A Republican lawmaker is responding to a glaring report about an alleged misuse of Arizona taxpayer funds of historic proportions in Santa Cruz County.
Late last month, Arizona State Representative Matt Gress, the House Chairman of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee (JLAC), issued a response to an investigatory report by the Arizona Auditor General’s Office over “alleged significant financial misconduct by the former Santa Cruz County Treasurer.” The potential misappropriation of funds may have come close to $40 million.
Earlier this year, former Santa Cruz County Treasurer Elizabeth “Liz” Gutfahr resigned her office, just days after Chase Bank flagged the financial irregularities. Multiple law enforcement jurisdictions are investigating the actions from the office over the past decade.
In a statement, Gress said, “The actions detailed in the Arizona Auditor General’s report are deeply disturbing and represent a significant betrayal of public trust. This case would stand as one of the worst instances of county financial misconduct in Arizona’s history, underscoring the need for more stringent oversight and accountability in the management of public resources. It is particularly concerning that, despite the County’s authorization, one of the County’s financial institutions may not have fully cooperated with the Auditor General’s investigation. Any refusal to provide additional information only heightens the severity of the situation and underscores the need for greater transparency.”
On August 26, Arizona Auditor General Lindsey Perry sent the report to Governor Katie Hobbs, Attorney General Kris Mayes, Members of the Arizona Legislature, the Santa Cruz Board of Supervisors, and the Assistant U.S. Attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice. Perry’s report stated that “Our investigation revealed that from March 2014 through March 2024, the Treasurer allegedly took $39,472,100 when she made at least 182 unauthorized wire transfers from 2 County Treasurer’s Office bank accounts to business bank accounts connected to her. To help conceal her actions, the Treasurer allegedly failed to record her unauthorized wire transfers in the County Treasurer’s accounting system and lied to and/or provided numerous false investment statements, cash reconciliations, and Treasurer’s Reports to County entities, officials, and employees; a County financial consultant; and/or the Arizona Auditor General (Office).”
The report made nine recommendations to county officials and two to the Arizona Legislature.
Gress showed his willingness to work on legislation in the next session to help prevent this kind of situation from ever happening again in Arizona. He said, “I intend to introduce legislation in the next session that will expand the authority of the Arizona Auditor General, giving the office independent access to financial institution records directly from the institutions themselves. This will ensure that auditors have more tools necessary to uncover and address financial misconduct, even when internal controls fail. Additionally, I am considering introducing legislation to require newly elected or appointed county treasurers and their deputies to meet specific training requirements, better equipping them to manage public funds responsibly.”
The first-term legislator concluded his statement, writing, “I commend the diligence of the Auditor General’s Office and the law enforcement agencies involved in bringing these issues to light. Moving forward, it is imperative that the County implements the nine recommendations made by the Arizona Auditor General to establish stronger safeguards to prevent such abuses and ensure that public officials are held to the highest standards of integrity. We owe it to the citizens of Arizona to protect their hard-earned tax dollars from fraud and corruption by arming the Arizona Auditor General with additional tools to uncover financial misconduct.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
Last Friday, the AZ Free Enterprise Club filed a lawsuit in federal court against Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes for failing to comply with the National Voter Registration Act’s (NVRA) mandate that he maintain accurate and updated voter registration records. Why? The data shows that there are 500,000 unaccounted for registered voters who are not qualified either due to death or moving out of the state, and in total, up to more than a million voters on the rolls who should not be registered.
Clean and accurate voter rolls are the bedrock of elections run with integrity. Ensuring only those eligible to vote may register and are on the rolls means that only eligible voters may vote in an election. It’s a basic principle: garbage in, garbage out. If we begin with bad data – ineligible individuals on the rolls – the system is susceptible to allowing ineligible ballots to be cast.
That’s why in 2022 we championed two landmark pieces of legislation to accomplish just that, and why, unsurprisingly, Marc Elias and the left’s lawfare machine immediately sued to stop these commonsense safeguards from going into effect. HB2492 ensures only eligible citizens who have provided proof of citizenship can register to vote and HB2243 requires regular and routine voter roll maintenance using several databases of information, with regular reports to the legislature of the results.
Both these laws are consistent with the NVRA’s mandate that states maintain accurate voter registration lists. But right now, Adrian Fontes is failing in his obligations under both, and that’s why we have filed a lawsuit in federal court to force him to do his job.
Four Counties Have More Registered Voters Than People
How do we know? According to the most recent census and voter registration data, more than 90% of the voting age population in Arizona is purportedly registered to vote. The national average is 69.1%. Why would Arizonans register to vote at an absurdly higher rate than the rest of the country? The only answer is that the state and counties are failing to adequately remove individuals who are no longer eligible, leading to bloated rolls…
The state declined to retry the case of George Alan Kelly, 75, the rancher charged with the deadly shooting of an illegal immigrant on his property.
Kelly faced the possibility of a retrial after a deadlocked jury resulted in a declared mistrial last week. As he walked out of the Superior Court building, Kelly said that he had faith God would protect him from those upset over the prosecutors’ decision.
“The nightmare’s over,” said Kelly. “God’ll look after me, like he always has.”
A small group of protestors awaited Kelly’s exit from the courthouse on Monday. A few shouted after Kelly as he walked away. Some of the protestors’ signs likened the shooting to a hate crime.
That illegal immigrant, Gabriel Cuen-Buitimea, 48, was found dead by Kelly last January after the rancher had allegedly fired warning shots above Cuen-Buitimea and the other illegal immigrants he was trespassing with on the property.
Accounts of Cuen-Buitimea crew differ, depending on who gave testimony. Authorities characterized the group as illegal immigrants evading Border Patrol during a typical illegal crossing. Kelly claimed the group’s presence was marked by a gunshot, and that the men were camouflaged and carrying assault rifles, one of which Kelly said was pointed at him.
Cuen-Buitimea had been deported for illegal entry into the U.S. at least three times from 2011 to 2016. According to a friend’s account to The New York Times, Cuen-Buitimea lived with his two adult daughters in Nogales. The pair met with the Mexican Consulate in Nogales and prosecutors after the declared mistrial last week.
One of Cuen-Buitimea’s travel companions, Daniel Ramirez, later served as the key witness against Kelly; Ramirez was imprisoned for drug smuggling nearly 10 years ago, though he falsely told the court that he had no prior drug-related convictions.
Ramirez’s testimony was later scrutinized for alleged editorialization and coaching by prosecution.
Santa Cruz County Attorney George Silva released the following statement after their decision to not retry Kelly:
“Because of the unique circumstances and challenges surrounding State vs. George Alan Kelly, the Santa Cruz County Attorney’s Office has decided not to seek a retrial in this matter. However, our Office’s decision in this case should not be construed as a position on future cases of this type. Our office is mandated by statute to prosecute criminal acts, and we take that statutory mandate seriously. We will review all the facts of each case as they are presented to our office, and we will continue to prosecute all criminal acts that occur within our jurisdiction when a factual and legal basis exists for prosecution. Nothing follows.”
Following a similar statement from the county attorney’s office in court on Monday, Judge Thomas Fink said the court would schedule a hearing to determine whether to dismiss Kelly’s case with or without prejudice.
The Arizona Superior Court declared a mistrial last week after the jury was unable to reach a verdict. Seven wanted to find Kelly not guilty, but one wanted to sentence him on the charge of second-degree murder.
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Clean and accurate voter rolls are a cornerstone to safe and secure elections. And they are required by both state and federal law. Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) specifically obligates states to conduct a general program that makes a reasonable effort to remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters due to death or change of residence. The U.S. Supreme Court even backed this up in its 2018 decision in the case Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute.
But Arizona’s current Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and its former Secretary of State (now Governor) Katie Hobbs have failed to perform the necessary voter list maintenance. And right now, 14 Arizona counties are in violation of Section 8 of the NVRA…
When Gov. Doug Ducey pledged $25 million last month to deploy the Arizona National Guard to the Mexico border he did so after the Biden Administration ignored pleas from state and local law enforcement officials to address the influx of immigrants and smugglers making it unhindered across the border.
The governor noted the National Guard troops would be on State Active Duty to assist with medical operations in detention centers, help with installation and maintenance of border cameras, monitor and collect data from the cameras, and analyze the situation at the border to identify trends in smuggling corridors.
The deployment was well received by two border sheriffs -Cochise County’s Mark Dannels and Yuma County’s Leon Wilmot- who spent the last three months trying to get federal authorities to come up with a plan for the escalating public safety threat and humanitarian crisis at and well beyond the international border.
However, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos has insisted his agency does not need National Guard support even though the county shares nearly 130 hundred miles of border with Mexico. The same “no thanks” approach was expressed by Sheriff David Hathaway of Santa Cruz County.
The difference in the positions of the sheriffs falls across political lines – Dannels and Wilmot are registered Republicans, while Hathaway and Nanos are Democrats.
The same political division is reflected in an April 21 letter signed by one county supervisor from each of the border counties in which they chastised Ducey for not asking for their input about the border situation. The signers -all of whom as Democrats- serve as their counties’ representatives on the Arizona Border Counties Coalition.
“We are disappointed that you failed to consult with the various Boards of Supervisors of each border county on this matter,” the Coalition letter states. “If asked, we would have requested assistance for transportation services, specifically buses and drivers, to provide those transportation services that we are now left to arrange on our own.”
The letter was signed by Sharon Bronson, Pima County; Ann English, Cochise County; Bruce Bracker, Santa Cruz County; and Tony Reyes, Yuma County.
Chief of Staff Mark Napier of the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO) serves as his county’s point of contact with the Arizona National Guard. Last Thursday more than 30 troops arrived in Cochise County to perform a variety of non-law enforcement duties, including working with an extensive camera system utilized by the Southeastern Arizona Border Region Enforcement (SABRE) team to monitor cross-border traffic.
The troops are also providing support in CCSO’s jail and other clerical activities which allows sheriff’s personnel to deal with “other service demands and address the increase in challenges associated with the border crisis we currently face,” Napier explained.
On Friday, Napier told AZ Free News he and Sheriff Dannels had no advance notice that Supervisor English was signing the letter to Ducey, but they do not see the supervisor’s stance about deployment as being in conflict with CCSO’s position that the border crisis “presents a public safety, national security and human rights issue” which must be addressed in collaboration with federal, state, and local partners.
“The letter expresses some frustration over the lack of engagement between the Governor and Supervisors with respect to the deployment of AZNG personnel,” Napier said. “That is a matter between those Supervisors and the Governor.”
Napier added the Coalition’s letter also states border security is a responsibility of the federal government, “which in fact it is.” And the letter does not deny there is a public safety concern related to the current conditions along the border, he noted.
The Coalition’s letter makes no mention of the frequency or cost of transportation services any of the counties have had to provide or arrange for.
