 years.
On the flip side, turnover in state employees skyrocketed, perhaps reflecting “the ultra competitive labor market and the difficulty in retaining current talent,” as the Department of Administration suggests, or perhaps reflecting bad bosses or management practices in certain departments.
The 2021 workforce report reminded us of a point we think often gets lost: How well the government works affects you directly. If it works smoothly, that saves you time (and time is money, or so we hear). You’ll be able to get the help you need. You won’t be hindered in doing stuff that requires government oversight. If you retain people well, you likely get a better government. If the government works poorly, it affects our overall perception of whether the government is good.
We should all want a government workforce that likes their jobs. We should want relatively low turnover, which comes from solid pay, good benefits, healthy working conditions and flexibility. Because when we end up needing help from the government, it shouldn’t be a terrible experience.
We literally cannot afford a single turnover here at the Arizona Agenda. Please become one of our beloved paying subscribers right now so Rachel doesn’t quit to make more money elsewhere. Unfortunately, Hank is basically unemployable at this point, so you’re probably stuck with him. Sorry.
Define “person”: A federal judge temporarily blocked a 2021 law granting human rights to fetuses from being enforced, saying the law is “unconstitutionally vague” and opponents of the law are likely to ultimately win their case against it. The law granted fetuses “all rights, privileges and immunities available to other persons,” but the judge wrote that the myriad uncertainties about what exactly, that means “create an intolerable risk of arbitrary enforcement.”
They did call 2020 right: Fox News updated its list of toss-up districts, throwing in Arizona’s 4th Congressional District, currently represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton. While the central Phoenix-based district got more competitive in last year’s redistricting, and both the NRCC and DCCC are keeping tabs on it, Fox so far stands alone in calling it a toss-up rather than a Dem-leaning district, as Cook and other House district rankers declare it.
Somewhere in Arizona, a bill is going unpaid: Reporters spent the day trying to nail down details about former President Donald Trump’s planned visit to Arizona this weekend, as rumors swirled that Team Trump was eyeing Tucson1, though they seem to have settled on Prescott Valley. Previous rumors about where the event would be held also included Lake Havasu City.
Sliced mangos, anyone?: The Republic’s Bill Goodykoontz previewed the upcoming documentary “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down” and brings us this delightfully disgusting detail: Giffords keeps roughly a third of her skull, the piece that was blown off in the 2011 shooting, in her freezer “right next to the empanadas and sliced mangos,” as her husband, U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, explains in the documentary, which hits theaters Friday.
Pro tip: Delete the tweets before you start to sue: It was another big day for GOP gubernatorial contender Karrin Taylor Robson after the latest HighGround Public Affairs poll showed her surging — still behind frontrunner Kari Lake, but within the margin of error — and she picked up a coveted endorsement from the National Border Patrol Council. Meanwhile, local attorney Tom Ryan, who is representing Phoenix drag legend Richard Stevens AKA Barbra Seville, fired off a litigation hold demand to Lake, saying since they’re all expecting to see each other in court, she has to stop deleting social media posts of Lake partying with Seville. And check out Phoenix Magazine’s latest piece on Lake. For a “failed profile,” it’s a pretty good read.
Party labels are a good predictor here: The Republic’s Tara Kavaler asked the seven (!) candidates running to be Arizona’s next attorney general what laws they believe govern abortions in Arizona and whether they’d prosecute women or doctors. The results were largely predictable: The Democrat said the state laws banning abortion are unconstitutional because, unlike the U.S. Constitution, the Arizona Constitution includes a specific right to privacy, while all the Republicans who answered offered some version of Arizona’s laws make abortion illegal and they would prosecute, with some minor differences.
Too little too late: The Arizona Legislature’s attempt to rein in “forced condo sales” doesn’t go far enough to help many Arizonans who are facing the prospect of being kicked out of their condos if enough of their neighbors agree to sell, the Arizona Capitol Times’ Nick Phillips reports. A last-minute amendment to the bill, which Gov. Doug Ducey signed last week, watered it down so it will only apply to condos created after the law takes effect later this year.
“The first time I heard about condo terminations over a decade ago, it raised my eyebrows a bit and I thought, ‘Wait a minute, this is America, can we really do this?’” Arizona attorney Michael Schern, who does condo terminations law for investors, told Phillips.
Water is always water, and other facts to blow your mind: In an ongoing series, KJZZ’s Ron Dungan tries to explain Arizona’s water problem not in acre-feet or gallons, but through a single drop of water.
“The water drop that comes out of your tap has likely existed as gas, ice or saltwater. It may have been here when the Earth was a fiery planet more than 4 billion years ago,” Dungan writes.
Drill baby drill: Voters in Cochise County will decide in November whether to create an Active Management Area to regulate groundwater pumping in the Sulphur Springs Valley area as longtime family farmers in the area worry that massive agriculture projects that have moved in in recent years are sucking all the water out of the aquifers, Shar Porier writes in the Herald-Review. Only five AMAs exist in Arizona, though more local municipalities are considering them as state policymakers fail to enact groundwater protections.
You people never listen anyway: Like many daily papers these days, The Arizona Daily Star is canceling its candidate endorsements this year. Instead, the paper will focus its efforts on “candidates and issues in the many down-ballot races that don’t get much attention,” as well as questionnaires and interviews with candidates, editorial board chief Curt Prendergast writes.
Just roll with it: The big fuckup on Pinal County ballots isn’t getting fixed any time soon, Pinal County Attorney Kent Volkmer told 12News’ Brahm Resnik. Volkmer said voters should just vote on the ballot they have, even if it contains missing or wrong local races, because the county can’t fix the error in time for the primary election. The county is considering asking a judge to approve a new election plan or holding a special election for the municipal races that got messed up, Resnik reports.
There’s a sector for that: Different types of immigration in two sectors of Arizona’s border with Mexico underscore the diverse array of problems officials face in dealing with immigration, the Washington Post’s Nick Miroff writes, noting the Mexican traffickers who control smuggling routes “have developed a tailored strategy for each” sector. The Tucson Sector sees young men from Mexico making a mad dash to the U.S. while trying to evade capture. In the Yuma Sector, immigrants of all ages from all over the world routinely turn themselves in and request asylum.
Things that make you go hmmmm: The City of Nogales is investigating whether a former councilman dodged sewer fees by lying about his residency — and has spent almost as much on the investigation as the former councilman is alleged to have bilked the city out of. The Nogales International’s Angela Gervasi reports that the investigation into Jorge Maldonado, who resigned in April to run against Mayor Arturo Garino, comes right before the primary election, though the city maintains it’s not political.
A different kind of work from home: A 2021 law that is now being implemented allows families of medically fragile children to become trained and certified as their caretakers and get paid by the state to do so. Only about 50 people have been certified so far, the Queen Creek Tribune reports, but the program is a big financial boost to parents who cannot work because they take care of their medically fragile children full-time.
Adoption is not always an option: The Arizona Game and Fish Department is once again adopting out desert tortoises, though you should only get one if you don’t plan to move out of state and are willing to write a will that plans for their care. But don’t go adopting that bobcat living in your attic, Axios’ Jessica Boehm reminds us.
Legislative District 6, Arizona’s largest legislative district, stretches from the Four Corners Monument to the Grand Canyon to southeastern Arizona and includes the Navajo Nation, Hopi, San Carlos tribes. It’s similar to the latest iteration of LD7, which sent three Democrats to Phoenix since its inception in 2011 (some of you will remember Carlyle Begay, who was elected as a Democrat before switching to a Republican in 2015). LD6 will be heavily Democratic, too: Dems make up roughly two-thirds of the district that covers most of northeastern Arizona, including the Grand Canyon.
Arizona Sen. Theresa Hathalie, a co-founder of the Navajo & Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund who was appointed to the Senate just before the 2022 session, is running to keep her seat. She may face Jeff “J.D.” Daniels, a Libertarian write-in candidate, who will need at least 246 votes in the primary to make it to the November ballot.
In the House, three Democrats will compete for two seats. Democrats are guaranteed to represent the area over the next two years; there are no Republicans running. Myron Tsosie is the only incumbent, but voters will definitely recognize at least one of the other name on their primary ballot. Mae Peshlakai, a jewelry maker and weaver, is the mother of Jamescita Peshlakai, who served several years in the Legislature before resigning to take a job in the Biden administration. Deydrek “Dey” Scott, a former assistant to Jamescita Peshlakai in the Senate, is also running, bringing several years working in local government and politics to his campaign.
This is perhaps our favorite political flier of the 2022 cycle so far. The low-budget one-pager posted by Republican LD29 candidate Austin Smith details research on his primary rival, Trey Terry. Titled “My Research on Trey Terry,” the flier mostly includes deleted tweets and news clips.
We’ve been laughing about this for literal weeks, and we couldn’t really tell you why. In this age of high-dollar, slick TV ads, there’s something both endearing and ridiculous about a printed-out page that feels more like a “how I spent my summer vacation” report you’d hand in to a teacher when returning to school in August.
Trump’s campaign still owes money to the City of Tucson for a 2016 rally there, as he does to loads of other cities, including Mesa. Cities usually don’t bill for the public safety costs associated with presidential visits, but they do for campaign rallies.
While I was in the legislature, I had the State Retirement System create a database of all five year continuous workers. If you did that now, it would have all people who worked for government in AZ from before 2016 through 2021. Then, I had them calculate their change in pay for the four most recent years.
City workers averaged 11 percent change in pay for each year. Yes, reclassifications and promotions run rampant.
County workers averaged 6 percent
State workers averaged 4 percent.
In 1995, 55 percent of Chandler citizens rated city government excellent. That dwindled to 38 percent in 2007 and then Chandler quit measuring.
The City of Phoenix varied between 12 percent excellent and 16 percent excellent for forty years before they quit measuring.
The City of Tucson quit measuring when they hit 8%. A special case all their own, Tucson has over 380,000 miles of cracks and potholes in their 2,500 miles of streets, record murders in 2021 and hasn't created a job since March of 2007.
By comparison, the Chandler Unified School district had 38% of their parents rating them excellent in 1998 and they steadily improved this to 72% in 2021. The Stanford Education Project rated Chandler among the top 1% of all school districts in the nation based on their academic gains.
Your average pay for a state worker of $50,000 compares as follows to the City of Chandler:
City of Chandler has 330 salaried employees making an average of $99,000 per year
City of Chandler has 1,000 hourly employees making an average of $62,000 per year before overtime.
For an overall average of $77,000 as compared to your $50,000 for state employees.
Cities are not a good bargain for the taxpayer in AZ.
State government and schools are an excellent bargain. Tell a state employee thanks and give a teacher a special thanks.
The National Assessment is the gold standard for comparing state outcomes. Our 8th grade math scores rank as follows: AZ Blacks rank 3rd just a point out of first with Blacks in only two other states outscoring them. AZ Hispanics rank 14th, Asians 5th and whites 6th. All this nonsense from U.S. News, Scholaroo, WalletHub is just that: scientific nonsense.