Thanks to blogger Cell-out Arizona for pointing out that not only do private prisons cost more than public ones, officials apparently knew, didn’t care, and changed the law to allow it : Documents Show Arizona Officials Knew Private Prisons Weren’t Saving Money

Not that I’m terribly surprised. But now we have the smoking gun, what do we do with it?

Election season may be our best chance to shove the stink under the noses of those running for office and get them to answer questions, or at raise the issue at debates and public appearances of candidates.

Here’s some sample tough questions to ask candidates for the AzLeg. If you call or email a campaign office, they should give you some kind of response, and it lets them know that this issue is important to voters. Tell me if you try this and get any answers!

While we’re at it, how about some positive leadership? Dr Dave Wells of the Grand Canyon Institute has a proposal for saving anywhere from $30-70 million while impoving outcomes by implementing an Earned Release program involving drug rehab and intensive probation. Most states have something similar, Arizona is the only state that makes all nonviolent prisoners serve 85% of their time behind bars at $21K/year. We also may be the only state with a governor whose campaign chairman and policy advisor is (not was) a lobbyist for a private prison corporation.

Mental health services, drug rehabilitation, intensive probation are all effective tools to reduce recidivism (read, repeat crime) and they are cheaper than locking people up. More effective, less expensive – sounds like an ad campaign. But why should we care? Prisons are big business in Arizona, and business makes jobs! Prison guards have steady pay and good health benefits, who could say no to that? Teachers smeachers, prisons are the real growth industry in this town.

Interview with Dr David Wells, author of Reducing Incarceration Costs While Maintaining
Public Safety: From Truth in Sentencing to Earned
Release for Nonviolent Offenders

Dear Tucson City Council

The Rio Nuevo board appears to be trying to execute a ‘land grab’ to take ownership of property that should belong to the city of Tucson. As a Tucson taxpayer and voter, I want you – my elected representatives – to control this property, NOT an unaccountable, governor-appointed board that I cannot contact and do not trust.

I know that if there is a problem – and yes, there have been some – I can go to my city council representative and talk about it. I know that as elected officials who have to face the voters regularly, you will be responsive to our concerns.

I also know that the Rio Nuevo board is extremely difficult to contact, that they have lawyers answer their messages (at what cost per voice mail?) and that they were appointed by the governor, thus several layers removed from any accountability to me as a voter. Unlike the city council, the Rio Nuevo board meetings do not have audio or text transcripts online and even the minutes are only updated thru last March.

Please stand up to them and do not give them our land. I hope there is something we can do to get their hands out of our tax money and off our property. Mistakes were made with Rio Nuevo management, but I would rather have you guys fix it than have them steal us blind.

Suing the city is just taking our tax money that should be paying for police and pools, and putting it into the pockets of their lawyers. Let me know if there are steps we voters can take to make this stop.

Sincerely,

Golda Velez
[address deleted from online version]

See also editorial at Grinnell wants to be mayor – but his board is suing the city and Jonathan Rothschild’s statement on the lawsuit

Ron Lewis is quoted in the Arizona Daily Star as saying “Qwest has been unable to document any ‘truly’ dropped call that wasn’t the result of a hangup or operator error.”

Meanwhile, front line operators are filing problem after problem with their supervisors, providing detailed information about dropped calls, calls that wouldn’t transfer, and the inability to hear callers:

7/15 7:25:15 PM “Call was disconnected in the middle of questioning. It was a child caller reporting his mom having a seizure. Very frustrating!”

“Would not transfer using ‘MED’ or ‘MED CELL’ transfer button”…”Unable to transfer to TPD” …”Transferred caller to TPD using genovation pad. After 3 rings it stopped ringing”…”As soon as the call was picked up …, call was disconnected. This happened twice!”…”Anytime I log off to go on break or give a break or first time logging in the first caller [reports] that calls can’t hear me.”

Michael LaFond, a 911 operator with 17 years experience and fired after reporting errors with the new system, confirmed the same problems. As many as 4 or 5 times per shift, LaFond experienced “serious things like losing sound – so I have a caller on the line and I cannot hear the person speaking. When I go back and hear the recording, they could hear me, they were talking, but I couldn’t hear them. So they were on the line and they were unable to get help. There was a caller that was having an emergency and I was unable to transfer the call.”

Specifically, LaFond was fired for researching the June 1 call that ended in the death of a 10-year old girl.

Why would researching a serious problem be a fireable offence if the department were not trying to cover up issues?

KGUN9 news found out in an interview that ‘Operators say they were told to log any unexplained troubles as “Code 17″ and later found “Code 17″ was the tag for operator errors.’. So when Ron Lewis as General Services director reported to the city council that ‘most of the problems were operator error’ this is just what operators were directed to record things as!

We need to fix the problems. I hope that fire chief Jim Critchley will take those seriously and be able to solve them, whether it takes going back to the old system, leaning on QWest and Motorola to fix the Meridian ACD, or replacing faulty hardware. But we can’t fix them by hiding them, and Tucson may have bigger problems than just the 911 system. We need to take a hard look at how this was handled by our local managers – Mike Letcher, Ron Lewis and Isaiah Twombly, I understand are the managers in charge. And we need to fight back hard against the state legislature to stop them from taking funds that are critical to our community. Thanks to City Council member Steve Kozachik for standing up for public safety and the front line workers some of this has gotton exposed, but he can’t do it alone. What is your ward council member doing about it?

See 911 Tucson for the in-depth report. I spent about an hour on 8/18 talking to Michael LaFond, and his passion and dedication to public safety really shone through. We need more people like Michael LaFond working for the city of Tucson, but instead we have one less.