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TexasTowelie's JournalMesa homeless camp told to vacate state land
Camp Alpha, a Mesa homeless camp started by a veterans’ organization near the Loop 202, has a week to move after the Arizona Department of Transportation served a notice to vacate state land late Friday afternoon.
Tim Tait, an ADOT spokesman, said conditions at the camp have deteriorated since December, when ADOT gave Veterans on Patrol a reprieve a few days before Christmas. ADOT posted a large sign, however, warning people not to trespass on state property, days before the reprieve was issued.
“It is no longer safe to stay at the homeless camp,” Tait said.
Known as Camp Alpha, it was started for homeless veterans and for other homeless people by a volunteer organization based in Tucson. Lewis Arthur, the camp’s founder, explained at the time that no drug or alcohol use was allowed inside the camp’s perimeter.
Read more: http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/local/mesa/mesa-homeless-camp-told-to-vacate-state-land/article_bad5a656-fb20-11e6-a04f-c74dc0f54ad9.html
Job numbers for Intel's new Chandler plant questioned
East Valley elected officials applauded Intel’s announcement last week that it will invest $7 billion at its Chandler chip factory known as Fab 42 and create 3,000 full-time Intel jobs. The tech company also said the project would create more than 10,000 jobs in Arizona to run and support the factory.
But long-time Intel observer and industry analyst Jim McGregor, founder of TIRIAS Research in Phoenix, said he isn’t sure where those numbers are coming from.
Fab 42, he explained, is designed to be a “dark fab,” meaning that when it opens in 2020 or 2021, it will be fully automated and will only need a minimal crew of operators and technicians.
“It’s not going to take several thousand people to operate the place,” he said. “We knew Fab 42 would reopen, we just didn’t know when. It’s nothing new.”
Read more: http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/feeds/az_local_business/job-numbers-for-intel-s-new-chandler-plant-questioned/article_3926f5d2-f874-11e6-a5f1-23b12699f6f8.html
First Democrat to challenge Ducey talks about sex life, debt
A Democrat has officially entered the race to challenge Gov. Doug Ducey next year.
Noah Dyer, a 36-year-old Glendale resident, has never run for political office, and only recently switched from independent to Democrat “specifically for the purposes of this election.”
Dyer is a marketing executive who once said he would give up his right to privacy by taping his entire life for a year. He announced his candidacy for governor at the Arizona Capitol this morning.
Sen. Steve Farley, a Tucson Democrat, is flirting with the idea of running for the state’s highest office in 2018. Ducey has already filed a campaign committee for his re-election race.
Read more: http://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2017/02/14/first-democrat-to-challenge-ducey-talks-about-sex-life-debt/
House attorney says bill targeting voter initiatives legal
The attorney for the Arizona House of Representatives says the last of several bills targeting the initiative process is Constitutional.
The advice given Monday sets the stage for a vote on a fourth piece of legislation prompted by the passage of a minimum wage increase in November. Speaker J.D. Mesnard says he expects a vote this week.
Three others were approved by majority Republicans last week over Democrats’ objections.
One bans paying petition circulators per signature and requires only Senate approval and Gov. Doug Ducey’s signature.
Read more: http://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2017/02/27/house-attorney-says-bill-targeting-voter-initiatives-legal/
Senate votes to give business more time to fix potential disability violation
Over Democrats’ objections, state senators voted Tuesday to give businesses more time to fix violations of disability laws before ending up in court.
SB1198 is a direct result of what all sides agree has become a growth industry among some attorneys. These lawyers find what they say are violations of laws dealing with access to the handicapped, file suit but then agree to drop the claim in exchange for a cash settlement.
And the alternative is to fight the lawsuit, which may actually cost more in legal fees than the settlement request.
The situation got so bad that Attorney General Mark Brnovich got a state judge to consolidate more than 1,000 of these individual lawsuits into a single case. Now he is trying to have them dismissed.
Read more: http://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2017/02/28/senate-votes-to-give-business-more-time-to-fix-potential-disability-violation/
'Education Governor' Doug Ducey: No Cash for Computers That Pay Arizona Teachers
Education officials are scratching their noggins why Gov. Doug Ducey, the self-proclaimed and widely heralded “Education Governor,” would chop every penny of funding for the computer system that makes sure students get counted and teachers paid accurately and on time.
The move means the state will be unable to send checks to schools, officials warn. That means no teachers get paid, and that may happen before the fiscal year runs out on June 30.
The governor's office characterized the disagreement more like part of a routine budget process and not as cause for alarm.
“The governor wants to make sure people get their paychecks,” Ducey's spokesman, Daniel Scarpinato, said. “He’s not going to sign a budget that doesn’t do that.”
Read more: http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/education-governor-doug-ducey-no-cash-for-computers-that-pay-arizona-teachers-9102720
9th Circuit Court: Fired Maricopa County Employee Not Entitled to $300K Award
The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Maricopa County did not violate a former employee's First Amendment rights by firing her after she commented to a newspaper.
Maria Brandon, a former civil litigator, had worked for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office for 25 years when she was fired in 2011.
Not only did she lose the case, barring appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the Thursday ruling also means she won't get the more than $300,000 she was awarded after a seven-day trial in 2014.
Neither Brandon nor her attorney, Larry Cohen, returned a message on Friday.
Read more: http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/9th-circuit-court-fired-maricopa-county-employee-not-entitled-to-300k-award-9114136
Work on Trump's border wall to begin near Tucson, 2 other locations
Work on the wall President Donald Trump has promised to erect along the nation's 2,000-mile southwestern border will begin near Tucson, as well as El Paso, Texas, and El Centro, Calif., according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Customs and Border Protection has identified areas where the existing "fence or old brittle landing-mat fencing are no longer effective," the federal agency revealed in documentation accompanying memos by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly.
The document provided no further detail on the locations where work would begin on the structure that was a signature Trump campaign promise and is central to the president's hard-line stance on illegal immigration.
Kelly's memos dealt with the agency's implementation of Trump's executive order on immigration enforcement and border security.
Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/border-issues/2017/02/25/work-trump-border-wall-begin-near-tucson-2-other-locations/98389642/
Tucson urging high court to overturn law penalizing cities
PHOENIX - The city of Tucson wants the Arizona Supreme Court to find that a 2016 law requiring the state to withhold funding from cities with ordinances that conflict with state laws violates the state Constitution.
The legal move comes after Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich determined in November that a Tucson policy to destroy guns seized by its police department may violate a 2013 state law requiring the weapons to be sold.
Brnovich wants the high court to make a final decision and trigger the provision that allows the state to withhold tax money from the city.
Both sides will make their case at a hearing Tuesday in the first legal test of Senate Bill 1487. Nearly $1.1 billion in income and sales taxes was distributed to 91 cities and towns in the budget year that ended June 30, 2015. Tucson said it get about $170 million a year.
Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2017/02/27/tucson-urging-high-court-to-overturn-law-penalizing-cities/98487438/
Arizona may face another billion-dollar school lawsuit
Less than a year after voters passed Proposition 123 to resolve a $1.6 billion lawsuit over school funding, a new, even larger education lawsuit looms — and almost nobody is talking about it.
While the first lawsuit focused on underfunding per-student payments to schools for operational costs such as teacher salaries, this latest dispute centers on nearly a decade of cuts to capital funding for textbooks, technology, buses and building maintenance. Attorneys have warned of a lawsuit for years.
Now, they say they could file one within the next month.
Gov. Doug Ducey in his budget proposal included an additional $17 million to the School Facilities Board for building maintenance, but he continued hundreds of millions of dollars in annual cuts directly to schools for other school maintenance and soft capital such as technology.
Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona-education/2017/02/26/arizona-lawsuit-education-capital-funding-building-maintenance-technology-school-buses/98328544/
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Gender: MaleHometown: South Texas. most of my life I lived in Austin and Dallas
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Current location: Bryan, Texas
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