The Daily Agenda: Thankful for you
It's the season of thanks! ... We're thankful they're not on the ballot ... And thankful we still have Joe to kick around.
Hello readers,
We’re going to try something different today. Rather than a snark-filled report breaking down the latest scandal in Arizona politics, we’re going to do our best to be sincere. Weird, right?
Thanksgiving does that to people. There’s something about the year coming to an end that forces us to reflect on the blessings and challenges it brought. This year delivered a lot of both. But for today, let’s focus on the good.
First of all… You’re here! That’s awesome!
We never had any guarantee that anyone would read this newsletter, let alone keep paying for it year after year. But some of you have now purchased your third annual subscription to the Agenda! That’s incredible, and it’s still our biggest reason to be thankful this year.
The fact that nearly 10,000 of you keep showing up every morning at 6 a.m. to read about the nitty gritty of Arizona politics and government gives us hope for local civic life and local journalism. And that’s a hard thing to find among us jaded newspaper reporter types.
Thanks to each and every one of you 9,675 (and climbing!) subscribers for your time, your attention, your comments and your occasional deeply wounding criticism. Thanks for helping build the Agenda and being part of our community!
But we owe an extra special thank you to all of you who pay for your subscription.
We know there are a lot of demands on your purse. We have to pick and choose between subscriptions all the time. (It’s one of our biggest business expenses!) Thank you for choosing to support the Agenda.
Without you, the Agenda would cease to exist.
But it’s not just subscription dollars that keep us going. Receiving your emails, comments, DMs, texts, tweets and random stories is truly the best part of the job.1 They give us the motivation and inspiration to keep us going, even on the bad days.
On those rare bad days, we look at the page of notes people leave when they upgrade from free readers to paid subscribers. So we’re especially thankful for those.
We’re also thankful to be at a point when the Agenda’s scope and vision can grow, too.
That means developing new products for new nitches, as we’ve done with the Tucson Agenda, and expanding our mindset about what the Agenda can become. It’s exciting!
With your help, we’ve built an awesome, sustainable newsletter that people like. We even have a little budget beyond our own salaries. That’s pretty cool! We’re finally at a point where we can step back and ask, “What now?”
Some of that will be doubling down on what we already do well. Other parts will be more innovative. But that’s a newsletter for another day…
The point is that all of this is only possible because you choose to support the Agenda.
And we’re eternally grateful for that support.
We hope you enjoy the long weekend with those you’re thankful for.
We’ll be back in your inbox at 6 a.m. Monday.
If you’re feeling thankful for the Agenda this Thanksgiving but can’t afford to pay for your subscription, follow us on social media and tell your friends about the Agenda.
It’s the best free way to help!
And if you love the Agenda and can afford a little more, consider making a tax-deductible donation through the Local News Fund so we can continue to innovate the newsletter.
Party pooper: The Patriot Party of Arizona won’t become a recognized political party after the group came up about 3,000 signatures short, the Republic’s Ray Stern reports. Former Republican Rep. John Fillmore of Apache Junction led the effort to make the election-denying group the state’s fifth recognized party.
“The Zone” spreads: Now that Phoenix has cleared out “the Zone,” nearby neighborhoods are seeing an uptick of unsheltered people staying in alleyways and in front of empty businesses or homes, 12News’ Erica Stapleton reports. Meanwhile, Phoenix owes $220,000 in legal fees to the local business owners who sued the city alleging “the Zone” created a public nuisance, per KJZZ’s Kirsten Dorman.
"It seems that the quote, unquote ‘clean up’ that the city did just spread the mess out a lot further," resident Troy Young said.
Stay in your lane: State schools chief Tom Horne doesn’t have the authority to launch a lawsuit opposing dual language instruction for English language learner students, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes argued in a filing in the aforementioned lawsuit, per the Arizona Mirror’s Gloria Rebecca Gomez. Horne filed the lawsuit in September asking a Maricopa County Superior Court judge to declare the Legislature’s adoption of 50-50 models (where students are taught in English half the time and a partner language the other half) unconstitutional. Mayes argues the state superintendent’s role is administrative and the State Board of Education directs educational policy.
Which lane?: The Maricopa Association of Governments wants to know what improvements you want to see along the stretch of interstate from the I-10 Deck Park Tunnel to the I-10/I-17 Split, per 12News’ Gabriella Bachara. About 12,000 crashes happened in this corridor from 2016 to 2021, per MAG, and about 89 resulted in severe injuries or death. You can give them a piece of your mind via this survey until the end of the month.
They also want concessions: Sky Harbor workers with SSP America walked out of their concessions jobs in protest of labor law violations amid the busy travel season, ABC15 reports. Workers at the airport’s restaurants have been asking for better working conditions for a while, and some spotted cockroaches and rats at the restaurants the SSP America owns.
Lost in translation: A report from the border advocacy group No More Deaths found the Pima County Sheriff’s Department has a discriminatory practice of handling calls from non-English speaking migrants in distress and often dispatched callers to Border Patrol without taking information, AZPM’s Danyelle Khmara reports. Sheriff Chris Nanos disputes the findings.
Tough but fair: Tucson City Council Member Steve Kozachik wants to know who should be held accountable for the University of Arizona’s $250 million shortfall, and why Arizona Board of Regents members didn’t question UA President Robert Robbins more about how it happened, he writes in an op-ed for the Tucson Sentinel. Kozachik, who was laid off by the University of Arizona’s athletic department in 2020 as a cost-saving measure, questioned why the university kept making investments (including buying a shady online university) when they should have foreseen the financial doom ahead.
“As I watched the presentation I kept waiting for the explanation. The question isn't ‘does Robbins know how to spend other peoples' money.’ Based on the financial shortfalls the answer to that is obvious. The question is, does he know how to manage it,” Kozachik wrote.
Healthcare at the high court: The San Carlos Apache tribe’s claim that the federal government isn’t reimbursing it enough for tribal health services will go to the U.S. Supreme Court, per Cronkite News’ Adrienne Washington. The key to the case is whether Indian Health Service should cover overhead costs for third-party insurers.
Yet another advertiser that won’t take us: Flagstaff will stop allowing businesses to advertise at its airport after the Goldwater Institute threatened to sue the city over its rejection of an ad for firearms, the Arizona Daily Sun’s Adrian Skabelund reports. Council members and the city manager contended advertising at the airport is more trouble than it’s worth.
There’s one constituency critical to the Agenda’s continued success that we forgot to thank at the top of today’s email.
So, let us say, from the bottom of our hearts: Thank you to all the politicians who get rejected and just refuse to take no for an answer.
Thank you for making yourselves wildly available to mockery. We know it’s not easy, but someone has to provide today’s laugh.
And when all else fails, it’s nice to know that we can always count on you, Kari Lake, Trent Franks and even Joe Arpaio, to help us fill out the bottom of this email.
We couldn’t do it without you!
It is also occasionally the worst part of our day.
Happy Thanksgiving to both of you.