Each legislative session, Arizona lawmakers pore over thousands of pages of impossibly complicated bills, eventually wading through the technical language and past the nagging lobbyists to pass hundreds of laws. But now a two-page bill designed to simply cross-reference all exemptions to Arizona Public Records Law–without changing public policy–is stuck…
Paul Don’t Rite So Good The Flash had to scrub in the shower after reading last Sunday’s column by Arizona Republic editorial windsock Paul Schatt. It wasn’t enough for Schatt to parrot the doomed and primal yearnings of Arizona’s crispiest Phil Gramm crackers–Governor J. Fife Symington III and U.S. Senator…
Lisa had an abortion yesterday, and her parents don’t know. Lisa’s only 15. She’s the cute young girl next door with long brown hair, a ninth-grade honors student. She’s got everything going for her–except, until yesterday, she was pregnant. She’s still confused about the abortion, and having it was not…
Somewhere, those kids are snickering. You can bet that they are–whoever they are–getting quite a kick out of this whole thing, their adolescent, pimply faces breaking into grins of vandalistic glee every time a news account of their devilish handiwork appears in print or on TV. God knows, they’re high-fiving…
Lady of the Rings Dewey Webb’s “Lourdes of the Rings” (February 8) was most interesting, even and well-done, except that it gave a misleading, two-dimensional profile of Kay Torrez. For a half-century, Torrez has been an ardent, effective, respected neighborhood and community activist, much of it in the cause of…
Surveying the New Age happening unfolding on the grounds of her Hyder Valley ranch one recent Sunday afternoon, Kay Torrez makes the understatement of the millennium. “If you don’t know what’s happening out here, I guess all this does look kinda far-out,” concedes the 73-year-old grandmother. To say the least…
Glendale Mayor Elaine Scruggs walks along the driveway that loops around her city’s latest acquisition–a weather-beaten, 98-year-old Victorian Queen Anne Revival home. There’s actually enough foliage to lower the temperature here, in this little corner of the desert where the tall date palms turn the shaded grass a deep, lush…
When Sheriff Joe Arpaio sued the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in 1994, challenging its authority to cut his budget, the action was widely viewed as a publicity stunt. Not so, argued the sheriff, assuring the public that he was entirely serious. Besides, Arpaio pointed out, taxpayers wouldn’t pay for…
Cuff Links or Handcuffs? Bankrupt Governor J. Fife Symington III has scraped up enough pocket change to buy back some of his most beloved belongings from the bankruptcy trustee who now controls his estate. The Fifester’s legal team has asked the U.S. Bankruptcy Court to allow His Deadbeatness to purchase…
Although he swore in U.S. Bankruptcy Court to reveal personal financial records to creditors, Governor J. Fife Symington III is taking elaborate steps to avoid disclosing crucial information. Rather than open his records for review, Symington is trying to convince the court that a 1990 financial statement he used to…
In Larry Debus’ game, you have to play all the angles if you want to become one of the best. And he’s long been known as one of the best in town. The veteran defense attorney knows that a jury will take stock of how his clients behave, dress and…
By most accounts, the child-molestation case against Mesa appliance-store owner Arvine Hardwick was sound. At trial in early 1994, Hardwick’s three alleged victims–sisters then ranging in age from 12 to 16–held their own as they told horrific tales of misplaced trust and seduction. A Maricopa County jury then convicted Hardwick…
Content-ed The new format for New Times’ Table of Contents is a great improvement! It’s much easier to find the sections for which I read this newspaper, even if the advertisers may suffer from less rummaging. And it’s no harder to find my favorite staff writers’ work. But what happened…
So I’m sitting there in a bar, talking with a guy I know, and he’s complaining to me about his job. This guy works in a furniture warehouse and he says that one of his coworkers is a wrestler. A wrestler, huh? Yes, indeed. He is the Drifter. And the…
Doris Tryon keeps busy any way she can. In the evenings, she rips drywall from the kitchen of her mobile home, which is located on a half-acre desert lot 40 miles west of Phoenix. The plasterboard will soon be replaced by new cabinets. Doris doesn’t like to be idle–in mind,…
The Pink Cat slumps on a folding chair in a makeshift dressing room at Phoenix Civic Plaza. The small cuts beneath his eyes sting, his hands ache, his arms throb. But Scott Walker’s pride hurts worse than his body. He heard the boos and the derisive meows from the small…
Hungry for a career change? Perhaps you dream of trading in your nine-to-five for the excitement and glamour of selling pot? Or maybe you’d just like to keep a few well-cured grams of Maui Wowee around the house for those occasional Cartoon Network marathons, but don’t want to break the…
Fife Deep-Sixed by 60 Minutes? The long-awaited 60 Minutes segment on Governor J. Fife Symington III appears to be on the cutting-room floor at CBS News. It’s been more than four months since Morley Safer interviewed a reluctant Symington–and the piece still hasn’t been scheduled for broadcast. A CBS source…
Halvor Elvik wants balloons. The Norwegian foreign correspondent has jetted to Phoenix after covering President Clinton’s State of the Union address, and he’s been instructed to submit an article about the building excitement for the city’s first Super Bowl. It will be Elvik’s first Super Bowl, as well. And he…
It is a little after 7 a.m. on Friday, and, strangely, everyone in the Bikini Lounge is drinking beer. The strange part is not that the patrons are drinking at 7 a.m., but that they are drinking beer. Beer in this place? In Phoenix’s last remaining shrine of ripped-off, modified,…
Monday morning, 9:30. Robert Balling’s office phone rings. Again. “Hey,” he says into the receiver. “How’s it going? Yeah, I saw. Looks pretty bad. … I don’t know, maybe … I gotta go. Okay, bye.” Balling, 43 years old, solidly built with a healthy, Arizona golf tan, rolls his eyes…
The Salt River Project is mired in sludge, and, at the moment, so is Paul Cherrington, SRP’s engineer in charge of water distribution. He’s pulled on rubber boots and stepped gingerly out onto the cracked, miles-long cake of sludge that had been mucked out of the Arizona Canal and piled…
