Last fall, 50 brave Valley Metro bus drivers gave up their stable jobs to take a chance on light rail. Many had been with the bus system for more than a decade. But the for-profit company that Metro Light Rail hired to manage the new rail system, Alternate Concepts Inc…
Yesterday, the big journalism buzz in town focused on how the East Valley Tribune won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Today, the second-day story was all about sour grapes at the Arizona Republic. Unbelievably, the state’s largest daily doesn’t appear to have even mentioned the Trib’s…
Plenty of drivers chafe at criticism from their backseat counterparts — but Phoenix bus driver Michael Berry took his annoyance to a whole new level. Berry, a driver with Valley Metro, responded to complaints from a 28-year-old passenger last April by allegedly attacking him with his fists. Witnesses told police that Berry slammed the…
Halfway through Bryant Wilkerson’s trial for manslaughter, aggravated assault, and a host of other felony counts, a juror had an interesting question for Judge Teresa Sanders. The question has yet to be posted to the public record, so I can’t tell you the precise phrasing. But the gist was this:…
Our cover story this last week told you about the unexpected consequences of Arizona’s Clean Elections experiment: a more polarized legislature, a fair amount of gratuitious spending, and dirty tricks aplenty. But one of our sources recently pointed us toward an interesting phenomena potentially related to Clean Elections –…
Last year, prosecutors working for Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas angrily accused Superior Court Judge Timothy Ryan of “a persistent pattern of conduct that indicates bias and prejudice” against his office — and demanded that he be removed from all criminal cases. That attempt failed. Yesterday, the office impugned the…
Deb Gullett, former chief of staff to both Senator John McCain and Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, can add another “former” to her list of titles: former ASU employee. Gullett, who’d been serving as the associate vice president for external relations for the College of Public Programs, confirmed to New…
For three weeks, jurors heard testimony in State v. Bryant Wilkerson, as the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office attempted to a convince them that a 28-year-old Fountain Hills man was guilty of manslaughter, aggravated assault, and multiple counts of felony endangerment. It took the jury less than two hours today to find Wilkerson…
When we heard that Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon’s wife, Christa Severns, filed for divorce Monday, we were convinced that finally we’d get the gossip motherlode. Surely these two hate each other now, right? Surely everybody’s just dying to throw down! Alas, no. “We are having the most amicable divorce…
Last summer, Margarite Dale went on a spending spree. The 44-year-old Glendale mom bought two computers — a monitor, desktop, and laptop, plus a full set of software for both. Total cost: $2,409. And she didn’t stop there. In just a few weeks’ time, Dale also purchased a $709 camera…
Maricopa County Sheriff’s Captain Joel Fox, still the only person to date who’s been linked to a mysterious $105,000 donation to the Arizona Republican Party, took the stand today in front of Administrative Law Judge Thomas Shedden — but instead of resolving the issue, Fox’s testimony only added further confusion to the already…
That was fast. Two days ago, Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas fired off a Hail Mary to the Court of Appeals, complaining that superior court judges are biased against him and asking the higher court to intervene. Today a three-justice appellate panel dismissed Thomas’ petition for special action — without…
Two years ago, a 28-year-old postal worker named Bryant Wilkerson was hit by a drunk driver, a teenage girl who’d been partying with her friends all day on the Salt River and had the blood alcohol content to prove it. That day, Wilkerson’s life changed forever, but not in the…
Rusty Brown isn’t your typical civil rights hero. For starters, he’s a white male. He’s also a lawyer and a really good golfer: a six-time tournament champion at the Phoenix Country Club. (His handicap is a plus-2 — which tends to elicit gasps of envy from people who know about…
Sue Burris was fast asleep when the phone rang just before midnight that Saturday. Rousted from her bed, at first she didn’t understand what Paula Walker was saying. They’d won? The lawsuit was over? “It took me a few minutes to understand,” Burris says. “But then I got it —…
Maricopa County Manager David Smith lit into Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s top aide at a meeting last Friday, comparing him to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and calling him “just plain childish.” Amazingly, Chief Deputy David Hendershott then memorialized the conversation in a six-page memo to his boss, Arpaio. The memo,…
Two weeks ago, Mexican Consul General Carlos Flores Vizcarra fired off a letter to Maricopa County, complaining about Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s televised forced march of illegal immigrant inmates — and their subsequent segregation in Tent City. Today, Arpaio returned fire, sending a letter to Vizcarra saying that he has stripped Mexican…
So Andrew Thomas fought the Bar, and Andrew Thomas won. But it looks the real losers here aren’t only those good government types who’d hoped to hold the erstwhile county attorney accountable for his overzealous prosecutions. No, the real losers include us, the taxpayers. According to a recent story in…
When a new runway opened at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in 2000, it received the blessing of the Federal Aviation Adminstration. But a newly released report from another federal agency, the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Transportation, cites that same runway as a potential…
This just in: It’s okay to arrest newspaper owners under the cover of night. And it’s perfectly ethical for the county attorney to appoint the sheriff’s lawyer as a special “independent” prosecutor in a case where the sheriff is the “victim.” And if that “independent” prosecutor’s conflicts are so glaring that he quickly…
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Larry Grant upbraided the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office this morning for allowing the Sheriff’s Office to give a sealed deposition to a newspaper reporter. The deposition, of East Valley developer Conley Wolfswinkel, had been subject to a protective order, agreed to by both sides in…
So yesterday Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas sued his client, the Board of Supervisors, again. Taxpayers of this county should be getting to used to this sideshow: By our count, Thomas has now sued the Supes three times during his scant five years in office. And Thomas wonders why they’re trying to…
