Tuesday, we posted a guest view by County Supervisor Ally Miller. In that guest view, Supervisor Miller made assertions regarding County Administrator Huckleberry's alleged actions regarding garnering support for county bonds. The administrator wrote us regarding this as he does not believe this view to be supported by fact. We don't want to be involved in county politics so we don't intend to allow pursuit of this issue further. We are positing the following response as part of our fairness doctrine.---
To Whom It May Concern,
In a post on your blog October 10, 2017 you published a portion of an email purported to be from Pima County Supervisor Ally Miller in which she referenced the Pima County Bond Program.
According to your post, she wrote:
“One of the things that Chuck Huckelberry (Pima County Administrator) does to garner support for bonds (and I will use a Parks and Recreation bond to illustrate) is that he will list every park in the county and list $1 million for each park.”
“Then after the election, he uses all the bond money for one park. Voters are outraged. “
Neither assertion is true. You and your readers should know you’ve been purposefully lied to.
Pima County has an extensive bond program and has had such for 20 years. There are strict controls on how bond projects are funded. We have a Truth in Bonding Code that governs the expenditure of bond funds and requires the Board of Supervisors to hold an advertised public hearing before voting to approve any change in bond funding. We have a Bond Advisory Committee that reviews every bond project and has public discussions and votes at publically noticed meetings to recommend any suggested changes to projects. Any change affecting a project requested by a city or town also requires a public hearing and approval of that municipality’s elected council. The County Administrator has no authority to make decisions about bond project funding as asserted by Supervisor Miller.
All of the information about our bond program is available online at www.pima.gov/bonds . There are over 700 completed bond projects since 1997. There is an interactive map online where you can click project-by-project and review the project scope of work, status and funding.
In 1997, voters approved $52.65 million for parks and in 2004, $96.45 million. It is verifiable that Pima County never proposed $1 million for every county and municipal park and it is verifiable that in neither election did all of the parks money approved by voters end up being used for a single park.
If you don’t believe me, go the state Auditor General’s website and look up the 2013 state Legislature-ordered audit of Pima County’s bond program. It proves Miller lied in her letter published in your blog. It also shows that Pima County’s bond program is exemplary.
Finally, Supervisor Miller’s argument about moving bond funds from one project to another doesn’t apply to Oro Valley’s bond election since it’s a single project bond – there’s no other project to which funds could be moved. So why bring it up?
I’ll leave it to you and your readers to fathom why a Pima County Supervisor would write such demonstrably false and misleading statements. Perhaps she’s trying to affect the outcome of the Proposition 454 vote?
Sincerely,
Chuck Huckelberry
Pima County Administrator
