The Phoenix City Council has yet again postponed making a decision on whether to give Veolia Transportation, a company that operates city buses, a pass on fines assessed for poor performance. Vice Mayor Michael Johnson made a motion to withdraw the item, and the council agreed 8 to 1. Councilman…
When Phoenix City Council consider on Wednesday slashing the fines for Veolia Transportation, the French company that operates city buses, the company’s bus drivers will be outside protesting and picketing against it. Union reps believe Phoenix bending over backwards to help a “foreign company,” all the while that transit company…
Calling all hot Latina chicas. Univision Network is heading to Phoenix for its nationwide open auditions tour for the upcoming season of “Nuestra Belleza Latina,” a reality show/beauty competition. The open casting call is from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday (January 28) at La Curacao, 7815 W. Thomas…
As we noted yesterday, Phoenix/Scottsdale ranked among the top 10 rudest cities in America, according to surveys by Travel + Leisure magazine. On Wednesday, our fine Arizona Governor Jan Brewer “has did” all she “could did” during an Arizona visit by President Barack Obama to live up to the reputation…
Apparently, Arizona hasn’t cornered the market on blatant insensitivity to the Latino community. In case you missed it, Mayor Joseph Maturo Jr. of East Haven, Connecticut shared some thoughts with a reporter who questioned him about how he was going to reach out to the Latino community. He makes the…
Phoenix/Scottsdale made Travel+Leisure magazine’s list of America’s Rudest Cities. In fact, the Phoenix metro area moved up four slots to No. 8 over last year’s ranking. Here’s the blurb on the Valley of the Sun:…
The FBI arrested four police officers, including the president of the police union in East Haven, a Connecticut suburb, over allegations that the men, for years, orchestrated civil rights abuses against Latino residents. The cops, indicted yesterday by a federal grand jury sitting in Bridgeport, pleaded not guilty and were…
Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton appointed two new members this week to the Board of Adjustment, a body that weighs development-related cases with significant impact on neighborhoods and developers. Stanton replaced Bob Ford and Alex Tauber, both serving on terms that had expired more than a year ago. In their stead,…
Phoenix police officials should have more closely examined allegations made by police Sergeant Phil Roberts about falsified border-related kidnapping statistics before deciding to investigate him for making those claims, according to a federal investigative report obtained by New Times. That message, found in a 33-page report by the U.S. Office…
In 2005, during an otherwise typical tour of his West Phoenix district, then-Councilman Claude Mattox turned to a City Hall reporter and casually announced that Maryvale, once a premier master-planned community, used to be nice “until the illegals moved in.” It was the kind of statement from a politician that…
About two weeks after being sworn in as Phoenix’s newest mayor, Greg Stanton announced today members of his Mayor’s Office staff, which includes some of the same individuals who worked for him while he was a city councilman or with him at the Attorney General’s Office. As we already know,…
Early Sunday morning, Miles Romanski and his brother were near 75th and Peoria avenues, driving home, when police say shots rang out.Miles, 24, was fatally shot in what police believe was a road rage incident. Miles Romanski leaves behind a pregnant wife and two step-children.Now, cops say they need your…
Greg Stanton took the stage as Phoenix’s 52nd mayor and delivered an inauguration speech earlier today that, in part, announced his plans to develop a second bio-medical campus in north Phoenix with the Mayo Clinic and creation of a “Mayors’ Futures Forum on Education,” a way for Arizona mayors to champion…
Judicial Watch, the Washington, D.C.-based conservative think-tank that went after Phoenix to force them to release logs maintained by Mayor Phil Gordon’s security detail, is pleased with a recent court decision ordering their disclosure.”Judicial Watch is excited by the ruling because it creates more transparency within government,” says Greg Collins,…
Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, who only has about a week left in office, may be forced to release security-detail logs that track two years’ worth of his movements.The Arizona Court of Appeals reversed a ruling by a Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Rea that protected those logs from being…
Glendale Human Resources Director Alma Carmicle got a bonus and a bump in pay — at a time when wages were frozen for employees citywide — and was allowed to remain on Glendale’s payroll even though she and her family moved to Mississippi.The Arizona Republic reported that Carmicle “received a…
The Arizona Attorney General continues its inquiry into El Mirage and allegations that city officials used city resources to influence the outcome of an $8.5 million bond election on November 8.The bond passed with a mere three-vote margin.El Mirage provided some rather interesting responses to questions posed by the AG’s…
The Arizona Supreme Court ordered the City of Glendale to pay legal fees incurred by the Tohono O’odham Nation during court battles related to the city’s opposition to tribal plans for a resort-style casino near the city.The latest batch of legal fees are more than $25,000, and that, added to…
Just five months after signing into law the nations “toughest” anti-immigration law, Alabama lawmakers are having “second thoughts amid a backlash from big business, fueled by the embarrassing traffic stops of two foreign employees tied to the state’s prized Honda and Mercedes plants.”The backpedaling involves the state’s Republican attorney general…
It’s been a tough year for Phoenix city employees — from enduring false claims by politicos they are bilking the city with their average compensation at $100,000 to being vilified in the 2011 mayoral election, accused of bleeding taxpayers with their inflated salaries and bloated benefits.Despite it all, city employees…
The Arizona Court of Appeal is weighing whether to overturn a ruling that protected from public release Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon’s security-detail log.It’s unknown when the judges who heard arguments in the case on Tuesday will make their ruling.The log maintained by Gordon’s security detail — sworn Phoenix police officers…
Mary Giovagnoli, the director of the Immigration Policy Center, posted a new blog about the “dramatic reversal in the definition” of the term “anchor baby.”In their initial definition, executives for American Heritage Dictionary didn’t include any notation that the phrase was offensive or disparaging. But they have since corrected their…
