Richard Fimbres Responds To Unsubstantiated, Personal Attacks

by observer on Oct.31, 2009, under Tucson, politics

Richard Fimbres Responds To Unsubstantiated, Personal Attacks

Contrary to Richard Fimbres’ Republican opponent’s unfounded, scurrilous and unsubstantiated allegations, he did respond, more than two months ago (August 19), to the attacks made on him by his successor, Alberto Gutier, a longtime Phoenix Republican political operative, strategist, activist, Sergeant at Arms for the State Republican Party, and currently the Director of the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety (GOHS) under Governor Jan Brewer.

In the letter, sent by Gutier’s Deputy Director, Matthew Derr, (August 6) singled out only City of Tucson Contracts out of the thousands of yearly contracts, just months before the Tucson City elections, showing the real intent of this correspondence. One of the allegations, dated April 14, 2009, occurred during Gutier’s watch.

There was no wrong-doing or fraud involved at all. If an agency had any particular problem with a grant proposal, Richard Fimbres was then advised by that agency that there was a concern, then he was updated by his staff on the grant application and the issues and questions were dealt with in a timely manner. This was the operating procedure for the thousands of grant applications which were processed by the GOHS staff during the six plus years of his tenure.

“The office’s procedures, documentation and files were periodically reviewed and approved by NHTSA (National Highway Traffic and Safety Adminstration) and the State Auditor General during my tenure as GOHS Director,” Fimbres said.

“Many accomplishments were achieved during the six plus year tenure, including the reduction of highway fatalities by more than 25% in the past two years alone,” he went on to state.

“These accusations are a political hit, right from Karl Rove’s playbook,” Fimbres said, especially coming a week before Tucson voters go to the polls.

The Arizona Daily Star report on this, Wednesday, Oct. 28.

Democratic City Council candidate Richard Fimbres is fending off charges of financial mismanagement during his six-year tenure leading a state agency.

Republican Ward 5 hopeful Shaun McClusky sent out a campaign mailer that should be in mailboxes today alleging more than $189,000 “disappeared” under Fimbres’ leadership as director of the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety.

“If we can’t trust him to do his old job right, can we really trust him on the City Council?” it reads.

Fimbres, who worked for former Gov. Janet Napolitano, said the money is not missing, lost or misappropriated and no laws were broken. He questioned the motives of the agency’s current director, Alberto Gutier, calling him a Republican operative.

At the root of the issue is a series of federal grants for the Tucson Police Department to fund traffic enforcement and DUI task forces.

Highway Safety is essentially a pass-through agency. If a city is approved for federal funding, it spends the money and then submits a request to be reimbursed. Tucson Police spent $189,952, and sought reimbursement several times through 2008.

Leadership of the office switched under Gov. Jan Brewer. In August, Gutier’s deputy director sent a letter to Fimbres asking for a detailed response for why the reimbursement requests “went unpaid and ignored.”

In an interview Tuesday, Gutier said despite the wording on the mailer, he would not characterize the money as “missing.” He said a Fimbres staff member neglected to file the reimbursement paperwork on time. But his office has since gotten an extension so the money can be paid.

Although the mailer said Fimbres won’t answer questions about the lapse, Fimbres did respond to the state shortly after receiving the letter, telling Gutier, “I am very concerned about what appears to be a thinly veiled political attack using the state resources of your office.”

He found it curious, he wrote, that in an office that handled millions of dollars in grants, the office had singled out Tucson contracts, mere months before the city elections. He said he was never personally contacted by the agencies in question with any concerns about their requests.

Fimbres also said Gutier overstated the importance of when reimbursement requests are processed. “We like to get them in during the fiscal year, but sometimes that’s not possible,” he said.

“All they had to do was get the paperwork in,” he said, adding that’s obviously the case since the feds were agreeable to the extension.

(NOTE: Mark Kerr is the volunteer campaign manager for Richard Fimbres.)

:justice, rights, Tucson

3 Comments for this entry

Carolyn Classen
October 31st, 2009 on 8:47 am
More on this issue at Blog for Arizona, “Shaun McClusky pulls a Dunbar, campaign circles the drain”:
http://arizona.typepad.com/
ado1
October 31st, 2009 on 3:34 pm
Sounds like a few radical LIBs in the Democratic party want to get into a pissin’ match with the GOP. As usual they will end up covering themselves in their own urine. Undoubtedly there will some who enjoy that.
tiponeill
October 31st, 2009 on 6:08 pm
” As usual they will end up covering themselves in their own urine”

I suspect that you mean that ultimately they will win the election