In the past two years, the Tempe City Council has come under increasing scrutiny for illegal meetings, aggressive policing of the unhoused and advocates who feed them, and for allowing a substantial budget shortfall.
Just two weeks from now, the city’s voters will decide whether to stick with three incumbent council members — who unfailingly vote as part of a 7-0 bloc — or move to elect new council members.
One of the three incumbents up for reelection is Councilwoman Berdetta Hodge, a former school governing board president. For months, there have been rumors circulating around Tempe that Hodge was involved in a hit-and-run collision.
Just in time for the election, we’ve obtained records from both the Tempe Police Department and the Mesa Police Department related to the investigation of Hodge.
Hodge in July 2025, flanked by Democratic U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton.
The case was ultimately closed about a week after the incident because the woman who claimed to have been hit by Hodge — Marge Zylla — didn’t want to prosecute Hodge for leaving the scene of the alleged collision, which is a state crime.
It’s worth noting that Zylla is an employee of neighboring City of Chandler, and she previously spent 10 years working for Tempe as its lobbyist. So there's not a lot of incentive for her to lie (or for her to press charges — Zylla told police she only wanted a report filed for insurance purposes).
Hodge did not respond to our questions about the incident, but her campaign staff gave a statement to the Daily Independent.
“This is yet another baseless political attack from desperate opponents,” Hodge said in the statement. ”As an independent law enforcement agency concluded, there was no accident, therefore there can be no hit-and-run.”
But police didn't actually conclude that there was no accident — they simply closed the investigation.
“In a moment where we need unity, it’s sad that we see the politics of division,” Hodge’s statement concludes.
Critics and challengers say that lockstep unity among members of Tempe's city council is part of the reason why the current crop of city council members needs to go.
Many of their most controversial decisions have been made unanimously. The council even flip-flops in calculated unison.
But we'll leave it to you to decide whether it’s a “baseless political attack” or not.
Here are the details, per the police report.
Collision? What collision?
Around 1:30 p.m. on Dec. 27, Zylla was driving near Southern Avenue and Los Feliz Drive, she told Tempe police. When a red light turned green and a disabled vehicle a few cars ahead of her didn’t move, Zylla said she was read-ended by the car behind her. She told police that “the impact was hard enough for the suspect to notice.”
Then, the car backed up and changed lanes.
Zylla followed, taking pictures of the car, license plate and the driver from a side angle.
The car — a black 2011 Mercedes GLK350 — and the license plate matched Hodge’s registration. So did the picture, apparently.
“I located a photograph of Berdetta Hodge ... and compared it to the photograph provided by the victim,” Tempe Officer William Frommling wrote. “The hair style and face shape in the photos indicate that Berdetta was the driver of the Mercedes GLK350 at the time of the collision.”
Tempe Officer Tyler Perkins examined Zylla’s car and did notice small gouges and small paint scratches in the plastic portion of the rear bumper.
Two days after the incident, Tempe police Chief Kenneth McCoy requested assistance from his counterparts at the Mesa Police Department “due to a potential conflict,” since Hodge is a council member.
A Mesa officer went to Hodge’s house and interviewed her six days after the incident. The councilwoman must have a super-powered brain, because she remembered a lot of details about what happened near the alleged incident — but did not remember rear-ending Zylla’s car.
“Hodge did provide a similar account of traffic flow at the time of the incident, recalling traffic backed up due to a disabled car stopped several vehicles in front of her vehicle. Hodge told me she had slowed her brakes down as other vehicles pulled out and went around the stopped vehicles. When asked if she recalled the victim's vehicle, Hodges described a gray Honda sport utility vehicle which had been stopped in front of her vehicle,” the officer wrote. “Hodge told me she would have known if she accidentally struck the Honda and if so, she would have remained at the scene. Hodge added that she is a council member and would never flee the scene of an accident.”
The Mesa cop didn’t find any damage to Hodge’s vehicle that would have been caused by the collision, noting the car was older and had a bit of damage that didn’t seem fresh.
After the interview, the case was closed. On top of Zylla’s lack of interest in prosecution, Tempe police were unable to find any surveillance footage that showed the alleged collision.
Someday, we’re gonna start a segment called “texting with sources.”
Dynamics of the race
Hodge and fellow incumbents Arlene Chin and Jennifer Adams are taking on four challengers for at-large seats (meaning the council members represent the whole city and not specific districts).
There will be two rounds of elections for the council race — one on March 10 and another in May. At most, six of the seven candidates running could advance to the May general election contest.
Three of four challengers responded to our inquiry about the police reports. None of the incumbents responded to our questions.
Progressive Bobby Nichols declined to comment, while entrepreneur Joe Forte — who lost support in the moderately liberal town after some of his right-wing posts on Truth Social surfaced — said it was people “making a mountain out of a molehill” out of the incident.
“If you want to hit the incumbents over anything, it should be the mismanagement of the city budget,” Forte said. “The city is currently running a deficit of $5 million dollars a year and not a peep from the incumbents on where that additional revenue is going to come from or where in the budget to cut, when I've already proposed both. That's the real issue that we all should be talking about.”
Progressive challenger Brooke St. George wasn’t as forgiving.
St. George has said she was inspired to run partly after becoming disillusioned with working at City Hall and, particularly, disappointed by the behavior of her former boss, Councilwoman Jennifer Adams.
“Criminal charges or not, our elected officials must be held to the highest standards of conduct,” St. George said. “Following the law also means taking responsibility and being honest when mistakes are made. Any effort by the candidate or the City of Tempe to deflect blame or manage the optics ahead of an election only further undermines public trust.”
Ultimately, the details of the incident might not change any voters’ minds — and it’s certainly not as damning as the series of controversies, scandals and accusations that have mired the council in the past two years.
Since the last council election in 2024:
Its members were caught breaking open meetings law to discuss a secret, taxpayer-funded program to monitor social media opposition to a council initiative, which local critics painted as a land giveaway to wealthy developers.
A tape of the executive session was released about a year ago and showed the council members trashing their own constituents, calling one a “crazy uncle,” and laughing merrily when the consultant they hired called their critics “cave people” — based on the acronym, “citizens against virtually everything.”
The council members have also garnered criticism for an ongoing attempt to cite and arrest residents feeding homeless people in city parks. In July, the council voted 7-0 for a controversial new ordinance further restricting use of the parks, brazenly unfazed by the 77 people showing up to speak out against it.
And after citizens organized an initiative with enough signatures to send it to the ballot, its members backed down and repealed the law in another 7-0 vote.
Organizers, led by the Phoenix metro chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, flooded City Hall to oppose the parks measure.
In many ways, Tempe — with its typically uncontroversial, happy-go-lucky, left-of-center politics — has become the local government most under fire from its residents.
Whether they show up for March’s election will determine whether business continues as usual. It’s worth keeping an eye on this one.
Let the mud-slinging begin: Faced with accusations of corruption from Republican lawmakers, Gov. Katie Hobbs is launching an offensive against Republican Sen. T.J. Shope, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer reports. Hobbs’ staff prepared a list showing Shope received nearly $5,000 in meals and entertainment last year from lobbyists, but he didn’t include that money in his financial disclosures. Fischer checked Hobbs’ records from when she was a legislator all the way to her time as governor and found her disclosures look a lot like Shope’s.
Counting on Congress: A whole bunch of members of Congress are voluntarily quitting this year as America’s least-functional public body hits a modern low in the number of bills it has passed into law, the Washington Post reports. Arizona is home to two of the so-far 68 members of the House and Senate who are moving on — Republican U.S. Reps. Andy Biggs and David Schweikert — both of whom are seeking the Governor’s Office. Meanwhile, the number of actually competitive seats in Congress is dropping, per NPR, as states like California and Texas go tit-for-tat in an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting process. Of the 435 House districts, only 18 of them are listed as “toss ups,” according to Cook Political Report. But Arizona is home to two of those districts (the most of any state, tied with California, Iowa, Ohio and Pennsylvania). Arizona’s swing districts are Schweikert’s CD1 and Republican Rep. Juan Ciscomani’s CD6.
No money, no water: Against the backdrop of Colorado River water shortages, a bill from Republican Rep. Justin Olson is causing a headache for Queen Creek officials who are trying to secure the city’s water future, Cecilia Chan reports for the East Valley Tribune. HB4030, and a companion ballot measure, would block cities and counties from increasing fees and taxes until 2030, but Queen Creek is in the middle of spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy water from the Harquahala Valley, and the only way to cover the cost is a new water user fee.
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What would Gov. Biggs say?: ICE and Border Patrol agents running roughshod through cities like Minneapolis has apparently shifted President Donald Trump’s thinking about where he’ll target next, per States Newsroom. The president reportedly said during a closed-door meeting with governors that his immigration enforcement squads would “only go where we’re wanted,” according to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. And Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont quoted Trump as saying “‘We’re not going to send ICE into any cities that don’t ask for it.’”
Meanwhile, in Arizona: ICE agents in Tempe are trying to send an Iranian man, whose brother went on a hunger strike at an immigration detention center in Florence, back to Iran where he is likely to be executed, Morgan Fischer reports for the Phoenix New Times. Some Arizonans are so worried about being swept up randomly by ICE that they’re carrying their passports when they take their dogs for walks, Cronkite News’ Dermont Stevenson reports. And Richard “Hank” Mueller, the top investigator for Pinal County Attorney Brad Miller, who is pushing for more cooperation with ICE over the objections of the county supervisors, has a history of misconduct as a sheriff’s deputy dating back more than a decade that includes forcing his way into an innocent couple’s home and a drunken fight at a Tempe sports bar, the New Times’ Stephen Lemons reports.
In other, other news
A bill to force the Arizona Independent Party to change its name is sailing through the Legislature and headed right for a lawsuit (Stacey Barchenger / Republic) … Democratic state Rep. Myron Tsosie plans to file a complaint over reports Chinle High School basketball players were spit on and called racist names when they played Coolidge High School (Ignacio Ventura / KJZZ) … Flights from Sky Harbor to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico were canceled on Sunday after violence exploded following the killing of a cartel leader (Kevin Reagan / 12News) … And a probate judge in Maricopa County is in hot water for hugging a felon and joking about turning off the microphones in her courtroom (Robert Anglen / Republic).
Yesterday, the House had several concurrent resolutions and memorials up for final votes.
You’ll recognize them by the “HCR” and “HCM” prefixes. (Or “SCR” and “SCM” in the Senate).
While HCRs usually mean lawmakers want to send something to the ballot to get around Gov. Katie Hobbs’ veto stamp, HCMs are usually requests aimed at different governing bodies — the functional equivalent of a very official postcard.
But HCM2007 caught our attention. It would ask the Arizona State Board on Geographic and Historic Names to split State Route 69 into five sections and rename each stretch “Veterans Memorial Highway” for different wars.
The number comes from the highway’s official state route designation, which is the name required in statute. Route 69 is currently known as Black Canyon Highway, and it runs from I-17 to Prescott.
In committee, Republican Rep. Pamela Carter asked whether lawmakers could keep “69” in the name so drivers wouldn’t get confused. Republican Rep. Selina Bliss reassured members that the route “will forever be Highway 69.”
Disappointingly, lawmakers handled the discussion with full decorum on the floor. Not a single 69 joke made it into the record.