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Wry Heat - by Jonathan DuHamel

Is Pima County Park Plan Legal?

by on Oct. 18, 2011, under Politics

Pima County wants to change the use of voter approved bond money.  According to the Arizona Daily Star (see story), “Bond money approved by voters for the expansion of Catalina State Park likely will be used instead to buy land to add to a different park.”

Can the County legally take this bond money and put it to another use?  If a similar precedent rules, then the answer is no.

The Cave Creek School District wanted to redirect $13 million in bond money approved for new school construction to other projects not voter approved.  The Goldwater Institute sued on behalf of District taxpayers.  A Superior Court Judge ruled that school districts may not use bond money for projects that voters have not approved. (See more here.)

From my reading of the Star’s story on Catalina State Park bonds, Pima County is contemplating what amounts to the same thing as the Cave Creek case, which means Pima County may be embarking on an illegal activity.  Such action could cost taxpayers money to defend any lawsuits that may arise.

That’s my take on this proposal, but I’m not a lawyer.  What do you think?

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 18th, 2011 at 7:34 am and is filed under Politics. Tags for this post: , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  • Mark B. Evans

    The county’s parks bond questions are loaded with lists of projects. The county can legally move money from one project in a question to another project included in the same question because voters approved all of them at oncce. However, in response to anger over the county moving bond money around in previous bond elections, the county passed a truth in bonding ordinance more than a decade ago that only lets the supes move money around in a bond question if the bond committee signs off on it and after a public BOS vote.

    Both the committee and the BOS signed off on it. It’s legal, a fact I double checked with Ann Day’s office this morning in an effort to get an answer for your post.

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