Pima County Elections Division has updated the results of its counting of the remaining ballots from the Nov. 3 election and it looks like Republican Steve Kozachik has defeated Ward 6 Deomcratic incumbent Nina Trasoff by 1,675 votes.

In the extremely close Ward 3 race, Democratic incumbent Karin Uhlich has held her lead over Republican challenger Ben Buehller-Garcia, though it shrunk to 246 votes.

However, though Buehller-Garcia is within 0.65 percent of Uhlich, it’s not close enough to trigger a recount. Arizona law requires candidates to be within 0.5 percent to automatically trigger a recount.

That said, it appears there are still thousands of bad ballots that may go uncounted. It may be worth Buehller-Garcia’s time and money to find a lawyer and consider forcing the county to prove it rightly mucked those ballots. He’s not close enough for a recount, but too close to just walk away.

And Prop. 400, the Home Rule provision, also appears to have lost, which will cost the city millions of tax dollars.

The county had thousand of uncounted ballots left to count Tuesday, most of those early ballots that arrived in the mail Monday and Tuesday  or that were dropped off at polling places Tuesday. There were also a number of provisional ballots, which are issued to voters who have some kind of problem at the polls, either they lack identification, showed up at the wrong polling place, or records showed they received an early ballot.

Not all of the uncounted ballots were from city precincts. Some were cast for school elections in Oro Valley, Sahuarita and Catalina Foothills. The latest results were posted by the county on its web site at 5:20 p.m.

With all but one precinct yet to report as of midnight, it looks like Ricahrd Fimbres will be the new face on the Tucson City Council for Ward 5.

And the public safety initiative Prop. 200, was crushed, losing by more than 2 to 1.

But everything else in the city election is too close to call. While no one at county elections picked up when I called a few minutes ago, it’s a safe bet that there are still ballots to count – any early ballots turned in Tuesday and any provisional  ballots cast. How many of those there are I don’t know but if last year’s presidential election and the 2006 state election are any indicator there are likely hundreds if not thousands of votes still to count.

If it’s just hundreds, incumbent Democrat Karin Uhlich in Ward 3 may be safe, as she had a roughly 600-vote lead over Republican challenger Ben Buehler-Garcia. Uhlich certainly could have used the nearly 4,000 votes Green Party candidate Mary Decamp likely siphoned off.

In Ward 6, incumbent Democrat Nina Trasoff trails Republican Steve Kozachik by 1,200 votes. Trasoff had a razor-thin edge over Kozachik most of the night, but late returns, likely from the East Side Republican stronghold (the only one in the city), put the Republican ahead. Depending on how many ballots were cast in the remaining voting area still to report and the uncounted balance, Trasoff may be done.

But the big news (I know, I buried the lede) may be Prop. 400 losing by about 600 votes. If this goes down, it will cost the city millions. The vote was for Home Rule, which lets municipalities exceed state spending caps with locally generated revenue. The rule has to be reauthorized by voters every four years.

It has always passed. But the anti-incumbent, anti-tax voting trend of this election may have led voters to vote against it thinking it would save them tax money. It doesn’t, it just screws the city out of money it can’t afford to be screwed out of.

See ya’ll when the sun rises.

City election results as of Midnight from Pima County elections web site:

Ward 3

UHLICH, KARIN DEM 29,769  47.32%

BUEHLER-GARCIA, BEN REP 29,197  46.41%

DeCAMP, MARY GRN 3,855  6.13%

Ward 5

FIMBRES, RICHARD DEM 33,200 53.36%

McCLUSKY, SHAUN REP 28,862 46.39%

Ward 6

TRASOFF, NINA DEM 30,506 48.86%

KOZACHIK, STEVE REP 31,706 50.78%

Prop 200

YES 19,129 29.77%

NO 45,121 70.23%

Prop 400

YES 31,053 49.50%

NO 31,676 50.50%

Tuesday is election day in the city. Go vote. Pack up your criticisms of city government and go to your polling place and vote your conscience for council members in wards 3, 5 and 6 and for propositions 200 and 400. It’s what makes us a great nation.

But be realistic about your vote for council. You will have participated in a process to select members of a seven-member public body. You did not elect a dictator.

The people who do get elected are not stupid, lazy or corrupt. They are just struggling with the incredible complexity of governing a city with as many competing interests as there are people.

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Although it’s an esoteric issue, the Arizona Supreme Court today handed down perhaps one of the most important public records decisions in its history.

The court unanimously ruled that public records kept in an electronic format are public records and the native format must be released if requested.

Here’s what I wrote about it last month on the eve of the court hearing oral arguments in the case:

As open records cases go, this one is pretty dry. It’s hard to get the public excited about whether something you can’t see is a public record. But it might be as important of a public access case as has ever been before the court. The case has generated at lot of interest with at least four friend of the court briefs filed in the case, including one from the First Amendment Coalition, which represents numerous government openness advocates including news media, private investigators and government watchdog groups (Full disclosure: I’m a FAC board member).

The case revolves around records Phoenix police officer David Lake requested from Phoenix PD in 2006. Among the records requested were the typed notes of one of his supervisors. When he got the notes, he suspected his supervisor had altered the date they were typed. He requested the metadata to determine if that were true.

The city denied the request, saying metadata wasn’t part of the public record. Lake sued and the Superior Court and later the Court of Appeals agreed with the city that metadata is not a public record.

That’s wrong.

Think of metadata as akin to the black box of a commercial airplane. When you get on an airplane, you can see the wings, fuselage, tail, engines and all of the other visible parts of the plane that make it able to fly.

But what you don’t see when the plane is flying is all of the thousands of electronic signals and switches the plane’s computers are controlling to keep the plane in the air. All of that electronic information is stored in the plane’s black boxes.

The recording devices don’t really play a role in the plane’s flying and nobody really cares that they’re there until something goes wrong. Then everybody cares.

It’s the same for metadata, though metadata do more than just record what happens to the document, such as when it’s opened or saved, they are the document: The document and the metadata are symbiotic – one can’t exist without the other.

When you’re typing something in Microsoft Word, you don’t really care that metadata is allowing you to see what you’re typing or embedding behind the scenes the electronic wizardry that makes e-mail addresses and Internet links live (all you see is they changed to blue). Until your computer crashes, then you care that there’s metadata.

In its ruling, the appellate court went to great lengths to argue that there are government records and then there are public government records. The court argued that just because metadata exists doesn’t mean they are public records. Amazingly, the appellate justices ruled that the printed version of the electronic record Lake requested was public but systemic parts of the electronic version of that record were not and therefore could be withheld.

The court, obviously, rejected the appellate court’s arguments. Key to the win was the work of FAC attorney Dan Barr and the examples of what metadata are provided by ASU journalism professor and computer assisted reporting guru Steve Doig.

Below are the Court’s ruling and amicus briefs filed by FAC that include Doig’s explanation.

Supreme Court Ruling Lake v. Phoenix

Brief of Amici Curiae First Amendment Coalition, et al.

FAC Amicus Brief: Exhibit_A

FAC Amicus Brief: ExhibitB

We’re in serious trouble.

The state’s economy has yet to hit bottom and tax revenues continue to fall while demand for state services and benefits increase with the number of unemployed.

The state is broke and getting broker, having to borrow $600 million from the federal government to pay rising unemployment insurance benefit claims, according to a story Thursday in the Arizona Republic.

Legislators need to get back under the copper dome and fix the budget mess.

So what’s the Legislature’s plan to solve these burgeoning fiscal problems?

Wait until January when the next legislative session convenes (or maybe next month, according to a Republic story Friday.)

That’s ridiculous and cowardly. We need action now.

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I was doing my usual flipping through the 10 p.m. local news broadcasts and came across a report by KGUN-9 about a protest downtown by various groups wanting the city to fess up on how the Museum of Contemporary Arts managed to get a sweetheart deal from the city for use of the old TFD HQ.

Among those protesting was Tucson Police Officers Association President Larry Lopez, who claimed that the city had rigged the bidding process and that he had a source in the city who told him there had been other, oral bids for the building. But then he refused to say who told him that.

At which point KGUN played a clip lifted from YouTube, of all places, of Joseph Welch’s famous retort to Sen. Joe McCarthy “Have you no decency sir?”

Wow.

I teach a reporting public affairs class at the UA J-school. I teach my students not to use superlatives and hyperbole in their writing. They rarely work and usually make readers, especially educated, savvy, older readers, roll their eyes.

I guess now I’ll have to warn them about using outrageous, sensationalistic, editorializing comparisons of horrible historical characters that are out of context and have no real relevance to the story being reported.

Larry Lopez as Joe McCarthy? Gimme a break.

[I tried to figure out how to get clip the off my DVR and on here so you can see it, but I'm out of time and have to go to the County BOS meeting this morning, so if anyone out there has a link to the clip, send it my way or post it in the comments below]

A new law (HB 2332) goes into effect next month allowing permanent advertising on public school sports facilities, buses and web sites.

Each school district gets to keep any advertising money it garners and is not restricted on how it spends it.

Now the law only allows temporary advertising, such as banners hanging on outfield fences at baseball games, or off bleacher railings at football games.

There are some caveats, the ads can’t promote things that are illegal or inappropriate for children – smoking, drinking, sex, etc.

But there’s no caveat preventing ads for what teenagers do best – eating fatty fast food and drinking sugary drinks.

How long before we see ads on  a teacher’s web page to the effect of, “This U.S. History homework assignment brought to you by Coca-Cola?”

Or a gymnasium floor with McDonald’s golden arches painted on it that chimes “I’m lovin’ it” every time the home team scores a basket?

I’m sure advertisers will be lining up to reach these captive audiences and state schools are so desperate for money, I’m certain that school boards will hold their noses and cash the checks.

But this has disaster written all over it. And lawsuit. Imagine what will happen when a church wants to buy a high school a new scoreboard in exchange for an ad on it. Or when a school board lets Pepsi have a web ad but not Red Bull. Or when a group of parents and students decides an ad for athletic shoes is abhorrent because the company manufactures its shoes in some Third World sweatshop?

Schools are not bereft of advertising or consumerism now, to be sure. School newspapers sell ads and yearbooks are chock full of them, likewise sports programs. And school children are constantly dunning parents and the community for money for their schools through the sale of Christmas wrapping, cookie dough, discount cards and so forth.

But this takes it even further. I think it’s a step too far. The Legislature in its zeal to find any revenue source other than taxes to pay for state programs is making a deal with the devil. And that’s never good.

What do you think?

Proposition 200, a citizen’s initiative mandating city police staffing levels and fire department response times, is generating the most interest in the Nov. 3 Tucson general election.

It’s even bled over into the council races, as evidenced by the testy exchanges between Democratic Councilwoman Nina Trasoff and her Republican challenger Steve Kozachik on Arizona Illustrated last week.

City officials and opponents say the initiative will cost the city millions it doesn’t have while proponents say you can’t put a price on public safety.

The Star’s Rhonda Bodfield did a decent job covering the initiative’s basics in an article published Sunday.

While I don’t think Tucson is crime-ridden city, as compared to other cities its size with similar levels of poverty, the recent budget cuts, hiring freezes and early retirements have thinned the police and fire departments ranks. But while public safety is important, you can’t make it prime and gut all other city services.

I’d be more inclined to support the initiative if it had a dedicated funding source, a special tax levy – an increase in the primary property tax or a sales tax increase – to pay for it. Otherwise, it’s an unfunded government policy mandated by special interests (police and firefighter unions). That’s no way to run municipal government. Besides, we’ve seen before what happens when a special interest gets voters to pass a sweeping pubic policy change on an emotional issue – Bob Beaudry’s Water Consumer Protection Act in 1995. That initiative was a disaster that had to be undone by voters four years later.

If you don’t like the way the city administers and funds its public safety departments, elect council members who will change it to your liking.

Prop. 200 is not the way to do it.

But what do you think?

Well, the Norwegians who choose who gets the Nobel Peace Prize did the Obama Administration no favors last week (as I’m sure you’ve heard).

Even ardent liberals and Obama lovers are scratching their heads and saying he doesn’t really deserve it.

But ardent conservatives and Obama haters are apoplectic about it (even more than they usually are about Obama).

For me, the real story is who nominated him. Nominations for the prize were due Feb. 1, about 11 days after he became President.

Much of the acrimony over the prize centers on the fact that Obama hasn’t really accomplished much peace-wise in the nine months he’s been President. But he hadn’t accomplished anything in the 11 days he was President before the nominations were due, if the awarding committee followed its rules. If it didn’t, and tossed those who were nominated late in the process for Obama just to make some sort of political statement against the Bush administration, than the value of the prize is sullied even more.

I’d also like to know who was nominated but didn’t win.

But, in terms of poll questions, the best one is what Obama should do about it. He’s already said he’d accept it and will donate his $1 million winnings but he has until next month to change his mind.

What do you think he should do?

The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to take up the issue of gun rights again.

Last year, the court ruled that the 2nd Amendment allows Americans in federal jurisdictions to possess a gun in their homes for self-defense purposes, rejecting a lower court’s ruling that the Amendment’s “right to bear arms” clause applied only to regulated militias.

But last term’s ruling concerned a Washington D.C. ban on handgun possession and therefore it applied only to federal laws restricting gun ownership.

Now the court, in taking up a Chicago ban on handgun possession, will decide whether the 2nd Amendment also applies to state restrictions on gun ownership.

This is an emotional issue, perhaps second only to abortion in its divisiveness, and the court in its D.C. decision trod lightly.

Though it’s early in Chief Justice John Roberts’ reign, it seems clear that he and his four fellow conservatives intend to reverse the sweeping liberal rulings of the Warren and Burger courts slowly rather than make abrupt, sweeping decisions of their own.

For instance, Scalia, in his majority opinion in the D.C. case, channeled Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who famously opined that free speech is not an absolute right – you can’t cause a panic by shouting “Fire” in a crowded theater when there is no fire.

Scalia likewise argued that while the right to bear arms extends to individuals, it was not an absolute right. Just like there can be time, place and manner restrictions on speech, there can be similar restrictions on gun ownership. Some government restrictions on guns are reasonable, he said.

It was half a loaf neither side in the gun control debate wanted, nor seems willing to accept.

Both sides are getting wound up for round two and rightly so because there’s a chance the court’s decision may muddy the waters further.

Not all conservative justices are cut from same Constitutional cloth. Some have a more amorous relationship with the 10th Amendment – which reserves to the states any right not enumerated in the Constitution – than with other amendments and the court has never really said whether the 2^nd Amendment applies only to the federal government or to the states as well.

The Chicago case should settle that but will the 10th trump the 2nd in some justices’ minds?

When the court’s various ideological wings run into competing amendments, the wings often fly apart and you get crazy quilt split decisions loaded with concurring and dissenting opinions.

And that well could be the case here. To be sure, the court’s five conservatives will likely affirm that the right to bear arms extends to all individuals not just those in federal jurisdiction. Where it could get interesting is if they split over whether the states have the right to restrict that right and if so, by how much.

If the 10^th Amendment gets in the way, gun rights and gun control advocates could be left with a tortured ruling that will probably require a third round in the court to nail down the 2^nd Amendment.

What do you think?