Arizonans are outraged by photo radar, those ubiquitous gizmos that snap pictures of speeders who are cited by mail.

I wasn’t around for the Boston Tea Party, so I can’t describe how riled up those colonial types were 235 years ago when they defied the government and chucked a bunch of tea into Boston Harbor.

The history books describe it as “a direct action protest” in which individuals take things into their own hands.

Had I been at the original Boston Tea Party – not the unrelated Tax Day re-enactments Wednesday – I might have a better understanding of what is going on now with photo radar – those ubiquitous gizmos that snap pictures of speeders, red-light runners and other traffic scofflaws so they can be cited by mail.

I can understand that people nabbed by the units aren’t all that happy with them. But the anti-photo radar movement is made up largely of people who have not been ticketed.

They nonetheless feel the systems are unfair or a violation of their right to privacy or something like that. And they are revolting – in Arizona and around the nation.

I really don’t get it.

Unfair? Is it unfair for cops to have cars with lights hidden behind the grille? Or unmarked cars? Or for them to hide on a side street with a radar gun? This isn’t a game. It’s enforcing laws.

Privacy violation? What right of privacy do you have while speeding or running a red light on a public street? None at all.

Violation of your constitutional rights? I don’t think so. The Founding Fathers were forward-thinking guys, but I can’t find any mention of cameras, radar or even cars in the Constitution.

Nonetheless, I can’t remember anything else the government has done recently that has made people so upset. I’m trying to understand. I really am.

So I asked Joe Scott, marketing director for a Pennsylvania-based outfit called PhantomPlate.com.

Scott’s company has an entire business devoted to beating photo radar in all sorts of ways. Its main product is a database of all known photo radar locations that you can download into your GPS navigation device.

Then when you approach a photo radar location, the thing beeps and you slow down. Keeping the database current costs $39.99 a year.

There also are sprays and plastic covers for your license plate that are supposed to reflect the flash of photo radar and make your license plate unreadable.

Scott tried to explain why photo radar is so objectionable: “Usually when you get pulled over by a police officer, you’ve been doing something wrong,” Scott said. “It’s fair and that’s the way it is.”

Fair. That seems to be the key word used by the anti-photo radar crowd.

Scott said cameras can’t be talked out of issuing a ticket if, for example, you’re speeding on your way to a hospital – something I can’t believe is common.

But there is an irony in Scott’s business. While he makes money defeating photo radar, he doesn’t want to totally defeat it. No photo radar, no business.

Ryan Denke is king of the Arizona anti-photo radar crowd with his Web site, photoradarscam.com.

He’s an unemployed electrical engineer from Peoria who spends his time circulating petitions to put an initiative on the November 2010 ballot to ban photo radar in Arizona.

He says he is “more than confident” he’ll collect enough signatures.

Denke is quick to note that he has “a clean driving record” and has not been nabbed by a radar camera. But his objections center on the fairness issue.

When a human officer nabs you, you can plead your case to the officer and then have the opportunity to face your accuser in court, Denke said.

But when a photo radar-issued ticket arrives in the mail a couple of weeks after the violation, “By then, you don’t know if you were driving that fast,” Denke said.

He also says it’s unfair that as many as half of the vehicles are, in effect, exempt from photo tickets.

Drivers of commercial vehicles can’t be identified and mailed a ticket personally, so companies can ignore citations, he said.

If a plate is obscured – for example, with Scott’s spray – there is no ticket. And drivers from Mexico or another state can ignore photo radar tickets because Arizona won’t track them down, Denke said.

But unless something happens, fighting photo radar is a losing proposition.

At the end of 2006, there were 155 jurisdictions using red-light cameras; two years later, that had more than doubled to 345.

There are 3,000-plus speed and red-light cameras in the nation, up from 2,500 a year ago. The figures are from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

There is, of course an easier and cheaper way to avoid photo radar tickets: Don’t speed or run red lights.

Call the cameras unfair if you like. But also call them omnipresent. And probably here to stay.

Mark Kimble appears at 6:30 p.m. Fridays on the Roundtable segment of “Arizona Illustrated” on KUAT-TV Channel 6. He may be reached at mkimble@tucsoncitizen.com or 573-4662.

The manufacturer claims its spray will reflect the flashes from photo radar cameras, making your license plate unreadable.

One Web site provides photo radar locations than can be downloaded into GPS units.

As Tucson leaders debate the future of downtown – and whether it has much of a future at all – a new study on job sprawl provides needed direction.

More than 85 percent of Tucsonans work within 10 miles of downtown – one of the highest percentages in the nation.

And no city has a higher percentage of people working nearby but not downtown. Almost 2 of every 3 Tucsonans work more than three but fewer than 10 miles from downtown.

The figures are from Job Sprawl Revisited, a report by the Metropolitan Policy Program of the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C.

The study found that jobs are moving away from city centers nationwide – and the same is true in Tucson.

Since 1998, the number of jobs more than 10 miles from Tucson’s downtown has grown from 9.6 percent to 14.5 percent.

But Tucson remains a compact city. Only six cities have fewer jobs farther from the city center.

Why does this matter?

As the study notes, the geographical distribution of jobs has implications for a range of policy issues – including housing, transportation and economic development.

The cities that will be the most productive, inclusive and sustainable will be those cities in which jobs are not scattered across a large area.

The study points to a concern for Tucson – and one that can be addressed here while it is too late for many other American cities.

Cohesive planning policies for affordable housing, transportation – including automobiles and transit – and other factors must be drawn up with an eye toward keeping Tucson jobs from sprawling farther.

The value of this was explained by Laura Shaw of Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities:

“Many of our jobs are closer in to town, contrary to perception,” said Shaw, vice president of investor relations at TREO. “That puts us in a good position to attract a creative class that wants to live closer to town. From an economic development standpoint, we’re in good shape.”

Not everyone wants to live or work in the central city. But Tucson must put in place planning and zoning guidelines encouraging development of a compact city that leaves a smaller and less-intensive footprint.

The Brookings study shows it still can be accomplished.

GABRIEL ROTH

What are we to make of the report of the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission, delivered in February?

The main recommendations are twofold:

• For the short term, increase the federal gasoline tax by 10 cents a gallon and the diesel tax by 15 cents a gallon, both indexed for inflation.

• In the long term, phase out the fuel taxes dedicated to roads and replace them with fees based on vehicle miles traveled.

These recommendations can go some way toward the objective of treating roads as assets in a free economy, with road users paying the costs of their trips and road providers supplying the facilities for which road users are prepared to pay.

The first recommendation is equivalent to a gas tax increase of about 0.5 cents per car-mile, and would raise the federal tax to 28.4 cents per gallon, or about 1.5 cents per car-mile.

There is a case for increasing the amounts payable for the use of some roads, but not for increasing the amounts payable in federal taxes. Increases by individual states would be more cost-effective, with competitive pricing by private providers ideal.

Understandably, many state officials probably prefer a federal increase, to avoid the unpopular task of raising taxes themselves.

The second recommendation would require every vehicle to be equipped with a device capable, by means of GPS signals from satellites, of recording the distances traveled on different roads.

At intervals, the total mileage traveled (but not details of individual trips) would be transmitted to billing agencies. Such arrangements are now in place in Germany (for trucks on the Autobahn) and are to be introduced in the Netherlands in 2011.

These systems are similar to the E-ZPass systems commonly used today, except that such systems would be best handled through private firms instead of government bureaucracies, and information about all trips would be gathered within ve-hicles, without the need for roadside sensors or gantries.

Privacy is a prime concern, and methods have been developed to ensure that only mileage totals are sent to the billing computers. Privacy would be even further protected if the billing were done by competing private entities subject to civil liberties protections.

Vehicle miles traveled fees have important advantages over fuel taxes as a way of paying for road use.

First, the fees can be made to reflect the costs arising from the use of different kinds of vehicles. For example, vehicles with many load-spreading axles, which cause less damage to roads, can be charged lower fees.

Second, VMT fees can be varied to take into account the specific locations and times of trips, as well as trip length. For example, travel in off-peak periods can be charged at lower rates than travel in the peak.

Third, by enabling charges to be routed from road users to road suppliers, VMT charging enables roads to be provided commercially as easily as cell-phone service, eliminating the need for federal and state highway financing, as commercial services can be provided by private firms.

However, these advantages of VMT charges are nullified by the commission’s recommendation for a single, nationwide, federal VMT charge for road use estimated, for “illustrative purposes,” at 2.3 cents per vehicle-mile for cars, equivalent to a gas tax of 48 cents a gallon.

Even worse is the recommendation that all the revenues be routed to Washington for Congressional allocation. This is as sensible as legislating that all payments for telephone use in the U.S. be sent to Washington, for disposition by Congress.

The commission’s support for the federal financing of roads is unfortunate. Since the completion of the Interstate Highway System, Congress has shown little interest in meeting the needs of road users, preferring to engage itself in the distribution of highway monies between the states, and in diverting Highway Trust Fund monies to non-highway uses.

The vast majority of road users would benefit from the abolition of the Highway Trust Fund and the fuel taxes that support it, leaving highway funding to the states.

The states then would be free to explore more direct ways to fund their roads voluntarily from consumers.

For example, by using GPS-based VMT charges, states could apply to roads the same principles used to pay for cell-phone service, with road users opening accounts with private road providers and paying all their road bills in the manner of the E-ZPass payments we take for granted today.

In sum, the commission’s report is good in parts. The recommendation to adopt VMT charging is excellent.

But real reform in transportation financing cannot be expected until roads, which are too important to be left to the vicissitudes of politics, are brought into the market economy and treated like food, water, telecommunications and other necessities.

Gabriel Roth, a research fellow at the Independent Institute (http://independent.org), is the editor of the award-winning “Street Smart – Competition, Entrepreneurship and the Future of Roads.”

Our supposedly construction-addicted state is faring better than more diversified economies

Thousands of Tucsonans line up at a job fair at Tucson Convention Center in January. Arizona has been hit hard by the burst of the housing bubble, but the state's unemployment rate compares favorably to other states' rates.

One of the most firmly held beliefs about the Arizona economy is that it is too dependent on housing.

This goes beyond the indisputable point that housing is a big part of the Arizona economy. The assertion, almost universally accepted, is that housing drives the rest of the Arizona economy.

The housing sector in Arizona has certainly been hammered. The Case-Shiller Home Price Index tracks home values in 20 large metro areas. According to the index, home values in the Phoenix area peaked in June 2006. Since then, they have declined by 46 percent.

This is the largest decline of any metro area in the index, and nearly twice as much as the index average of 27 percent.

According to the Arizona State University department of Realty Studies, residential building permits in Arizona have declined 73 percent since the housing peak.

So, Arizona’s housing sector has suffered a sharper decline than probably anyplace else in the country. If the rest of Arizona’s economy is dependent on housing, then why does Arizona have a lower unemployment rate than the rest of the country?

January is the most recent month for which comparative figures are available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. During January, the country had an unemployment rate of 7.6 percent. Arizona’s rate was 7.0 percent.

The paradox is even starker when looking at major metro areas. The Phoenix area’s jobless rate was 6.7 percent. Only one metro area in the Case-Shiller group had a lower unemployment rate: Washington D.C., which has an economy clearly driven by government. The average unemployment rate for the 20 major metro areas was 8.4 percent.

According to BLS, of the 49 metro areas in the country with a population in excess of 1 million, Phoenix had the seventh-lowest unemployment rate.

Phoenix has done much better than many metro areas alleged to be our economic betters. San Diego, the proclaimed bioscience leader, had an unemployment rate of 8.6 percent. Charlotte, in North Carolina that supposedly does right in education what Arizona does wrong, was at 10.5 percent. Portland, the antithesis of an economy driven by housing, was at 9.8 percent. Seattle, which has the big companies we supposedly can’t attract, was at 7.5 percent.

So, most large metro areas have unemployment rates substantially above the national average while Phoenix, whose housing sector has been hit the hardest, has an unemployment rate substantially below the national average.

What gives?

Arizona has suffered large job losses during the housing decline. Construction employment in Arizona also peaked in June, 2006. Since then, Arizona has lost 88,000 construction jobs, a decline of 36 percent from the peak. Nationally, construction jobs declined by 13 percent.

Construction represented two-thirds of all jobs lost in Arizona. Outside of construction, the job loss in Arizona was less than 2 percent.

It’s rather clear that a lot of Arizona’s residential construction work force was itinerant. And much of it also was illegal.

All of this unveils what should have been obvious all along. Housing does not create its own demand. Something else has to draw people to an area, which in turn creates the demand for housing.

Arizona has a fundamentally solid underlying economy that benefits from, but is not dependent on, housing. And it has a frothy real estate sector that depends on growth generated primarily by other factors.

The real estate sector is oversized. But that is inevitable in a place that is growing faster than other places. That’s not the same as the rest of the economy being dependent on housing.

These days, various advocates of various dubious schemes to “diversify” Arizona’s economy frequently assert that housing is to Phoenix what cars are to Detroit.

If that’s true, why does Detroit have an unemployment rate nearly twice as high as Phoenix’s?

HOUSING MYTH

The Associated Press

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

A Tucson annexation of Raytheon Missile Systems property at Tucson International Airport, along with other local annexations, could increase tax revenues enough to help the city stave off its budget crisis.

Raytheon, long a good neighbor in the Tucson community, should move forward with annexation for its good as well as the city’s.

With annexation comes full rights to city services, including Tucson’s top-flight firefighters and police.

More than half of property owners in any district must agree to annexation, as must owners of property whose values amount to more than half of assessed valuation.

Annexations sought by City Manager Mike Hein could produce $1 million in tax revenue, a sorely needed infusion of funds that could save jobs and services in this dire economy.

We hope these property owners will agree to become part of Tucson.

Bishop Gerald Kicanas

Just two days after President Obama called the nation’s attention to Arizona’s housing crisis, a local group met to start a discussion on how to tackle the problem in Tucson.

Obama last week chose Arizona as the backdrop to unveil his housing policy. It wasn’t a surprising choice, as Arizona has become ground zero in the mortgage foreclosure crisis.

One study found that home prices in the Phoenix area tumbled 40 percent in a year, prompting investors to abandon their properties and leaving overextended homeowners to face foreclosure.

But housing problems existed in Arizona – and in Tucson – well before the current foreclosure crisis. And they will remain long after the housing market has bounced back.

That’s why Bishop Gerald Kicanas of the Catholic Diocese of Tucson invited Tucson Mayor Bob Walkup and Richard Elías, chairman of the Pima County Board of Supervisors, to help head a group taking a broader look at how to provide an adequate supply of safe and affordable housing in the Tucson area.

Kicanas, Walkup and Elías last week hosted a forum in which the first steps were taken to address local housing issues. A follow-up session will be held in April.

The goal of the program is not simply to have more people own homes, but to lay a foundation for sustainable home ownership. And if that is to happen, land use, transportation and other factors must be part of the discussion.

In many places where housing is more affordable, transportation costs are much higher – a connection not always taken into account. That leads to the phenomenon known as “drive until you qualify” in which people buy homes farther and farther from the city core because land costs – and home costs – decline.

The local housing forum will urge that zoning for affordable housing – including apartments and rental units – take into account the accessibility of mass transit. In that way, money saved on housing will not be gobbled up by higher commute costs.

A housing trust fund also is a critical component in an affordable housing plan. Such a fund is a dedicated source of revenue reserved solely for affordable homes. The funds usually are established at the state and local levels so they will not be encumbered by federal restrictions and can be used for local housing goals.

There is an Arizona Housing Trust Fund, and Tucson has one of its own, with developers contributing to it as a condition of rezoning or of other city action.

Affordable housing is essential to the long-term health and strength of a community. Good for Kicanas, who has stepped outside his traditional role as a clerical leader to help shape a discussion of this timely issue.

A crew installs a retaining wall on the west side of the interstate. The fill dirt came from other parts of the Interstate 10 construction job, and all of the old road was broken up and used as fill.

The predicted construction nightmare on Interstate 10 never materialized, and for that we tip our hats to the Arizona Department of Transportation and its contractors.

The mammoth, $200 million widening project now is expected to be completed by December – way ahead of the expected April 2010 finish.

It’s been under way since June 2007. And, yes, we’ve all experienced some detours and a few instances of slowed traffic.

But considering the scale of the work – widening the highway from six to eight lanes between Prince Road and 29th Street; erecting seven bridges and underpasses; and adding new exit and access ramps – drivers have suffered very little inconvenience.

The project managers have proven to be far better prepared and more efficient than locals expected. We commend them – and we thank them.

It’s a good idea for the Tucson City Council to be looking at ways of stimulating the moribund local economy.

But the stumbling, bumbling way in which the council approached the idea – before throwing it all in the lap of a task force – does not engender confidence that council members have really thought things through.

Instead, it appears council members are more concerned about the process and who gets the credit and less concerned about the end results.

The debate was publicly launched last week when Councilman Rodney Glassman proposed temporarily suspending impact fees – charges made by the city to developers to cover the infrastructure costs of growth.

Glassman rallied developers and environmentalists behind the idea and pushed it as a way to spur homebuilding and to put people in that industry back to work.

There are a couple of concerns with that proposal:

• The problems with the housing industry are far larger than the cost of Tucson’s impact fees. This is a nationwide and especially an Arizona slowdown. Suspending the fees may have a small, localized effect, but it won’t be significant.

• Should impact fees be suspended equally and entirely citywide? Wouldn’t it make more sense to give larger breaks to development in the city core, where infrastructure already is in place while giving smaller or no breaks to development on the periphery?

• What would the fee suspension mean for the city’s goal of increasing affordable housing?

• They are called “impact fees” for a reason. Development does have a financial impact on the city. If fees are not collected, that doesn’t mean the cost of the impact vanishes. It merely shifts the cost to other taxpayers.

Nonetheless, a discussion of the proposal was sidetracked by angry council members who claimed Glassman took credit for an idea some of them already were considering.

Fine. A good idea has a thousand fathers, but a bad idea is an orphan.

So Glassman’s idea was booted to one of the city’s ubiquitous task forces. The group of undetermined size and makeup is supposed to discuss the proposal and come back with a recommendation within 30 days.

That doesn’t make much sense. The task force members haven’t all been selected. Yet it has been determined that the group’s discussions will be coordinated by the Metropolitan-Pima Alliance, whose members are largely in the building industry.

If council members want to discuss ways of stimulating the local economy, they should look at available options and work with city staff to evaluate the relative merits and disadvantages of each. Then they should make a decision without first filtering it through a task force of undetermined composition and unclear usefulness.

Our confidence level is not high.

New Sun Tran logo

A wider variety of transit services will be available throughout the metropolitan Tucson area under a needed expansion and unification of a sometimes fragmented and disjointed system.

The most visible changes will be a new look for Sun Tran buses and new names for other aspects of the system.

But underneath that will be a seamless system unified under the Regional Transportation Authority.

When voters approved, in 2006, a half-cent sales tax increase to pay for transportation, $500 million was designated for transit services over the two-decade life of the tax.

Residents throughout the county are paying the additional tax, so it is only equitable that all benefit from improved services.

Presently, Sun Tran primarily operates in the city, although tentacles of service extend into unincorporated areas under county contracts.

The city will continue operating Sun Tran and much of the transit system – but with the RTA overseeing all of it to make sure the different aspects work together.

And that is how it should be.

There will be additional express bus routes serving outlying areas and, in the future, circulator bus routes in Marana and Oro Valley. Rural areas will have park-and-ride lots.

And transit vehicles will sport a new silver, blue, yellow and white paint scheme that will be phased in as new equipment is purchased.

A regionwide transit system would offer transportation alternatives to far more people through regular buses, express buses, van- and car-pool programs and vans for handicapped people.

It makes sense – for riders and for the taxpayers who finance it – to bring it all under a single regional umbrella.

New Sun Tran bus design

In their push to balance the budget, leaders in the Arizona Legislature have proposed cuts that would decimate education and punch crushing holes in this state’s protective net of social services.

It is an unreasonable attack on some of Arizona’s neediest citizens and would make it far more difficult to put the state on the road to recovery once the recession ends.

With the state facing a projected $1.6 billion deficit in the current fiscal year ending June 30, and up to $3 billion more in the next fiscal year, there are no good solutions.

But the budget-balancing options put on the table by key Republican legislators show a shocking lack of thought and creativity.

For example, there is a proposal to eliminate KidsCare, a health insurance program for children whose parents earn too much for state-paid care. The savings of $18.3 million would be more than offset by costly emergency room visits and additional care provided by the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System.

There also is a proposal to provide child care subsidies to fewer families. But savings of $8.1 million would be more than offset if some parents are forced to stop working and go on welfare.

Funding for school computers, textbooks and other equipment also may be chopped. But Arizona already is at or near the bottom in school funding. Will we be better off with worse schools? Obviously not.

Savage cuts also would devastate the university system. There is talk of cutting $388 million from the universities over the next 18 months.

As University of Arizona President Robert Shelton pointed out, “These figures are so extreme that they would absolutely cripple higher education in our state.”

The universities are the most powerful economic engine in Arizona – but they would be ill-equipped to jump-start the economy, making it far more difficult to recover from the recession.

In total, the proposals would cut $1.5 billion out of Arizona education in the next 18 months – something that probably would wipe out all-day kindergarten, libraries, school nurses, counselors and much more. There likely would be teacher layoffs and lower teacher salaries.

Arizona’s budget deficit is massive. We cannot cut our way out of it. Much more creative solutions are needed.

Legislators have vowed not to incur more debt – and the vast majority of the time, we’d agree with them. But we cannot eat our seed corn. We cannot permanently undermine the future strength of this state to dig our way out of the current – and temporary – financial mess.

Some limited borrowing would be far preferable than these devastating cuts proposed by legislators. Let’s get creative instead of wildly slashing at our future.

You can’t please everybody, heaven knows, but we’re confident that the Grant Road widening ultimately will benefit the vast majority of Tucsonans.

The Tucson City Council heard from vocal opponents Tuesday night before voting 6-1 to proceed with this enormous undertaking. Councilman Steve Leal dissented.

Like Leal, we empathize with owners who long have operated small businesses along Grant Road. Their concerns, particularly in the current recession, are understandable.

But three facts underscore the soundness of the council’s decision:

• Voters already approved this five-mile, $166 million project as part of the Regional Transportation Plan adopted in 2006, so any move to jettison it now would conflict with that decision.

• Grant Road business owners and residents have had enormous input into this plan, with continual public meetings and focus groups over the past two years.

• And eventually, the widened Grant Road will accommodate more traffic – pedestrian, bicycle and vehicular – bringing more patrons to the merchants there.

Grant Road is to be expanded from two lanes to three lanes in each direction.

The widening, from Oracle Road to Swan Road, is critically needed.

Tucson has no good east-west crosstown roadway, and a wider Grant will somewhat ameliorate that shortcoming.

In addition, traffic is expected to flow much more smoothly with new turnarounds – special U-turn only lanes – replacing some left turn lanes, and with the new “bulb outs,” slight curvatures in the roadway that calm traffic.

Granted (forgive the pun), Tucson will have grown considerably by the time this project is completed in 2018. But that’s all the more reason to get this work under way.

The improved Grant Road also will feature bike lanes wider than others in Tucson, expansive pedestrian paths separated from the street by landscaping and space for a rail line down the middle of the street in case the city decides to add one later.

The change will be contentious for many people, despite the ultimate benefits to the majority.

The project will consume all or part of 320 commercial properties and 101 residential ones, including some homes dating to the 1920s.

That is a shame, and blame can be laid on poor city planning and zoning that long has failed to appropriately segregate commercial and residential zones, much less predict the growth that was certain to occur.

But the losses on Grant Road, albeit most regrettable, also are the price of progress. And those who travel Grant well know that progress there is long overdue.

Kris Mayes

With three new members now serving on the five-member Arizona Corporation Commission – arguably the most important and powerful agency in the state – we’re delighted that Kris Mayes has been elected chairwoman.

We long have been impressed with Mayes’ knowledge, industriousness and dedication to energy, utilities and transportation issues in our state.

We also appreciate her new plans to promote water conservation, energy efficiency and use of renewable energy.

Gov. Janet Napolitano appointed Republican Mayes to the ACC in 2003, and she won election in 2004 and 2006.

Her fellow Republican, continuing Commissioner Gary Pierce, also will lend veteran insights to the panel.

We congratulate new Commissioners Bob Stump, Paul Newman and Sandra Kennedy and wish them well.

Hi Corbett Field needs to be made more accessible to handicapped people.

I cannot believe the uproar about baseball and sports in Tucson.

The city of Tucson has 500,000-plus residents with about 1 million living in Pima County. Compare that to the city of Pittsburgh, which has just over 300,000 people.

Pittsburgh has pro baseball, hockey and football teams and Penn State University. What does Tucson have? The Tucson Toros, an independent league team, and the University of Arizona.

It is time the City Council realizes Tucson is no longer a small town where you come to die. We need professional companies, not call centers, and professional sports teams from Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League.

The only reason Honeywell is here is because an airline company paid Honeywell to stay in Tucson. Otherwise it would have moved to Phoenix.

It is time for the City Council to open its eyes and realize that Tucson may have 1.5 million people by 2012. It needs to quit relying on Raytheon Missile Systems and Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and bring in companies such as Motorola, Sony and other types of industries.

We need a City Council that is visionary enough to see this and start making the necessary moves to do this.

One of the first is to make Hi Corbett Field more accessible to handicapped people by enclosing the ballpark. That would eliminate the direct sunlight and lack of shade for people with medical conditions.

Right now, handicapped people are seated in front of the bleachers. For my wife to go to Hi Corbett, I would have to put a shade cover over her scooter and make a misting system that would make it difficult for fans sitting in the first three rows to see.

At least at Tucson Electric Park the sun was blocked by the building. The smartest thing would have been to enclose TEP, and the Sidewinders would have been profitable because it would have been 75 to 80 degrees instead of over 100 degrees.

It is time for change and smart thinking, not the attitude that we are a small town anymore. We can be better than Phoenix and larger. We are a big city. Get over it.

Mark Walton is an electronics technician who has lived in Tucson since 1973.

Mark Walton

Ability to attract people like bears to honey has sticking point: economy

A Paradise Valley subdivision. Steep declines in home values may keep people from pulling up stakes and moving to Arizona.

At both the state and national levels, pitches are being made for huge expenditures on public works projects as an economic stimulus.

In Arizona, the pitch comes with a local twist: The state has a rapidly growing population. The additional infrastructure will ultimately be needed anyway. So, why not build it now, when the economy could use a boost?

The efficacy of public works spending as an economic stimulus is debatable. And there are major questions about how much idle heavy and commercial construction capacity really exists and how quickly additional capacity can be developed.

But put those issues aside for now. Let’s examine the underlying Arizona twist on the pitch: The population growth is coming anyway, so let’s build to accommodate it now.

Arizona has certainly been one of the fastest-growing states for some time. Although official statistics don’t reflect it yet, the widespread belief is that population growth in Arizona has slowed.

It’s also widely believed that this is a temporary phenomenon, that when the national economy recovers, Arizona will get back to attracting people like bears to honey.

Based upon history, that would certainly seem to be a safe bet. But, as George Will says, history repeats itself until it doesn’t. And there are reasons to be cautious about assumptions regarding what Arizona’s future holds when the current economic malaise clears.

The future-will-be-the-same argument assumes that population migration to Arizona is being suppressed by the inability of people to sell homes in other places and uncertain job prospects here. Once the housing market stabilizes and the job market perks up, the moving vans will resume their rumble.

However, economic policy choices (including a return to lax monetary policy and mammoth borrowing to fund bailouts and stimuli) may lead to a prolonged period of economic stagnation.

That, in and of itself, wouldn’t necessarily mean that migration to Arizona wouldn’t resume. Arizona grew at a very quick clip during the 1970s, the last period of prolonged national economic stagnation.

However, this downturn may be different. From the double-whammy of steep housing and stock declines, many Americans have seen their net worth shrink by a quarter or a third.

That’s a sobering development whose long-term implications cannot begin to be grasped at this point.

For a while, Americans may become a much more economically cautious people. Families may start living below their means again. Nest eggs may become more important. Savings from current income may become a larger part of building them, rather than relying on appreciation of already owned assets.

There’s a certain amount of risk-taking in moving. Some people move to take a specific job. But confidence in the longevity of any job has been shaken. People may become reluctant to give up networks they have developed where they currently live that can be accessed to find a new job should the need arise.

From the 1950s on, Americans increasingly moved to places they wanted to live without having a job in hand, confident in landing something once there. That sort of risk-taking may abate.

Then there is the issue of illegal immigration, which clouds any crystal ball.

Foreign immigration has driven a significant part of Arizona’s population growth. Since 1990, Arizona has added 650,000 foreign-born residents. In fact, foreign immigration has accounted for about a quarter of Arizona’s overall population growth.

And much of that foreign immigration has been illegal – according to most estimates, about 60 percent of it.

Illegal immigration is also believed to be down, but there are disputes as to the reasons why – a poor economy or increased enforcement activity. Which is the case won’t be known until the economy and the housing market recovers.

And if it proves to be enforcement, the effect of losing the construction labor previously supplied by illegal immigrants is another economic unknown.

Arizona doesn’t have a birthright to be one of the fastest-growing states in the union. That’s a function of the willingness of others to take moving risks and economic conditions nationally and locally – all huge imponderables right now.

This is, in short, a time for Arizona governments to be hunkering down, trying to manage their way through tight revenues.

It’s not a time to be making big expenditure commitments based upon the assumption that the future will be like the past.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

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Arizona’s population by decade

1900: 122,931

1910: 204,354

1920: 334,162

1930: 435,573

1940: 499,261

1950: 749,587

1960: 1,302,161

1970: 1,770,900

1980: 2,718,215

1990: 3,665,228

2000: 5,130,632

2007: 6,338,755

Interstate 10 in April

The people again have spoken – again with a resounding “No!” – regarding a proposed bypass route for Interstate 10.

The vast majority of the some 100 people (including officials from three federal agencies) who turned out for last week’s state Transportation Board meeting vociferously opposed a bypass that would cut through an established wildlife corridor west of Tucson.

One of the speakers, Saguaro National Park Superintendent Sarah Craighead, said a bypass “could have grave consequences” for the west unit of the park, blocking animal migration, spreading invasive species and increasing light pollution.

Her objections echoed what opponents long have said about freeway bypasses: They hurt the environment, bring unwanted development and stress water resources.

We wish the state Transportation Board would listen. So far, it hasn’t, choosing to go ahead and study the proposal some more.

Yes, I-10 traffic only will get worse – in four years, 200,000 vehicles a day are predicted to make the trek between Tucson and Phoenix.

But addressing the issue simply by pouring another strip of concrete to allow carbon-monoxide-spewing vehicles to chug through pristine wilderness seems to be an old-fashioned, piecemeal approach. That the strip comes with at least a $6 billion price tag and no funding source makes it even more suspect.

Gov.-to-be Jan Brewer and the Arizona Legislature need to take on the transportation problem in a comprehensive, creative manner that includes a funding mechanism.

Something along the lines of the failed TIME initiative, which would have raised state sales taxes to produce $40 billion over the next 20 years to address Arizona’s transportation ills, would be a good place to start.

The state board’s decision isn’t the only bit of distressing transportation news to hit Tucson lately.

The city’s streetcar project, a key feature of the 2006 Regional Transportation Plan, will receive just one-third of the funding it expected from the federal government.

The city has yet to persuade the feds that it has met requirements to justify $75 million in grants for the project, which eventually would connect the University of Arizona area to downtown.

Meanwhile, in Phoenix, a spanking-new $1.4 billion light rail system will be inaugurated Saturday. On a typical day, some 26,000 passengers will be whisked through Phoenix, Mesa and Tempe along 20 miles of track.

When it comes to transportation, Phoenix has the right idea. Southern Arizona, unfortunately, is moving in the wrong direction.