Citizen Staff Writer

RENEE SCHAFER HORTON

and CARLI BROSSEAU

news@tucsoncitizen.com

University of Arizona President Robert N. Shelton said Saturday that work on the University of Arizona Science Center at Rio Nuevo will slow.

Shelton said Saturday morning before tipoff at the UA-UCLA basketball game that Joel Valdez, UA senior vice president for business affairs, approached Mayor Bob Walkup and City Manager Mike Hein to talk about adjusting the project’s pace.

The Science Center, which is to share a building with a new Arizona State Museum near Origins Heritage Park, west of Interstate 10 and south of Congress Street, was to open in early 2012 with construction beginning this fall, according to a UA official’s Jan. 16 letter to Hein.

But with budget cuts already made and more looming, “We can’t spend money at this pace,” Shelton said.

The UA has spent more than $13.3 million on the project so far, according to an expenditure summary. The city is on the hook for half that amount but is about $1.3 million in arrears on its reimbursement payments.

In its contract with the city, the UA has an out on the Science Center if legislators cuts its funding. Officials are now exploring that option.

The university must make $57 million in state-mandated cuts before June 30, on top of a nearly $20 million cut taken last July. Legislators have said the university system will face even larger reductions in the fiscal year that begins July 1.

In an e-mail earlier Saturday morning, Shelton wrote: “Budgets are a ‘mess,’ to put it mildly, so short-term decisions must be made, but our long-term commitment to the Science Center downtown is strong.”

UA Vice President for External Relations Stephen MacCarthy said Friday that a detailed list of UA budget cuts would be released this week.

Citizen Staff Writer

Erin Faubion joined the Department of Defense Studio of Breckenridge Group Architects/ Planners as a project manager. Faubion has two years of experience in the industry in a design capacity. Also in the Defense Studio, Carl Kilgore is a new project manager/architect. Kilgore has more than 20 years of experience as an architect.

Gary Andros, a commercial real estate agent with Prudential Foothills Real Estate, was awarded the Certified Commercial Investment Member designation by the CCIM Institute. The CCIM designation is awarded to commercial real estate professionals upon completion of a graduate-level curriculum and attainment of a level of qualifying experience.

Scott Goldman recently earned Certified Consultant status by the Association for Applied Sport Psychology, the professional organization of sport and exercise psychology. Goldman is a psychologist for the University of Arizona Athletic Department. He administers patient care to student-athletes and provides consulting services for the coaches and staff. He also has a private practice.

The A List gives props to the Tucson business community’s movers and shakers. Send information to alist@tucsoncitizen.com

Citizen Staff Photographer

The Associated Press

The Associated Press

PHOENIX – Arizona started its current fiscal year with more budget trouble and Gov. Janet Napolitano said Wednesday she is having state agencies look for options during a time of “tough economic waters.”

However, there’s no indication that the Democratic governor and the Republican-led Legislature will be taking any joint action on the budget before lawmakers report in January for their 2009 regular session.

Napolitano told reporters she has not received expressions of interest from legislative leaders regarding a special session on possible budget adjustments. It wouldn’t make sense to call lawmakers into special session unless they have a plan and the votes to approve it, she said.

A leading legislative budget writer later said political realities put the ball in Napolitano’s court.

“Lead, governor, lead,” said Senate Appropriations Chairman Bob Burns, R-Peoria. “How do we do anything without her? She’s the only one with the authority to call a special session and propose a fix at this point. We could propose a fix but then what? We can’t call ourselves in unless she agrees to allow her Democrats to support a legislative call.”

Burns was alluding to the constitutional provision that allows the Legislature to call itself into special session with a petition from two-thirds of the members of each chamber. Majority Republicans don’t have that many votes in either chamber.

Along with monitoring daily fiscal reports, Napolitano said she and her staff were “working with our agencies to see where we can hold back and cut back and, like I said, manage our way through these tough economic waters.”

She declined to provide any specifics on budget changes being considered. “Nothing that I’m ready to discuss with you right now,” she told a reporter.

Napolitano said a hiring freeze she ordered last spring remains in place. “And I don’t see it coming off anytime soon,” she added.

Revenue in the fiscal year’s first month came in nearly $90 million lower than anticipated.

If that pace were to continue through the rest of the fiscal year, the $9.9 billion budget could face a shortfall in the neighborhood of at least $1 billion.

However, legislative budget analysts said when they reported the $90 million dip below expected July revenue that they would need several months of revenue data before attempting to revise the entire year’s forecast.

But a $1 billion shortfall would not be untrod territory for Napolitano and lawmakers.

Arizona lawmakers in April approved a $1.37 billion budget fix for the fiscal year that ended June 30, and the budget approved June 26 for the current fiscal year had to erase a $2.2 billion revenue shortfall.

Steps taken so far to erase the shortfalls including raiding special funds, draining most of the state’s reserve, temporarily delaying some state funding for K-12 schools, borrowing to pay for school construction and cutting spending by universities and numerous other programs by varying amounts.

With those actions, many traditional budget-balancing steps are now regarded as largely unavailable. That raises the prospect that future budget work would require more painful steps.

Other states are already engaging in midyear retrenching.

In Pennsylvania, Gov. Ed Rendell ordered a hiring freeze, a ban on out-of-state travel and other spending cuts to save $200 million as what he called a precautionary move. The hiring freeze will leave vacant about 5,000 state jobs.

In Tennessee, Gov. Phil Bredesen said he expects his state’s revenues to rebound from “grim” levels in July but that state agencies would try to spend less than amounts appropriated by the Legislature.

The Associated Press

The Associated Press

PHOENIX – A partial hiring freeze imposed on much of Arizona state government last March by Gov. Janet Napolitano because of budget troubles has resulted in 1,020 fewer employees.

Department of Administration spokesman Alan Ecker says nonuniversity parts of state government covered by the freeze had just under 17,100 employees on Sept. 10, down from slightly over 18,100 when the freeze was implemented March 5.

That’s a reduction of about 5.6 percent.

Meanwhile, other nonuniversity parts of state government not subject to the freeze also saw employment go down, by about 50 jobs during the same period, according to Ecker.

Parts of state government exempt from the freeze include positions in public safety, health and revenue generation.

Citizen Staff Writer

A.J. FLICK

ajflick@tucsoncitizen.com

Whether you want to see how your tax dollars are being spent, or you’ve always wondered what all those battleship-gray buildings are in Florence or you want to see how the hoosegow has changed since you were a resident, your chance comes Saturday. You can go to prison and get out free.

The state Department of Corrections is celebrating the centennial of the Florence prison complex with an open house from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at ASPC-Florence, 1305 E. Butte Ave., Florence.

The Florence prison replaced the old Territorial Prison in Yuma in 1908. The huge sally port (a two-door entry to a secure area) at the Central Unit was taken from the Yuma prison.

“The state’s first prison was built by inmates who lived in tents in the desert while it was under construction,” according to a DOC press release.

“The new prison was a distinct improvement over the Territorial prison,” the press release states. “There was no dungeon or ‘snake hole’ (the Yuma prison’s infamous cave for rebellious prisoners), however, the new prison did include a gas chamber.”

The gas chamber isn’t included on Saturday’s tour, according to DOC spokesman Bill Lamoreaux.

But visitors may board vans and tour the vast Florence complex, where historical facts will be given at various locations along with information about programs offered at the different units.

Refreshments, guest speakers and displays of prison memorabilia will also be part of the events.

Citizen Staff Writer

RENÉE SCHAFER HORTON

rshorton@tucsoncitizen.com

The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality awarded a grant to the University of Arizona to fund watershed improvement projects in Safford and Prescott.

Agency Director Steve Owens announced the $176,150 grant Wednesday, saying UA does a “terrific job training volunteers to protect our precious water resources.”

Program coordinator Candice Rupprecht said the need for training volunteers to protect, restore, monitor and conserve watersheds is critical to Arizona.

“We don’t have a lot of surface water in Arizona, so it’s really important for people to understand what is affecting our watershed,” she said. “Training the volunteers to recognize the issues allows them to help address them.”

A watershed is the area drained by a stream and its tributaries and can range from under a square mile to hundreds of thousands of square miles.

The grant will fund volunteers to work on revegetation projects with the Gila Watershed Partnership in Safford and Prescott Creeks Partnership in Prescott in hopes of lessening pollution that has shown up in those watersheds.

“We don’t know where the pollution is coming from, which is why it is called nonpoint source, but we do know that putting these vegetation strips along the stream bank will help reduce some of the nutrients and pollution that enter the streams,” Rupprecht said.

The Master Watershed Steward Program was launched in 2003 by the UA’s Cooperative Extension Program. It was funded through an interagency service agreement until this year when UA was required to apply for funding through the state environmental agency’s competitive grant process.

Master stewards take more than 50 hours of coursework in basic watershed science and learn about a variety of topics including hydrology, geology, soil types, water quality and quantity and water mapping.

Rupprecht said 25 classes have been held in 14 cities throughout Arizona since the program’s inception.

In the past, volunteers have worked on tracking and removing invasive species, water conservation and testing and conducting conservation education at schools and festivals.

The Associated Press
IN BRIEF

MILWAUKEE – Department store stalwarts J.C. Penney Co., Nordstrom and Kohl’s all reported steep drops in first-quarter profits Thursday as Americans snubbed apparel to focus on basic necessities at discounters in a challenging economy.

The three department store chains all predicted the softening sales environment would continue this year.

The Associated Press

Fed chief says financial firms must be cautious

WASHINGTON – Commercial banks and other financial institutions need to beef up their ability to detect and protect themselves against risks such as the credit and mortgage debacles, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Thursday.

The trio of crises – housing, credit and financial – have exposed weaknesses in financial firms’ so-called risk-management practices.

Banks and other financial players have racked up multibillion-dollar losses when investments in complex mortgage-backed securities soured.

The Associated Press

Citizen Staff Writer

RENÉE SCHAFER HORTON

rshorton@tucsoncitizen.com

The University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management and College of Medicine have joined to offer a five-year MD-MBA degree, the university announced this week.

Reasons behind the decisions include the challenge of managing health care issues, such as skyrocketing insurance costs, medical malpractice and drug safety.

Marisa Cox, director of admissions for Eller College’s MBA program, said the MD-MBA is a natural outgrowth of the dual-degree MBA programs Eller already offers in such areas as pharmacy, law, engineering and international management.

Eller administrators have been working with College of Medicine faculty this year to develop the program, which allows students to finish what would normally be a six-year program of study in five years.

Students who are accepted into the five-year program, offered for the first time this fall, will spend the first two years of the program attending the College of Medicine, Cox said. They would spend the third year working full time on core curriculum courses at Eller College, including finance, marketing, accounting and leadership development. The fourth year will be spent exclusively at the College of Medicine, where students will be doing much of their clinical rotations.

“The fifth year would be a blend, probably 60 percent of that at the College of Medicine,” Cox said. “Nothing gets shorted at all with medicine. We’re not going to have any less-trained doctors with this.”

Dr. Michael J. Demeure, a surgeon, said incorporating the MBA into the medical training would be tough, but could be worth it for young students who can handle the pressure.

Demeure, who completed his residency in 1988, took advantage of a recent shoulder injury to return to Eller to get his MBA.

Cox said the program came out of doctors such as Demeure returning to school in the evening Executive MBA program.

“Interestingly, we have some doctors coming to our evening programs saying, with all the change in health care and insurance filings, ‘We need some business acumen,’ ” Cox explained. “They are saying they want to speak the same language as the business office.”

Demeure said there is also a need, as economics become the driver for all aspects of medicine, for doctors to be able to speak the language of administrators, who many times have a business and not a medical background.

“I think the doctor of tomorrow will at least need a seat at the table in making decisions,” Demeure said. “A business background makes them better equipped to participate in the debate.”

He also said the MBA could benefit young doctors down the road as they look to move up in academic and administrative roles.

“It’s becoming a useful thing on your résumé,” Demeure said.

Brent Chrite, associate dean for Eller and director of MBA programs, said doctors who want to start their own practices need the same skills any entrepreneur needs.

“This represents, for us, a market test,” Chrite said. “Why not catch them before the practices start instead of them coming back to our evening classes?

“This is not only just a logical next step for the University of Arizona, but affirms what we see as a trend in the marketplace – the increasing importance and recognition of what is, in fact, the business of medicine.”

The Associated Press

The Associated Press

PHOENIX – The family of a New York woman who died in police custody at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport filed a wrongful-death lawsuit Thursday against the city.

The suit by Carol Anne Gotbaum’s family claims that Phoenix police ignored policies, used excessive force and caused or contributed to her death in an airport holding cell on Sept. 28.

Gotbaum, the daughter-in-law of New York City Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, was headed to an alcohol rehabilitation program in Tucson.

Police stopped her after she wandered through the terminal screaming, “I’m not a terrorist!”

Family lawyer Michael Manning didn’t say in the lawsuit how much money the family wanted from the department.

He filed an $8 million wrongful-death claim against the city in March. The suit was filed in Maricopa County Superior Court.

Police spokesman Joel Tranter wouldn’t comment about the lawsuit, but the department has rejected claims that it was responsible for Gotbaum’s death.

Stephen Craig, a lawyer for Phoenix police, criticized Gotbaum’s family in a March 26 letter to the family’s lawyers for blaming police.

In the letter, Craig pointed out that the family knew of Gotbaum’s fragile mental state and her problems with alcohol. Still, Craig said, nobody accompanied her to the treatment program in Arizona.

“The thrust of the Gotbaum family claim is that the city of Phoenix police officers should have been more supportive than Carol’s own husband, more knowledgeable than her own family, and should somehow have known that she suffered from a private condition that she deliberately hid from the public.”

He said Phoenix police made almost 4,500 arrests for disorderly conduct, loud noise and drinking last year.

“Is there anyone seriously suggesting that the officers should place a 24-hour suicide watch on each ‘drunk and disorderly’ suspect they arrest? That they should put their arms around their shoulders, sit them down, and give them some attention?” Craig asked in the letter.

“Or is this treatment only for the wealthy and politically influential?”

Police arrested Gotbaum, 45, on suspicion of disorderly conduct after she was denied a seat on a flight to Tucson. They shackled her to a bench and left her alone in a holding cell.

She was later found dead with her hands up near her neck. An autopsy showed she accidentally hanged herself on shackles.

The Associated Press

The Associated Press

SASABE, Son. – The sandy streets of Sasabe are empty. Migrant smugglers have to hunt for business at border-town shelters. Deported immigrants give up after one try, taking their government up on free bus rides home.

A U.S. crackdown is causing the longest and most significant drop in illegal migration from Mexico since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Officials say the U.S. economic downturn, tighter security and a more perilous and expensive journey are persuading many who try to sneak into the U.S. to give up sooner.

Border Patrol arrests are down 17 percent this fiscal year along the U.S.-Mexico border after falling 20 percent all of last fiscal year and 8 percent the year before that. The U.S. government’s fiscal year begins Oct. 1

It’s impossible to know how many people are crossing illegally, but the Patrol uses apprehensions to estimate the ebb and flow of traffic.

The downturn in illegal immigration has created labor shortages throughout the United States and several states are considering temporary-worker programs, especially in agricultural fields, where produce is going bad.

Mexicans in the U.S. are starting to send less money home, too.

Remittances soared in the early part of the decade to become Mexico’s largest source of foreign income after oil exports. They rose 1 percent in 2007, reaching $24 billion. In the first quarter of this year, they slipped almost 3 percent from the same period last year, Mexico’s central bank said this week.

Adolfo Vasquez, a 41-year-old corn farmer from southern Mexico, picked fruit for three years in Washington state. Last year it took him two tries to get to his job.

This year, he walked for four nights before U.S. Border Patrol agents caught him. He doesn’t plan to try again.

“It’s very disheartening because every time it gets twice as difficult,” said Vasquez, resting under an aid station tent for deportees in Nogales. “We’re going to go to Los Cabos or Tijuana. We hear there is work there.”

The number of returned immigrants who try again through the heavily traveled desert corridor west of Sasabe has dropped from 80 percent to 40 percent since January, said Border Patrol spokesman Jose Gonzalez.

Agents keep fingerprints on all those apprehended and can determine multiple offenders, even if they give false names.

U.S. authorities attribute the drop to tighter security and a new program in the Tucson sector of the Border Patrol that has prosecuted more than 3,000 immigrants for crossing illegally since it started in January.

Immigrants face jail sentences of from a few days to six months.

Still, none of the immigrants interviewed by The Associated Press knew about the new prosecution program.

Those on their way home said the main deterrents were tougher security and the dangers of the desert, including bandits who rob and even rape immigrants on both sides of the border.

The Border Patrol added 200 officers since last year to the Tucson sector, and 3,000 agents now search the vast desert for illegal immigrants by truck, horse, all-terrain vehicle and helicopter.

Agents have four aerial drones scanning for drug and immigrant smugglers, as well as two newly built 12-foot walls with steel posts near Nogales and in Sasabe.

At the same time, Mexican drug smugglers have started to collect fees for access to the main routes into Arizona.

As a result, Grupo Beta, the Mexican government’s migrant rescue group, has seen a 257 percent increase in the number of people seeking discounted bus tickets home this year.

About 2,500 people in Nogales and Sasabe asked for the tickets this year, while Grupo Beta received 700 requests in all of 2007.

“We can’t keep up with so many people who are heading back,” said Enrique Enriquez, coordinator for Grupo Beta in Nogales.

He said his rescuers spend the day shuttling migrants to a bus station.

Maria Fernandez, 25, made her first crossing with her husband after both had been laid off from a department store in Puebla state. Friends in New York offered to help them find work.

They said first they traveled to Altar, a farming town 70 miles south of Sasabe, a major gathering point for those heading to Arizona.

There, they had to pay about $50 so drug smugglers would allow them to travel the bumpy road north, and another $30 for a van that took them and another 25 hopefuls to Sasabe.

They walked for four nights through the mesquite-covered desert, where they were robbed once, the two said. They hid from Border Patrol agents at least five times.

When they reached the highway where they would meet their next ride, they were spotted by a helicopter.

Now, Fernandez was waiting in Nogales for her husband to be deported, as she had been.

“I won’t try again because it’s very difficult and, as a woman, one risks a lot,” she said.

The crackdown has made smugglers more desperate to recruit clients for the trip north. If fewer people cross, their earnings drop.

Francisco Loureiro, who runs a migrant shelter in Nogales, said that when people began arriving in January, the start of the high season, he spotted smugglers trying to drum up business inside his shelter.

Now, local police visit the shelter three times a night.

“The officers have found smugglers carrying guns and even drugs,” Loureiro said.

During earlier peak traffic seasons, overflowing vans and pickup trucks would arrive in Sasabe and then head out to the drop-off points where migrants begin their long walk.

The town of 1,500 people could see its population triple from migrants passing through.

Now businesses are closing and at least six safe houses and hotels have been left unfinished, said town administrator Ramona Flores.

Border experts estimate that 70 percent of residents earn their living from immigration.

On a recent afternoon, eight men waited for a smuggler near a pile of smashed and rusting cars.

“We’re supposed to be in high season, but in one day the most we’ve seen is between 300 and 400 migrants,” Flores said.

Juan Luna, a 39-year-old bricklayer from Guanajuato state, said he was heading to Oklahoma, where he would work as a dishwasher at a restaurant. After two nights of walking through the desert, he and five others were caught.

Citizen Staff Photographer

Citizen Staff Writer

ALAN FISCHER

afischer@tucsoncitizen.com

Far be it for us to keep you in the dark: The results of Saturday night’s Earth Hour are in.

Earth Hour – when people were urged to shut off lights and unplug electronic devices – failed to dramatically darken local skies or cut electric use here.

Still, the 8-9 p.m. effort enlightened the public about conserving energy, said Beth Gorman, program manager with the Pima County Department of Environmental Quality.

Earth Hour results here were OK for the nation’s inaugural attempt, Gorman said. Earth Hour launched last year in Australia and expanded globally this year.

“This is something that is going to need to grow over time like Earth Day,” Gorman said.

Though Tucson Electric Power Co.’s average hourly megawatt demand dropped during Earth Hour, spokesman Joseph Barrios was unable to credit the decrease to the event.

Saturday’s average hourly megawatt demand for TEP’s 375,000 customers dropped from 1,404 an hour earlier to 1,371 during the 8-9 p.m. event – Earth Hour – and then fell to 1,313 from 9-10 p.m., Barrios said.

That followed a similar pattern seen a week earlier on March 22, when average hourly megawatt demand was 1,362 from 7-8 p.m., 1,331 from 8-9 p.m. and 1,285 from 9-10 p.m., he said.

The darkness of the sky, which makes for best conditions for astronomers and skygazers, was measured before, during and after the hour sans electricity, said Doug Isbell, spokesman for the Tucson-based National Optical Astronomy Observatory that runs Kitt Peak National Observatory and other astronomy facilities.

“We had digital photography on Kitt Peak, looked at the Kitt Peak Web cam data and took sky quality meter measurements on Kitt Peak,” he said. “None of them showed major effects we can comfortably say came from Earth Hour.”

Citizen Staff Writer

GARRY DUFFY

gduffy@tucsoncitizen.cm

You can start an argument in the West by mentioning control of water resource policies in an empty room.

The room likely won’t be vacant for an August public hearing of Pima County and city appointees who are charged with charting existing and future water supplies and how they ought be allocated in coming years.

The Pima County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved formation of the joint committee with the city.

On it are some members of the city and county planning and zoning commissions, the Tucson Water Advisory Committee, the Pima County Wastewater Advisory Committee, and a former deputy to County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry who also is on the city water advisory committee.

Not on it are representatives of any other area jurisdictions – Marana, Oro Valley, South Tucson, and Sahuarita – or the Tohono O’odham Nation and Pascua Yaqui Tribe.

“The committee we are putting together today is charged with seeing that everyone is sitting at the table,” Supervisor Ann Day said of suspicions that the city and county will seek to dominate water conservation and use policies.

The committee is to meet later this month to set up procedures for tackling its mandate – looking at current water supplies and infrastructure, looking ahead at future groundwater and renewable water supplies and needs, population growth trends, preferred future land-use planning, and conservation standards.

Discussion then will include how to get information from neighboring communities and also provide them with data, Huckelberry said.

“We will be sitting in to monitor and follow what does come out of the committee,” Marana Town Manager Mike Reuwsaat, said Tuesday afternoon.

Officials there do not believe the committee poses a threat to the town’s water supply, Reuwsaat said.

But the town has interconnected lines with Tucson Water in some areas that should be monitored in future policy recommendations and decisions, he said.

Renewable water supplies, such as treated wastewater, will be an important commodity as alternatives to groundwater use become more vital, Reuwsaat said.

“The city has control over most of the renewable resources. The question is, how are they going to use it,” he said.

Other concerns have been raised over how treated wastewater – effluent – might be used in the future.

“As a citizen, I am drawing a line in the sand over drinking toilet-to-tap water,” Debbie Collazo said when she addressed the supervisors during a public portion of Tuesday’s meeting.

Supervisor Ray Carroll cast the lone dissenting vote on the committee’s formation.

“It should have had more input from all sectors of the community,” Carroll said.

Another concern was the quality of water area residents will be drinking in coming years.

Cronkite News Service

DANIEL J. QUIGLEY

Cronkite News Service

PHOENIX – Stalled legislation that would bar courts from granting custody to parents engaged in child bigamy got a second chance Thursday when a Senate committee approved attaching it to another bill.

Rep. David Lujan, D-Phoenix, is pushing for the change, saying it would help women leaving polygamist sects because those women often have few resources, which can compel courts to give full or shared custody to fathers who practice child bigamy.

Under Arizona law, child bigamy includes married adults taking minors as spouses or causing minors to marry adults who already have spouses.

Lujan’s original bill, HB 2009, would bar courts from awarding custody or unsupervised parenting time to a parent who engages in child bigamy unless a judge states in writing that there is no significant risk to the child.

That bill won unanimous approval from the House Committee on Human Services, but the Judiciary Committee declined to hear it. Thursday, the Senate Public Safety and Human Services Committee approved adding the language of Lujan’s bill to HB 2275 sponsored by Rep. Pete Hershberger, R-Oro Valley. Hershberger’s bill would limit evidence courts can use to grant temporary orders of child support, custody or parenting time to a paternity test or admission of paternity. The committee’s move sends the measure to the full Senate.