Last October was crunch time for the North American Free Trade Agreement. Ross Perot had been babbling about sucking sounds. No one knew whether NAFTA could pass Congress. A golden opportunity to cut political deals was at hand. Deals were being struck not just in Washington, D.C., but in Mexico…
Last October was crunch time for the North American Free Trade Agreement. Ross Perot had been babbling about sucking sounds. No one knew whether NAFTA could pass Congress. A golden opportunity to cut political deals was at hand. Deals were being struck not just in Washington, D.C., but in Mexico…
Last October was crunch time for the North American Free Trade Agreement. Ross Perot had been babbling about sucking sounds. No one knew whether NAFTA could pass Congress. A golden opportunity to cut political deals was at hand. Deals were being struck not just in Washington, D.C., but in Mexico…
Dean Brewer says he feels much better these days. The 40-year-old former owner of Charter Title Agency, which was seized by the state last October after $8 million turned up missing, has plenty of reasons to feel upbeat. Topping the list is his ability, so far, to escape an indictment…
Dean Brewer says he feels much better these days. The 40-year-old former owner of Charter Title Agency, which was seized by the state last October after $8 million turned up missing, has plenty of reasons to feel upbeat. Topping the list is his ability, so far, to escape an indictment…
It was February 7, 1991. Twilight was gathering on Capitol Hill as J. Fife Symington III faced off with Senator Howard Metzenbaum. The timing couldn’t have been worse. Symington was only three weeks away from a gubernatorial run-off election with Terry Goddard. Metzenbaum had convened a hearing into the failure…
It was summertime when Sherrie Rabellino, her husband and two children first visited Prescott and became enchanted with its historic downtown square. The family was hell-bent on moving from its lifelong home in Santa Rosa, California, a once-rural community 50 miles north of San Francisco that in the last ten…
Dean Brewer quickly crosses the Courtyard by Marriott parking lot, glancing repeatedly over his right shoulder toward the hotel lobby. “There’s a photographer in there,” he says nervously. “No photographs.” Brewer continues at a quick pace into an alley between two office buildings. He has a story to tell, but…
Imagine signing an agreement to buy a fancy car on layaway, then having to pay for an expensive valve job before your first installment is due. That’s sort of what’s happened in the case of the Central Arizona Project. Although Arizona hasn’t even begun repaying the $2 billion it owes…
Kenneth Wayne Reed keeps meticulous records. He has to. His future absolutely depends on it. Locked in Maricopa County’s Madison Street Jail for the last 18 months on felony charges of aggravated assault and kidnaping, 35-year-old Reed cannot meet the $25,000 bond needed for his release on domestic-violence charges. Frustrated…
Despite years of notice and a $1 million private contract to remove native plants from the Lake Pleasant shoreline, thousands of saguaro cactuses soon will be inundated at the gradually expanding reservoir 35 miles northwest of Phoenix. “They are going to be under water,” says Bob Michaels, a U.S. Bureau…
Governor Fife Symington’s much-ballyhooed Forestry Summit, which begins today, has taken on the trappings of a true blue-blood affair. Billed as an “excellent opportunity” for Arizona’s citizens to learn about and contribute to the continuing debate on management of the state’s sprawling national forests, the three-day conference at El Zaribah…
Zane Johnston gestures toward the .38-caliber pistol he carries in a worn leather holster on his hip and says, “The Bureau of Rec thinks I carry this for them. But I don’t. I carry it for varmints.” In Johnston’s book, a varmint is only a small notch above the U.S…
Steve Emerine swears he’s not a cop. A spokesman for the University of Arizona’s controversial Mount Graham International Observatory project, 58-year-old Emerine claims he attends campus demonstrations only to observe and answer media questions. “Under no circumstances, that I can think of, would I be involved in telling police who…
During the final days of a heated 1990 Republican primary campaign for Arizona attorney general, candidate David Eisenstein accused Grant Woods and his family of doing business with a known mobster. Eisenstein claimed the Woods family’s failed project, the former Radisson hotel in downtown Mesa, would cost taxpayers millions of…
A federal grand jury is conducting an investigation of Governor Fife Symington’s development company that apparently extends beyond previously known probes into the governor’s business activities, documents reviewed by New Times reveal. The grand jury, impaneled in Phoenix, recently sought financial records on 17 Symington Company projects in Arizona, the…
Atop Mount Graham inside the Columbine Visitor Center on a brisk Saturday morning, a half-dozen Department of Public Safety officers stood in a circle. They were discussing the merits of shining their shoes. “The colonel says we can wear Reeboks if we can get a shine on them,” one officer…
When Deborah Stuart left the home of her elderly aunt last July–skipping out on her probation officer, stealing $300 and leaving behind an $875 phone bill–there was little doubt where she was headed. The 31-year-old mother of two, a repeat felon, was making a beeline for Oklahoma–specifically for 1-918-596-5601, the…
It’s tough to fight people with friends in high places. Just ask former Arizona State Lottery director J. Bruce Mayberry, who played hardball with GTECH, the biggest lottery computer vendor in the nation, and with Evans Group, which holds the state’s largest advertising contract. Governor J. Fife Symington III fired…
Senator Dennis DeConcini has contradicted his own sworn testimony in the Keating Five scandal. On Monday, DeConcini admitted he was aware as early as 1984 that his chief fund raiser, Earl Katz, was in business deals with the recently convicted financier Charles H. Keating Jr., who controlled the failed Lincoln…
No one knows better how handy the Arizona State Retirement System fund can be for speculative forays into Arizona real estate developments than Governor Fife Symington. Symington found the system to be an easy touch when it came to borrowing money for his real estate gambits. Like many of his…
In an old school a block from the State Capitol sit 62 electric solar panels, donated to the state Department of Commerce’s Energy Office six years ago by Phoenix developer and solar-energy advocate John F. Long. While some of the panels are cracked and shattered, many only need to be…
