Flashes

Weasel Alert!
As chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, Jim Bruner cast the vote creating a sales tax that will fund a major league baseball stadium downtown. That move contributed to his being trounced in a bid for Congress last year, but don’t feel sorry for Jim. He nailed a great job this summer. He’s a banker. And guess what he’s banking.

If you said the money that’ll build Jerry Colangelo’s DiamondBanks a stadium, you’re right!

According to a First Interstate Bank spokesperson, Bruner will oversee the construction escrow account for the Maricopa County Stadium District, a fund that will hold sales tax proceeds. And take a gander at the sheer length of Bruner’s new title: executive vice president in charge of trust and private client services for the Southwest region of First Interstate Bank.

And The Flash always thought he was just a garden-variety weasel.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch
The Arizona Boys Ranch knows how to play hardball. Its Queen Creek-based treatment center for juvenile delinquents has Frank Kush, the hardnosed former ASU coach, directing its football program.

When the Boys Ranch needed to sort out abuse accusations leveled by the state Department of Economic Security and the Arizona Republic, it hired A. Melvin McDonald, the former U.S. attorney for Arizona. McDonald compiled a 186-page report last year documenting the hatchet job the Republic did in a story about the drowning death of a 17-year-old Boys Ranch inmate named Lorenzo Johnson. The article raised the possibility that three Boys Ranch workers had murdered the youth.

Now the Boys Ranch has hired Gary Richardson, the nation’s top libel lawyer, to dig into the Republic’s coffers. The Boys Ranch alleges the newspaper libeled the organization and its employees in the Lorenzo Johnson story. The Oklahoma-based Richardson won the largest libel verdict in the nation’s history, $58 million from Belo Corporation. He’s confident that the Republic will be soon writing a hefty settlement check.

“How much are you trying to squeeze” from the paper?” asked a Republic reporter at a news conference last week.

“I don’t think you have enough money to pay for what you have done to these people and their families,” Richardson replied.

Printed on Reycled Paper
You may have seen the top-of-page-one story in the Republic on July 16: “Top Woods aide probed over fund.” You may have thought the reporter, Bill Muller, was onto something fresh and hot. AG Grant Woods’ top aide may have broken the law, the story said, “by setting up a private slush fund . . . “

Think again. Muller’s story was an overplayed reconstruction of a Mesa Tribune miniscoop of a month or so ago. The Republic story–which deals with a few thousand dollars–ran a few days after Woods announced a big-money settlement in a multimillion-dollar bid-greasing case involving Fife Symington’s top lieutenants. It’s as if Republic editors were thinking, “We’ve got to get something on Woods. Quick. We’ve been writing too many bad things about Fife this week.”

But that’s not the stupidest part. The Associated Press picked up the Republic slush-fund story–the one borrowed from the Tribune–and distributed it on the state wires as if it were a brand-new exclusive. And who published that dull AP version of a six-week-old story that was not very important to begin with? The Flash is laughing so hard he can hardly write the words Mesa Tribune-Recycler.