Three of the people most involved in negotiating Arizona’s landmark Fiscal Year 2022 budget will take part in a Budget Roadshow next week across the state.
Sen. David Gowan (R-LD14), Rep. Regina Cobb (R-LD5), and Matt Gress of the Governor’s Office are headlining the free events in Casa Grande, Sierra Vista, and Tucson to help citizens better understand the budget process, budget history, and look ahead to the next session which starts in January 2022.
They will also discuss notable -and some not so notable- budget accomplishments from the recent legislative session and take part in a Q&A session.
The Thursday, Oct. 28 event at Casa Grande City Hall begins at 10 a.m. with a meet and greet, followed by the presentation at 10:30. It will be followed that afternoon at the Cochise College – Sierra Vista Campus at 3:30 p.m.
Then on Friday, Oct. 29, the trio will take their presentation to the Pima Community College – Downtown Campus Auto Center at 10:30 a.m. followed by a meet and greet at 11:30.
The three participants are well-suited for the event, as Gowan is the Senate Appropriations Chairman, Cobb is the House Appropriations Chairwoman, and Gress heads up Gov. Doug Ducey’s Office of Strategic Planning and Budgeting.
The meet and greets are being hosted by several Chambers of Commerce, including Benson / San Pedro, Greater Casa Grande, Green Valley / Sahuarita, Greater Vail Area, Marana, Oro Valley, and Sierra Vista Area.
More information about the Budget Roadshow, including how to request a presentation in a specific community, is available by calling Cobb’s office at (602) 926-3126 or Gowan’s office at (602) 926-5154.
Victor Manuel Aguirre is charged with one count of False Registration and one count of Illegal Voting related to steps he allegedly took to register to vote and then cast a ballot in the 2020 General Election.
The Arizona Attorney General’s Office confirmed to AZ Free News on Friday that a state grand jury indicted a Sahuarita man several weeks ago on two felonies related to illegal voting.
According to the AGO, 46-year-old Aguirre is alleged to have falsely completed a voter registration form on or about Sept. 30, 2020. He is alleged to have noted on the form that he had not been convicted of a felony or that his civil rights had been restored.
However, Aguirre had multiple felony convictions dating back to 1999. Most recently he had convictions for a 2006 criminal trespass, unlawful flight in 2008, unlawful use of means of transportation in 2010, identify theft in 2012, and weapons misconduct in 2017.
Because of the number of Aguirre’s past felonies, he would have had to apply to a superior court judge to have his civil rights restored. But despite that, Aguirre cast a ballot while in the Pima County jail, which would have been legal if he had actually been eligible to vote.
Aguirre’s indictment by a state grand jury on Aug. 2 resulted in a statewide arrest warrant which was served in late September. He paid a $1,000 bond earlier this week to get out of the Pima County jail pending trial and has been ordered to appear before Judge Javier Chon-Lopez for a pre-trial conference on Nov. 17.
The question of whether Aguirre’s voter registration was valid was investigated by Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s Election Integrity Unit. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant Attorney General Todd Lawson. In confirming Aguirre’s indictment, the AGO noted that all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
The charges against Aguirre are among several pursued in recent months by Brnovich’s election team. Most of the prosecutions have involved one or two low level felonies, although a San Luis woman is charged with four felonies in connection to an alleged conspiracy to collect several early ballots for the August 2020 Primary Election in Yuma County.
Although some critics argue Brnovich should not be pursuing individual voter misconduct, one election integrity advocate says such investigations and prosecutions are critical to maintaining confidence in Arizona’s elections.
“Legitimate voters deserve to know that when they vote their vote counts,” said Merissa Hamilton, of Strong Communities Action. “We need to make it easy to vote but hard to cheat.”
Hamilton added that vigilance is needed to ensure election laws are respected, otherwise it will encourage others to commit election fraud.
“Each and every instance of election fraud serves to raise doubt for voters,” she said. “That is why we can’t ignore the fraud.”
It is a position Attorney General Mark Brnovich agrees with, according to his spokeswoman.
“General Brnovich takes all election related complaints seriously,” said Katie Conner. “Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of our constitutional republic. We must do everything we can to protect the electoral process.”
Excitement is growing in northern Cochise County after the announcement that multiple jobs will be created in early 2022 when Excelsior Mining Corp. reactivates the historic Johnson Camp Copper Mine which was first opened in the 1880s about 65 miles east of Tucson.
Johnson Camp Mine has not produced copper ore in nearly a decade but reopening the mine will allow Excelsior to take advantage of copper’s strong price. In turn, the company will use those revenues to pay for a neutralization plant for its newly opened Gunnison Copper Project, which has produced far less copper cathode than it forecasted.
Excelsior’s Gunnison Copper Project situated one mile from Johnson Camp Mine along Interstate 10 opened last year with limited operations. It is expected to produce 125 million pounds per annum of 99.99 percent copper cathode when fully operational, but this year’s goal was only 25 million pounds.
On Oct. 20, Senior VP Robert Winton said the company has produced less than 1 million pounds to date. The problem, according to Winton and CEO Stephen Twyerould, is that carbon dioxide (CO2) has shown up in Gunnison’s in-situ recovery wellfield.
The villain, they say, is calcite, a naturally-present mineral which creates CO2 when it reacts with the leaching solution injected into the wellfield.
Winton says a fix to the CO2 issue has been identified, but it will take months to update the current wells. In the meantime, company officials have decided to make improvements at the Johnson Camp Mine in order to generate higher revenues next year.
The comments by Twyerould and Winton were made during a webinar hosted by Amvest Capital, a New York-based specialist investment management and corporate finance firm focused solely on the natural resource sector.
Johnson Camp Mine and its existing SX-EW plant can provide up to five years of production from its Copper Chief Pit and the Burro Pit, which Winton says have “a lot of near surface copper.” After construction of a new leach pad and issuance of amended state permits, Johnson Camp is expected to commence production in the second half of 2022.
That means Excelsior’s current staff of about 60 (employees and consultants) will need to be bolstered, bringing much needed fulltime jobs to the Benson and Willcox areas.
According to Winton, the presence of calcite was known from geological studies, but the extent of its impact was not understood until production began at Gunnison last year.
“Calcite was certainly understood in the prework, metallurgical costs, and certainly the feasibility study which is fundamentally an acid consumption discussion,” he said. “However, the negative impacts of CO2 and how they really impacted our flow rate was certainly not envisioned and certainly became the fundamental focus of our ramp up challenges.”
The good part, Winton said, is that the calcite reaction can be managed, which is why construction of a neutralization plant funded by Johnson Camp Mine revenues is Excelsior’s immediate focus.
In 2014, the Johnson Camp property was the main asset of Nord Resources, which was forced into court-ordered receivership by creditors after years of underperformance. Then in late 2015, Excelsior Mining obtained the blessing of a Pima County judge to buy out Nord Resources’ assets.
The company then purchased thousands of surrounding acres, including the site where Gunnison Copper Project’s North Star copper deposit is located. But Excelsior officials are not putting all of their eggs in the copper basket.
Last month Twyerould released a preliminary economic assessment of another company asset, the Strong and Harris copper-zinc-silver deposit located on the northside of I-10 a few miles from Johnson Camp.
Twyerould said that if mining is undertaken at the Strong and Harris deposit it would be by traditional open pit, followed by high-grade underground mining of the remaining sulfides at the bottom of the pit. However, he cautioned that it is still too early to know if mining will be feasible.
“Mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability,” he said.
Excelsior also has landholdings in the historic Turquoise Mining District, also referred to as the Courtland-Gleeson District, located approximately 30 miles southeast of the Johnson Camp Mine.
Excelsior Mining is using a six-step in-situ recovery process to produce 99.99 percent pure copper cathode sheets. The process starts with a leaching solution pumped through injection wells which have been sunk over the ore body. This is known as the wellfield.
The leaching solution then moves through naturally fractured rock and dissolves the copper. Multiple recovery wells surrounding each injection well then extract the copper-rich solution, also known as pregnant solution.
The fourth step is for the solution to be pumped to the surface for further processing during which copper is extracted from the solution and turned into copper cathode sheets. Finally, the mining solution is recycled back to the well field to be reused.
Throughout the leaching process, Excelsior Mining utilizes differential pumping and natural impermeable barriers to keep the fluids from migrating beyond the wellfield.
On Monday, Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels met with stakeholders about the ongoing crisis at the Arizona / Mexico border. The next day, he took to the airways to explain why two sheriffs’ associations strongly oppose the nomination of Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus to head the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
As Dannels made his comments to KFYI’s James T. Harris, Magnus was in Washington D.C. for a hearing on his nomination put forth by President Joe Biden to become CBP’s next commissioner. The nomination is being championed by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, but does not have the support of the National Sheriffs’ Association nor the Arizona Sheriffs’ Association.
“We need a leader there who can lead that organization into the future, not be a political puppet or yes man, not somebody who can say ‘hey this is wrong, it’s broke, let’s put action behind the men and women who are doing their best to solve this border,” Dannels told Harris. “This is not a political issue. This is a righteous issue for leadership, and on behalf of our CBP agents who can’t speak on this, we have a voice for them.”
Magnus has worked in public safety since 1979, always with municipal agencies. He currently oversees about 1,200 employees in Tucson, a city that is not even among the top 30 largest in the country.
By comparison, the San Diego Police Department has nearly 3,000 employees, while the Los Angeles Police Department is comprised of about 12,000 employees, 9,000 of whom are sworn officers.
However, CBP has more than 60,000 employees, including 45,000 sworn employees such as CBP officers assigned at America’s 328 ports of entry as well as U.S. Border Patrol agents.
In his testimony to the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday, Magnus said he recognized CBP “is a proud agency with a mission that is vital to this country” and that he will expect, without exception, “that all agency personnel be conscientious, fair, and humane when enforcing the law.”
He also testified that he prides himself “on being a pragmatic and bipartisan problem-solver,” and that by working with Congress, the employees of CBP, and its various partners “we can build upon its many strengths to make the agency even better.” His comments skated over the fact TPD has not had a good relationship with CBP during his tenure.
Yet the sheriffs groups focused on Magnus’ qualifications -or lack thereof- to lead a massive organization which is critical to homeland security concerns and to deal with what Dannels calls the “hot mess” of a border that saw a 325 percent increase this year in immigrants arriving at America’s southwest border.
Dannels, whose county shares 83 miles of that border with Mexico, is the president of the Arizona Sheriff’s Association, which represents 14 of the state’s 15 elected sheriffs. He also serves as chair of the border security committee of the National Sheriff’s Association.
According to Dannels, the decision by the National Sheriff’s Association to oppose Magnus’ nomination came only after conducting an interview with the chief.
“Obviously, after the interview, based on his experience, knowledge on the border and CBP and trade, off the past relationship -of which there really hasn’t been a past relationship with border communities by Chief Magnus- and the leadership, we felt that he is not the guy to carry this forward on behalf of CBP,” Dannels told Harris.
The group then sent letters to Biden, Mayorkas, as well as all 100 Senators outlining Magnus’ shortcomings for the job. That move prompted the Arizona Sheriff’s Association to send its own letter detailing the “dire circumstances” at the border and Magnus’ lack of qualifications and poor relationship with CBP.
Magnus’ nomination is supported by Arizona Senators Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema. Any individual or organization may present their views to the Committee by submitting a single-spaced Word document (not exceeding 10 pages) for inclusion in the official hearing record.
The title of the hearing (Consider the Nomination of Chris Magnus, of Arizona, to be Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Department of Homeland Security) and the hearing date (Oct. 19, 2021) must be included on the first page of the statement, along with the full name and address of the individual or organization submitting the statement.
The deadline for submitting a statement is Nov. 2. Statements can be emailed to: Statementsfortherecord@finance.senate.gov or mailed to: Senate Committee on Finance Attn. Editorial and Document Section Rm. SD-219 Dirksen Senate Office Bldg. Washington, DC 20510-6200. There is no fax option.
When Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich met Monday with stakeholders including Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels for an updated tour of the Arizona / Mexico border, he learned nothing has improved in the last 10 months.
Brnovich took part in an in-person briefing near Bisbee to discuss options for forcing or cajoling the federal government into acknowledging and then dealing with the border crisis which has seen hundreds of thousands of people from more the 160 countries cross into the southwest U.S. with little success by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, including the U.S. Border Patrol, in stopping them.
In an interview with AZ Free News after his border visit, Brnovich said the Biden Administration could make a significant and immediate impact simply by following existing federal laws. That includes deporting the more than 1 million non-citizen convicted felons and others who are the subject an Order of Removal.
Brnovich said deportations could start up very quickly, and would “send a signal that we will enforce our laws.” But instead, the White House continues to incentivize illegal border crossings while signaling “there are no consequences for breaking America’s laws,” he said.
Pushing for deportations is not something new for Brnovich or other state attorneys general. In January, President Joe Biden was asked to reverse an Inauguration Day order imposing a 100-day moratorium on most deportations. Under a 1996 law, such deportations should occur within 90 days of an immigrant receiving an Order of Removal.
According to Brnovich, the Biden deportation moratorium violated a law which went in effect in the waning days of Donald Trump’s presidency to require the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to provide a six-month notice to the State of Arizona before any immigration policies could be changed.
Brnovich also says he is concerned about the long-term effects of such lax immigration laws, which he called “the most important issue” facing the United States. And he worries that Arizonans and Americans “are becoming numb” to the statistics about the historic levels of unlawful immigration activities.
“The border crisis has the potential to negatively impact our country for generations,” he said. “It could alter the trajectory of our Nation. And it’s a tragedy in the clearest sense that it is preventable.”
Which is why the attorney general said it is important for lawmakers, politicians, and law enforcement officials from across the state to “get out of Maricopa County and see what is going on at the border.”
The border crisis is also why Brnovich finds it frustrating that the Biden Administration repeatedly demonstrates the rule of law no longer means anything. That leaves taxpayers to foot the bills.
“It is a fundamental unfairness,” he said, one which Sen. Mark Kelly “could stop tomorrow.”
According to the attorney general, all Kelly has to do to announce to Biden that border security and immigration must be addressed now.
“If Senator Kelly cared at all regarding Arizona, he would not do anything else until the border crisis is addressed,” Brnovich said. “There is nothing more consequential for Arizona. There is nothing more urgent and pressing than stopping this crisis.”
