Tucson's downtown hotel: Historical context of a complicated project (Part 3)

The saga of Tucson's proposed downtown mega-hotel has been a continuing drama for a few years. To offer an historic context to the current pending decisions, here is a series of news articles.

The original Request for Proposals
Downtown Revitalization Development Opportunity, Convention Center Headquarters Hotel
July 2007-- three years ago! No wonder Tucsonans are frustrated!

Economic downturn in the west
Brookings report finds LV among hardest hit
Las Vegas Review-Journal, December 2009.

City Council starts to debate the wisdom of the hotel project
Dialogue is changing on downtown hotel project
Inside Tucson Business, February 2010.

Local businesses are pro-development
Downtown vision, future is in new hotel, TCC
Inside Tucson Business, February 2010.

Are convention centers and hotels the great investment that developers say they are? (AKA the $190 million question.)
Space Available: The Realities of Convention Centers as Economic Development Strategy
by Heywood Sanders for the Brookings Institution, 2005.
This reports reveals not-so-rosy statistics about many cities that have built new convention hotels and convention centers to boost economic development. Sanders, an academic, was interviewed by local media in the spring of 2010, but the City Council gave him minimal time to explain his findings. It's important to note that the Brookings report was published in 2005; the economy has only gotten worse since then. In his interview on the John C. Scott show, Sanders said many US cities have traveled the convention center hotel road that the City of Tucson is now on. Some put up the funds and built the hotels; others decided to be more prudent and not build. It is scary to ponder what this huge debt could do to these heavily-leveraged cities if the US economy, in general, and unemployment, in particular, do not pick up soon.

Hotel Industry Fights Back
The Rhetoric vs the Facts: What the Brookings Report Fails to Reveal
The International Association of Exhibition Management pushed back after the Brookings Report was published in 2005.

Another "debunking" of the Brookings' Report, 2005.

Local hotel owner/opportunist wants a piece of the action
Chamber backs city lease after hotel upgrade
Arizona Daily Star, June 2010.

OUR VIEW: 99-YEAR PROPOSAL FROM BUSINESSMAN LOPEZ NOT GOOD FOR TAXPAYERS
Using city bonds to upgrade hotel is a bad idea
Even the Arizona Daily Star doesn't go for Lopez's idea for lining his own pockets with Rio Nuevo funds. June 2010.

Desperate construction workers want jobs
'WE NEED THE JOBS,' RIO NUEVO BOARD IS TOLD AT TOWN HALL
Workers flock to back TCC hotel construction
Arizona Daily Star, June 2010.

More questions than answers
These questions need to be answered before we OK a convention hotel
In Inside Tucson Business, Councilman Steve Kozachik uses the media to push for answers from Garfield Traub (the hotel developer) and from the Mayor and Council, June 2010. This article is a thorough overview of the funding and the issues.

Phoenix convention hotel occupancy less than 50%
Downtown Hotel Hell
A dose of convention hotel reality from Phoenix, thanks to the Tucson Weekly, September 2010.

Hotel hell devolves as bloggers offer options to City Council
Give downtown hotel site to the Apache Indians
A View from Baja Arizona blog on the Tucson Citizen website, September 2010.

Sensing the fear of local politicians, the hotel's developer offers another funding plan
New hotel-finance plan unveiled
Sensing that local politicians lack the will to go hundreds of millions of dollars in debt to finance and build the hotel, Garfield Traub offers an alternative funding plan, according to Arizona Daily Star, September 2010. GT suggests the creation of a real estate investment trust (REIT) which would finance the hotel. The problem with this idea is that the city would own all of the risk if the hotel sits empty, but the REIT would reap the profits if all goes well. (This is a really bad idea for the City of Tucson!)

The City Council and the Rio Nuevo Board play hot potato with the project
To build or not to build-- who's decision is it anyway? Apparently, we don't know. When the Arizona Legislature created the Rio Nuevo Board to oversee expenditure of the RN funds, Kozachik and others (including me) thought that meant they would oversee and make decisions on projects like the downtown hotel, but the RN Board passed the buck back to the City Council last week. On Sunday, the Arizona Daily Star called for someone to make a decision.

Three years, many plans, and millions of dollars later, Tucson still doesn't have a downtown hotel. Now what? As I have said many times, I do believe that Tucson would benefit from a larger, updated downtown convention hotel, but after having heard multiple interviews with Sanders about his convention hotel research, I am convinced that now is not the time for Tucson to take on massive debt and that the GT proposal is not the right plan for Tucson in 2010.

Stay tuned for future developments.

Buzz words abound at Prop 401 kick off

The weather is cooling down, just as the politics heats up in Tucson and across the nation.

Yesterday, the Yes on Prop 401 supporters held a press conference to formally kick off their campaign to change the Tucson city charter. As you may remember, I waxed poetic last spring about the City Charter Changes and why I opposed them then-- and still oppose them now. (Old stories linked here in chronological order 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.)

In the Arizona Daily Star and on the John C. Scott Show, the Southern Arizona Leadership Council (SALC)-- the corporatists who have been pushing for the City Charter Changes-- have been trumpeting the idea that the City Charter Changes have broad support-- from Tea Baggers to Democrats to unions and, of course, the rich white men who started this process.

Given the signage at the rally, I wonder how many of these people really understand what they are theoretically supporting. For example...

Do the unions understand that they are supporting a HUGE pay raise for mayor and council while their members are being furloughed and/or laid off? Also, by backing SALC, the unions are siding with the corporatists -- the dreaded management, as my steel worker Dad would have called them.

Do the tea baggers understand that those rally signs spouting catchy slogans like "Cut bureaucracy," "Demand accountability," "Cut costs" and "Streamline government" have absolutely NOTHING to do with the City Charter Changes? No bureaucracy is being cut; in fact bureaucracy will be strengthened and consolidated in the City Manager's office. There will be less accountability because the power will be with the manager-- not the elected officials. The only cost savings is in the consolidation of election cycles, but that money will be spent on the pay raises. (Hey, tea baggers, I know you are easily manipulated by the media, but you and the Libertarians should be more against this more than I am!)

Call me a Pollyanna, but I still believe in elected government and accountability to the people. For these reasons, boys and girls, I oppose Prop 401.

If these City Charter Changes pass in November, the most powerful person (mostly likely a white man) in Tucson will be the unelected city manager.

I believe that the city of Tucson could be run more efficiently, but making the city manager more powerful, paying the mayor and council more, scaring departments by eliminating their civil service protection, giving the mayor a tad more power is not going to do it, and shifting election cycles.

The current city government structure is flawed-- in my humble opinion-- because we have 7 people (city manager, mayor, and 5 council members) with about the same level of power + a gaggle of council and city staff also with some power. Consequently, we have a camel government -- one designed by committee.

Tucson has no Harry Truman. Tucson has no strong leader and no vision. Tucson has no one with the cojones to say, "The buck stops here."

Tucson needs a strong leader-- not another bureaucrat. Vote NO on 401!

I got scared yesterday but Keith and Gabby helped me through it

I was scared and depressed yesterday by the time I left work. Too much talk radio can do that to you, and I don't listen to the really horrible shows (ie, Jon Justice, Rush, etc.)

It started with Diane Rehm talking about the fate of education in the US if the Tea Baggers make strides in the November election. She asked the US head of the Department of Education what would happen if the Congress voted to eliminate the Department of Education, which is apparently one of their campaign rallying cries.

After she asked that question, the call was dropped. It was almost prophetic. I could hear in Diane's voice that she felt the same way. Silence... that's what would happen if they eliminated the Department of Education. Ideas would be lost or not shared-- especially unpopular ones. Education would be left to special interest groups-- religious, political, cultural-- and the melting pot of public education would die, thus creating more inequity, more division, more distrust. Sigh...

Later in the day, on the John C. Scott Show, there was a mixed bag, as usual. He started out with big-wig Republican operative Bruce Ash (grrrrr) gloating about a Republican Congress-- as if it were a done deal.

After that Jim Kiser (pro-Charter Change hack) quoting a Southern Arizona Leadership Council (SALC) poll of a whopping 600 people that concluded 2/3 of Tucsonans are not satisfied with the way the city is being run.

OK, there are some smart people among the SALC membership-- including former UA president Peter Likins-- so I would expect them to conduct valid surveys ... but apparently not. Drawing conclusions for a city of nearly 1 million from a sample of 600 is laughable. Unfortunately, they can get away with it because reporters and talk show hosts never challenge the sampling on surveys, ask exactly what questions were asked, or ask if the findings are statistically significant.

I am particularly suspicious of the Rasmussen polls which are published widely and which regularly offer Ash a reason to gloat (grrr). Their latest poll, which also came out yesterday, reports that Governor Jan Brewer gained 2 points over her challenger Terry Goddard after her disastrous performance in the debate last week. (This seems unbelievable, really.) Again, what question was asked? Is 2 points a significant change? My guess is that 2 points is within the margin of error-- so no real change-- which is also surprising since she came across as a dolt.

So, after a day of depressing news and bad numbers, I decided to take action and stopped at Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' office on the way home. OK, some times she annoys me with that Blue Dog thing, but maybe she's just acting that way to appease the Chochise County voters. Anyway, she's sooooooooooo much more reasonable than Jesse "privatize this" Kelly. It would be a very dark day in Southern Arizona if Kelly were elected. Anyway, I signed up to volunteer for her, as I have in the past. Like Harvey Milk, I won't give up without a fight.

A glutton for punishment, I watched Keith Olberman online later in the evening, and he actually picked up my spirits significantly.

Last night, Olberman reported Gallup data on whether people would vote for a generic Republican or Democrat for Congress. This question is asked every week. Last week the Republicans were up significantly. This week the 2 parties are in a dead heat-- see the graphic above. (So, why was Bruce Ash gloating?) Anyway, Olberman further reported that the lead on that question-- generic Republican vs. generic Democrat-- has changed 6 times since May 2010.

Anyway, that data doesn't sound like or look like a referendum against Democrats to me. I believe that some of this midterm election gloom and doom is being fueled by big money from corporations (thanks to the Roberts court decision), ginned up by Faux News, and then repeated by reporters and bloggers to demoralize us.

We can do this, people! Don't listen to the pundits. Let's make some phone calls and knock on doors.

UPDATE: In the category of great minds think alike, Blog for Arizona posted a similar article this morning (ahem... a few hours after mine, I must add). Check it out because the AZ Blue Meanie does go into more depth than I did.

Passage of healthcare reform brings threats and jubiliation

The passage of historic healthcare reform legislation on Sunday by the US House of Representatives brought a flood of threats from Republicans; racial/ethnic slurs and acts of terrorism against Democratic supporters; and shouts of joy from supporters. With passage in the Senate, President Obama was ready with his signing pen.

After a year of wrangling, the debate will likely continue for a while. Some states also want to opt out of the reform, using the states' rights argument. Governor Jan Brewer is among those governors opposing expanded healthcare coverage because she says it will cost too much. Of course, Brewer and her Republican cronies in the Legislature just knocked thousands of adults and children off of the state's healthcare rolls. As a result, the state will lose billions of dollars in matching funds. (Personally, I'm beginning to think they are all bad at math-- besides being uncaring. Why eliminate worthwhile programs that bring in revenue and help thousands of Arizona residents?)

Republicans like Arizona Senator John McCain have publicly vowed to fight against reform and other legislation brought forth by President Obama and the Congressional Democrats. To which most progressives said, "What else is new?"

On yesterday's John C. Scott radio show, McCain spun his tale with only softball questions (more like set-ups) from Scott.

McCain was trying hard to revive his Maverick image and deny the moderate flip-flop image his opponent J.D. Hayworth is spinning about him. McCain said the healthcare legislation was "a sham" and vowed to "fight in the Senate, fight in Tucson, fight in Phoenix, fight in Flagstaff, and fight across Arizona." I think by "fight" he means "campaign". How will his obstructionist stance play out in the fall election? Why would anyone vote for someone who's primary strategy is to say, "no"?

McCain also railed against the use of reconciliation to "ram it through" the Congress. Of course, neglecting the fact that Republicans have used this strategy 17 out of 23 times, since it was created a few decades ago.

So, healthcare politics continues. Although right-wingers will continue to try to stop or reverse reform, progressive will be pushing for more. As Ed Schultz said this morning, we are in the midst of a culture war that goes far beyond this legislation. After verbal and physical attacks against Democrats who supported this legislation, I totally agree with him.

Above, pro-reform protesters outside Senator John McCain's Tucson office.

This article originally appeared as a piece in my Progressive Examiner column.

Same-sex marriage is 'business-friendly'

Same-sex marriage-- I'm sure that this is not what Bruce Ash, John Munger, Jan Brewer, Steve Kozachik, Jack Kemper, and John C. Scott have in mind when they talk about making Tucson and Arizona more "business friendly," but as Judy Tenuta would say, "It could happen."

Work with me on this one....
1- Arizona has a multi-million-dollar budget mess on it's hands and no real solutions.

2- Our Republican governor and legislature refuse to take steps to bring more money into the state coffers because the obvious way to increase revenues would be to roll back the tax cuts that they have given businesses and rich people, and that would not be "business friendly."

2- Historically, Arizona has been a major tourist destination. We have plenty of hotels, resorts, and scenic vistas, which are perfect honeymoon retreats.

3- Arizona has the Grand Canyon, great weather in the winter, and the Gem and Mineral Show as tourist magnets, but fostering a new niche market for the tourist industry would make good marketing sense.

4- Arizona politicians-- both Democrat and Republican-- want to appear "business friendly."

So, why not develop same-sex marriage as a niche tourist market? According to this post on Alan Colmes' website, Edmund Egan, chief economist for the City of San Francisco, estimated that same-sex marriages could have earned that city $35 million a year + additional funds in tax revenues (except that California made it illegal with Prop 8).

Same-sex marriage also is illegal in Arizona, but-- hey-- if the legislature really wants to be "business friendly," they can make it happen. Si se puede, fellas. After all, bringing in several million dollars without raising taxes or fees would be "business friendly."

This article originally appeared in my Progressive Examiner column.

Unemployed in Arizona: State suffers largest job losses

The US economy has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs in the past year. Businesses of all sizes have closed their doors. In Tucson, signs of the recession are everywhere; empty auto dealership lots, vacant storefronts, and going-out-of-business signs abound.

One of the most telling signs of Arizona's weak economy is reflected in the job loss statistics. According to statistics released by the Economic Policy Institute, Arizona has lost the highest proportion of jobs in the US. Other states have lost more jobs, but their losses constitute a smaller percentage of their state's total economy.

As reported in the East Valley Tribune, Arizona has lost 9.9% of its jobs or 265,000. Most of the job loss has been in construction, which is down by 45%. These figures clearly reflect Arizona's dependence upon boom and bust cycles in the housing industry.

The statistics also reflect shortsightedness on the part of Arizona's political leaders--especially in state government. Rather than invest in education, job creation, and home-grown industries-- like solar power-- during boom times, the Republican-controlled state legislature offers tax cuts to businesses. In bust times, what do they do? They cut education (making Arizona less competitive in the long term). Cut social services. Cut financial support to cities. And cut anything else they can think of in order to avoid raising revenue. The thought of increasing revenue by relinquishing previous tax cuts is not even on their radar.

Last week, a Phoenix legislator was interviewed by John C. Scott, a Tucson radio talk show host. When asked about the state's financial crisis, including the job losses. His only suggestion was to offer further tax cuts to business--particularly homebuilders and developers to incentivize them to build more homes, which will create some construction jobs-- at least temporarily. (Scott should have asked who was going to buy these houses with so many Arizonans out of work.)

The myopia in the state legislature is frightening. The Republican ideologues continue to cling to Reaganomics. The trickle down theory-- giving tax cuts to the wealthy and thus incentivizing them to invest and create jobs-- has proven to be a failed economic policy. George Bush the First was right when he called it "voodoo economics." When will the Arizona legislature wake up?