Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano distinguished herself in Arizona as a topnotch attorney general and as a wise and prudent governor.

So it comes as no surprise that President Obama reportedly is considering Napolitano among his potential nominees for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Fellow Arizonan Sandra Day O’Connor was the first woman to serve as a Supreme Court justice. She was appointed by President Reagan in 1981 and retired in 2005.

O’Connor gained renown for her diligence, integrity and penchant for constructive compromise. She did Arizona proud.

Napolitano would make us proud, too.

While we’re pleased that she now is heading Homeland Security, we believe her lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court would provide an even greater service to our nation.

As the National Rifle Association was en route to Phoenix, the state House showed its support by passing a bill to let Arizonans stash concealed guns in their parked cars.

But while HB 2474 may please some gun owners, it’s an outrage for property owners, employers and businesses, which no longer could prohibit gun storage in vehicles parked in their lots and garages.

In addition to infringing on private property rights, this legislation raises serious safety concerns.

Supporters say the bill, sponsored by Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, would provide convenience for people who may be planning to hunt or shoot before or after work.

Alas, it also would make workplace shootings far more convenient by allowing workers to keep loaded guns stashed just outside in the parking lot – whether the employer likes it or not.

Workplace violence already affects more than 2 million workers in the U.S. each year, accounting for about 20 percent of violent crime, according to a 2008 study commissioned by the ASIS Foundation.

About 500 workplace homicides occur each year, the report found.

The legislation, which has yet to be heard by the Senate, also could imperil homeland security because power plants and military contractors no longer could ban guns in their parking lots.

The bill does provide exemptions for nuclear-generating stations, businesses that run a gated and controlled parking lot, and facilities that search vehicles and passengers as they enter a secure parking facility.

But legislators cannot possibly predetermine what institutions have a legitimate need to bar guns from their parking areas.

We also find little solace in another argument by the bill supporters, that security would be enhanced for people who drive through dangerous neighborhoods.

Those who cannot avoid such dangerous areas and tote guns as a result still shouldn’t have the right to store their loaded gun in a private parking lot if the owner doesn’t want it there.

We agree with Rep. Chad Campbell, a Phoenix Democrat, that property owners should have the right to determine whether to allow guns in their parking lots.

Six other Democrats joined with House Republicans to pass this bill Thursday, just days before the NRA’s 50,000 members descend on Phoenix.

We would like to remind those Democrats, and the Republicans they joined, that in today’s world, national security and personal safety are paramount.

While HB 2474 purports to enhance personal safety, it in fact does just the opposite.

These are factors the Senate would be well-advised to consider before voting on this ill-conceived gun bill.

For those of you looking to this space for perspective on the Citizen’s demise, for those looking for What It All Means – you are looking in the wrong place. ¶ Excuse us, but we’re a little too close to the situation right now.

Do you ask someone how it feels when a relative dies after a long bout with cancer? After all, we knew the end was coming for months.

But here’s a revelation: When death comes, even if it’s not supposed to be a shock . . . it’s still a shock.

So give us six months, or six years. Then we can provide some context.

Let’s stick, then, to the few points we can make with a sufficient degree of conviction:

• If there’s a way to spin the Citizen’s closure into a positive for Tucson, we’d love to hear it. But one doesn’t exist.

It would be bad enough if we were just any company. But a newspaper is the type of high-salary, knowledge industry, “smart” business that any of the city’s TREOish, economic-development types would love to recruit.

Those of us who have explored Tucson’s, uh, challenging employment environment know we won’t be making anywhere near the money we make now. Bottom line for Tucson: More than five dozen well-paying jobs lost.

But a newspaper isn’t just any company. It’s a repository of the city’s collective memory and of our aspirations and hopes.

Healthy journalism equates with a vibrant city. A dead paper is analogous to the city’s libraries closing – a chilling prospect.

• To all those bloggers and “citizen journalists” who, if you believe the Internet, are this close to reinventing the industry, here’s your opportunity.

Now is your chance to cover never-ending board meetings, make Freedom of Information Act requests to dislodge facts from public officials, call sources – you have cultivated sources, right? – and otherwise do what we in our dying industry like to call “reporting.”

To do it right, you’ll have to work eight to 10 hours a day, five to six days a week.

If it sounds like a job, not a hobby, it is. But don’t expect to get paid; apparently, that business model has been discredited.

We’re rooting for you. Public officials need vigilant scrutiny if our dollars are to be wisely spent and public policies are to be sane and progressive. So good luck with that.

• Finally, frankly, this paper’s closing dissolves a colorful, creative cast of characters the likes of whom you’ll never find in one place again. From sweet Mary Bustamante’s long-time devotion to schools to Dan Buckley’s vivid mariachi videos, from Ryn Gargulinski’s bizarre takes of the macabre to Alan Fischer’s scintillating science coverage, from Steve Rivera and Geoff Grammer’s mastery of Wildcats basketball and high school sports, respectively, to Anthony Gimino’s personal peeks at sports personas, we’ve had it all. And you had it, too.

But not now. With the loss of the Tucson Citizen, everybody in Tucson loses. And that’s a fact. Goodbye.

Several members of the Tucson City Council this week violated the spirit – and possibly the letter – of the state’s Open Meetings Law.

The law was written to ensure that decisions by public bodies are made in public. That didn’t happen when several council members got together ahead of the meeting to reach consensus on controversial budget cuts.

It’s a practice that must not be repeated.

Before Tuesday’s meeting, Councilwoman Nina Trasoff said she had met with some colleagues “in twos or in threes” to discuss funding cuts to nonprofit groups and other jurisdictions.

Trasoff said that since four council members had not been together, there never was a quorum so it didn’t violate the state Open Meetings Law.

That’s defining the law too narrowly – and flies in the face of several opinions from the state Attorney General’s Office.

The law says this: “All meetings of any public body shall be public meetings and all persons so desiring shall be permitted to attend and listen to the deliberations and proceedings.”

But that’s just the beginning. Public bodies cannot circumvent the intent of the law by meeting in smaller groups ahead of time to reach consensus. That prohibition extends to the exchange of e-mails among members of a body in an attempt to reach an agreement.

A 1975 opinion by the state Attorney General’s Office said “all discussions, deliberations, considerations or consultations among a majority of the members of a governing body regarding matters which may foreseeably require final action or final decision of the governing body constitute ‘legal action’ and must be conducted in an open meeting.”

The same opinion says that discussions taking place among fewer than a majority of the members “to circumvent the purpose of the Open Meeting Act . . . would constitute a violation.”

That covers almost precisely what Trasoff did with Regina Romero, Karin Uhlich and Shirley Scott.

The discussion involved possible budget cuts so the city could avoid instituting a tax on residential rentals. That tax was the subject of lengthy and heated public hearings that drew hundreds of Tucsonans recently.

Council members should have continued that discussion in public so citizens could hear the entire messy process with all views expressed.

The talk should not have taken place in a series of private conversations and telephone calls, with the resulting consensus presented in public as a neatly packaged fait accompli.

City Council members must be educated not only on the Open Meetings Law, but also on the way it has been interpreted over the years. Public business must be conducted in public.

Construction of a city-county courts complex downtown has been delayed because an old cemetery was on the land.

But Pima County did the right thing by taking the time and spending the money to exhume and store more than 1,800 sets of remains.

Saturday, the remains of 61 U.S. Cavalry soldiers and some of their dependents will be reburied in the Southern Arizona Veterans’ Memorial Cemetery in Sierra Vista.

The remains will be escorted from Tucson by scores of motorcyclists from the Veterans of Foreign Wars Patriot Riders.

Burial will come with full military honors at a new cemetery for historic burials near Fort Huachuca.

That’s as it should be. These soldiers from long ago deserve the same honors as current members of our military.

The next time you see several Sonora license plates in the parking lot of a Tucson store, you’re seeing your taxes being cut.

The Tucson area reaped $968.7 million in direct economic benefits from July 2007 through June 2008. That’s up from $280.2 million in 2001, according to a University of Arizona study released this week.

Dollars that Mexicans spend in Tucson boost our economy and are responsible for employing many Tucsonans.

Sales and other taxes paid by those shoppers are taxes that don’t have to be collected from the rest of us.

Many complain about the problems of living close to the international border. But there is a substantial upside.

When budgets are cut, it’s easy to focus on the dollars and cents and forget that real people are affected.

That may explain why the state Legislature is moving ahead with cuts to the state Department of Economic Security – cuts that will deeply affect the lives of developmentally and mentally disabled people.

Even if legislators brush aside the human toll and look only at the finances, these are cuts that should be reversed. In the long run, Arizona taxpayers will end up spending far more if the DES budget is cut than if spending levels are maintained.

Legislators are in an unenviable position, with state spending needing to be cut by at least $3 billion for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Some of the cuts could be avoided if lawmakers embraced a proposal by Gov. Jan Brewer to ask voters for a temporary tax increase.

Brewer seems to have backed away from the idea, but it makes sense. The alternative is eviscerating cuts that would return crucial state services to levels not seem in decades.

That’s what DES is facing.

The current budget proposal would cut about $41 million from state-funded disability programs and an additional $50 million to $60 million for long-term care for the most severely disabled.

And those cuts would come on top of a 10 percent cut to DES to balance the current year’s budget.

In a story published Tuesday in the Tucson Citizen, Jim Walsh of The Arizona Republic wrote about how the cuts would hurt 2-year-old Gabriel Saucedo, who was born without hands. With the help of a therapist from a state-funded program, the boy has learned how to feed himself, fasten his shoes and hold a pencil in his mouth to draw.

Without the program, Gabriel and 2,000 other children would require full-time care for the rest of their lives. That’s not only unconscionable, it would be a far larger financial burden for taxpayers than eliminating the proposed cuts.

One Arizonan who works with disabled residents says the cuts were proposed because his clients are an easy target.

“I believe it was a convenient decision . . . to make because it’s a vulnerable population and they can’t speak for themselves,” said Randy Gray, president and CEO of Marc Center in Mesa.

Gray said the proposed cuts would revert “our entire system of quality care back to the early 1970s.”

That must not be allowed to happen. The state must stand up for the most needy among us – even in the toughest of times. The cuts to DES must be re-evaluated.

If we can’t look out for the most vulnerable, who is safe?

Nine students from southern Arizona high schools are headed to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair – and most of them share a single teacher.

Margaret Wilch, a science teacher at Tucson High Magnet School, will have six of her students at the fair: Angela Schlegel, Mahwish Khalid, Negin Nematollahi, Michael Wallace, Emily Derks and Alice Glasser.

Also attending this week’s fair in Reno, Nev., are Ebaa Al-Obeidi from Canyon del Oro High School, and Martin Lopez and Mario Valdez, both from Rio Rico High School.

The nine students are the most to ever represent southern Arizona in the world’s largest precollege science contest.

Congratulations to all of them. They are among those who will lead us into the next generation of scientific exploration.

Congratulations to the University of Arizona softball team, which is headed to its 23rd consecutive postseason tournament.

Unfortunately, the Wildcats – seeded ninth nationally – won’t be playing at home in the first round of the NCAA championship tournament. The team was inexplicably sent to Louisville, Ky., as lower seeds won the right to host regionals.

But no matter. The Cats are used to winning the first game of the tournament regardless of where it is played. UA has won 20 of the 22 first-round games in its current streak.

The Wildcats have made it to the College World Series 20 times under coach Mike Candrea. And they have come home with the national title eight times.

We wish them the best as they go after No. 9.

Arizona legislators who have been roundly criticized for slashing education spending, are striking back.

Unfortunately, truth was a casualty as at least one lawmaker threw unsubstantiated and inaccurate allegations at school officials, accusing them of “illegally and secretly stockpiling millions of dollars.”

It makes for a great press release. But little of it is true.

As they dig in the sofa cushions looking for every unsecured dime to balance the state budget, lawmakers have turned their eyes on school funds. That’s understandable because education represents the single largest area of state spending – as it should be.

But in trying to grab money from schools, lawmakers showed that they really don’t understand the complexities of education finance.

In a recent press release, state Sen. Pamela Gorman, a Republican from the Phoenix suburb of Anthem, claimed school districts had more than $2.3 billion “cash” in the bank.

“A relatively small portion of this cash balance could be used” to help balance the budget for fiscal 2010, Gorman claimed.

Then she started lobbing grenades, accusing schools of “blatant deception and hypocrisy”

“Districts have been violating state law and illegally amassing larger and larger cash balances while crying out that we at the Legislature are decimating public education,” Gorman said. “It is shameless!”

If Gorman has any evidence of illegal activity, let’s see it. Every school district is audited every year and no allegation of illegal cash hoarding has ever been raised before Gorman’s broadside.

It is true that Arizona school districts have money in the bank. To not do so would be incredibly poor financial management. The Legislature often has challenged school districts to act like businesses – and that is what they are doing.

Money is held in reserve for many reasons. Hundreds of millions of dollars come from the federal government for the school lunch program. Some are gifts or school tax credit money waiting to be spent.

Other money is held in self- insurance accounts to pay health and liability claims. And if school districts collect property taxes in excess of what they are allowed to legally spend, the money is used to reduce property taxes in the following year.

The Legislature does have a difficult task facing it as it struggles to balance the state budget. But stealing money from school districts, then trying to distract the public with wildly inaccurate allegations of illegal activity is not going to make the job any easier.

Legislators should balance the budget based on honest and transparent discussion. Gorman’s statements were neither.

In his budget for fiscal 2010, President Obama has proposed that the federal government stop reimbursing border states for jailing illegal immigrants.

That would be a patently unfair slap at states – such as Arizona – that through geographic happenstance, are unduly impacted by the federal government’s failed immigration policies.

Under the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, states and counties are reimbursed for jailers’ salaries for holding illegal immigrants with at least one felony and two misdemeanor convictions.

In the past two years, $27.1 million has been sent to Arizona under the program, with about $1.3 million of that coming to Pima County. That is far short of the actual costs for jailing and prosecuting illegal immigrants.

Every dime of those costs not reimbursed by the federal government must be paid by state, county and local taxpayers. That is simply unfair.

Obama must include funding for the SCAAP program in his budget.

These mule deer, photographed in or near the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area in late 2007, clearly won't be able to go farther, whether to reach food, water, other members of their herd or a haven from predators. President Obama's budget proposal means no more border wall will be built.

President Obama has taken steps to halt construction of the medieval fence on the Mexican border – a move that brings to an end a chapter of pointless environmental devastation in the southern United States.

In his budget proposal for fiscal 2010 released last week, Obama canceled plans to extend the fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

So far about 624 miles of pedestrian and vehicle fencing has been built along the nearly 2,000-mile border Another 46 miles of fence had been planned, but what has been built so far may be the end of the project.

Instead, there are plans to switch to a “virtual” fence – towers holding sensors, cameras and communications equipment to detect smugglers and people entering the country illegally. Work on that far-less-offensive fence is set to begin this week.

Fences and walls were ineffective when they were built by the first Emperor of China, they were ineffective when built by the communists in East Germany and they have been and would have been ineffective in the southern U.S.

This was noted by Janet Napolitano when she was governor of Arizona. “Show me a 50-foot wall, and I’ll show you a 51-foot ladder,” said Napolitano, now secretary of Homeland Security.

Fences have their place in urban parts of the border, but are useless in isolated areas where smugglers go over, under and through them with impunity. The fence cost an average of $3.9 million per mile to build and a Border Patrol official called it only “a speed bump in the desert.”

The fence also has divided and irreparably harmed some of the richest biodiversity in the world that lies along both sides of the border.

The Bush administration ignored the Clean Water, Clean Air and Endangered Species acts, and three dozen other laws to build the fence. We are glad no more will be built.

The first version of the virtual fence built and tested in southern Arizona west of Tucson was not successful. But problems that came up with the various systems have been resolved.

Groundbreaking is to begin this week in southern Arizona for the virtual fence project’s first permanent detection towers. The towers are to be built first in Arizona, the busiest corridor for illegal entries.

Plans call for also placing such towers – along most of the Mexican border – in New Mexico, California and almost all of Texas within five years.

That type of fence will be more effective, less offensive and less environmentally disastrous. It’s a laudable change of strategy.

There is an interesting dichotomy in a couple of the Legislature’s budget decisions.

One way the Legislature proposes to collect more money is by stealing $265 million from impact fees paid to cities and counties.

At the same time, the Legislature is planning to hand out a $250 million tax break – mostly to businesses.

The state House budget plan would permanently wipe off the books a statewide property tax. The tax was put on hiatus for three years when the state had budget surpluses and was scheduled to return next year.

But instead of letting the tax go back into effect just in time to help address record deficits, lawmakers now say they want to repeal it.

Here’s a better idea: Keep the tax in place and let cities and counties keep their impact fee money.

Gov. Jan Brewer said she wanted a $1 billion per year temporary tax increase and called that one of her budget "principles" Now she's abandoned that position. So much for principles. What does Brewer stand for?

A state budget that can only be described as disastrous is taking shape as Gov. Jan Brewer stands on the sidelines, unwilling to get involved.

This budget, if approved in anything close to its present form, will deeply hurt schools, cities, clinics, hospitals, universities and services for children and the developmentally disabled.

It will eviscerate many state services and drive away businesses hoping to locate or expand here. And it will take years for the state to recover.

Brewer, who earlier staked out a strong position in favor of preserving essential state services, has turned tail and run away, displaying a complete lack of backbone. Her noninvolvement in dealing with this – the state’s most pressing issue – is deeply disappointing.

Despite promises of openness and transparency, Republicans in the state House have drawn up their budget plan in secret. Many Republicans legislators as well as all Democrats have been shut out of the process.

The result is terrible.

Cities and counties that collected impact fees from developers to build roads, parks and public safety facilities would have to turn over $265 million of that to the state. That’s grossly unfair as cities and counties deal with their own budget problems.

There are raids on school funds, in addition to proposed cuts in school operating payments – cuts that run counter to voter-approved increases.

The Legislature also plans to eliminate Science Foundation Arizona, which was formed to nurture high-tech businesses.

And legislators are relying largely on one-time money from fund sweeps and from the federal stimulus program for much of the budget fix – not a sound way to situate the state for future years.

Despite all these deep cuts, the state budget still is about $700 million short of being in balance.

Recognizing the impossibility of balancing the budget while still providing needed services, Brewer several months ago said she wanted a $1 billion per year temporary tax increase. She also said she would submit her own proposal for a balanced budget.

She has failed to submit a budget plan and to flesh out details of the tax increase proposal. And although she said several times that the tax boost was one of her budget “principles,” she’s abandoned that position.

So much for principles. What does Brewer stand for?

This is a budget proposal that would devastate Arizona. And it is being pushed through as the governor is MIA.

It is a shameful performance by the person who is supposed to be the state’s leader – a performance that voters certainly will remember next year if and when she seeks election to this job she inherited.

Hats on to the Arizona Cancer Center’s Skin Cancer Institute for putting a 12-minute video online to help people detect cancers.

(“Hats off” won’t prevent skin cancer, but “hats on” surely can.)

Early detection saves lives, and the quick spotting of skin cancers just became a whole lot easier thanks to the video that can be watched at www.azskincancerinstitute.org.

We denizens of the desert get plenty of sun exposure, so we need to indulge in sunblock, hats and other protection.

But spotting cancers promptly also is vitally important in the battle against skin cancer. Melanoma survival rates are 98 percent with early detection.

So check out the video now online, and follow the guidelines and instructions. The 12 minutes you spend now may provide you with many more years of life.