Does your parks department need money to keep a recreation center open? Are your schools having trouble getting dropouts back to class? Not enough police to protect your neighborhood? No sweat. Call out the National Guard. The Arizona National Guard is diversifying. Programs that educate troubled kids, take kids to…
For He’s a Jolly Delinquent Fellow For a contribution of at least $1,000 to the Arizona State Bar Foundation, attorneys get an asterisk next to their names in the Bar’s phone directory. They also get the title “Bar Fellow.” If you don’t make good on your pledge, you don’t get…
Santos Jaco, a small man barely five feet, four inches tall, stands on his toes and peeks over the shoulder of a bearded norteamericano wearing a Maya-style woven pullover. Jaco is trying to see a detailed charcoal drawing hanging on the gallery wall. The drawing depicts corpses, men and women,…
From a bare frame, he created this bike. In his mind, he saw it come together. He looked to others for the freshest ideas. Out of patience and skill came beauty. But what, he wondered, does it take to win? The boy from the projects is scoping out his competition…
James “Rocky” Tang grew up in a South Phoenix neighborhood where nearby dairies provided fodder for the games he and his childhood friends used to play with cardboard milk caps. But the retired restaurateur was just as surprised as anyone else when the game made a comeback in the form…
The state Attorney General’s Office is investigating the Maricopa Community College District’s purchasing department for possibly violating state procurement and antitrust laws. Rich Brydle told New Times that he was fired by the college last August after recommending that a computer buyer be terminated for manipulating the bidding process on…
In recent months, government officials have challenged Arizona prison inmates’ rights to receive magazines like Playboy in the mail. The courts have upheld the prisoners’ rights. But it’s apparently a hollow victory for inmates at one state prison. According to inmates who say they witnessed the crime, employees at the…
Ollie, Ollie Oxen Free After Posting Bond Oliver Miller had a dubious homecoming when the Detroit Pistons flew in recently to play the Suns. A court hearing in his divorce had been scheduled to coincide with the visit: During that hearing, somebody pointed out that Ollie had an outstanding warrant…
Months before a lucrative state contract was offered for public bid, Governor Fife Symington and former top aide George Leckie conspired with an official from the governor’s personal accounting firm, Coopers & Lybrand, to steer millions of dollars of work to the firm, an internal Coopers & Lybrand memo obtained…
No one is likely to forget for a long time what happened that day. That it was a hot, miserable July seemed only appropriate. The eviction of Helen Whitney had taken months, and this, the final step, was beginning to seem like it might go on nearly as long. Helen…
It’s no journalistic earthshaker that “dog bites man”–unlike the flip side of that equation–is not considered news. But what about the intrinsic newsworthiness of “dog nips horse”? That’s bad news–just ask the Valley horseback rider who found himself in the saddle when a vicious dog attacked the horse he was…
Art Amarillas peered into the spectators’ gallery of a Cochise County courtroom earlier this month. “I’ve been very sad about this since it happened,” he said to three of Ismael “Miley” Teran’s surviving relatives. “He never did anything to me. I was a very weak-minded individual, and my paranoia caused…
How ‘Bout Dem DiamondBanks? This just in: The Flash has reason to believe that the new baseball stadium will be named Bank One Stadium or something similar. The Flash has reason to believe that Bank One will pay the team–not the county, mind you–$2 million the first year, with that…
Bill Dougan started off the broadcast by opining that state Senate President John Greene is a “tin-plated, swaggering, obnoxious, power-hungry thug.” Then Dougan got nasty. The usual targets of his bombast–other politicians, local power brokers, the Arizona Republic–took their share of abuse. In one particularly vitriolic five minutes, he called…
The handwritten birthday card seemed so sincere. “My music is an expression of my inner self,” it started. “It was a true honor and delight to share it with these incredible musicians. ‘Somewhere Along the Way’ was written as an expression of searching along the path, the Way–as my studies…
As churchgoers around the Valley return home from services this Sunday afternoon, a former deacon named Dave will be hosting a special nondenominational “fellowship meeting” for a select few of his own followers. Nothing particularly unusual about that, except for one thing. Dave has never actually laid eyes on any…
Sex, Lies and Apparatchiks U.S. Senator John McCain must have a soft spot for known liars. Shortly after New Times revealed that reporter David Schwartz had been fired by the Arizona Republic for impersonating a prominent Phoenix attorney, McCain himself called Schwartz and offered to help find him a job…
It was October 1994, and Peter Galvin, a conservation biologist, was studying trees slated for logging in Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. The trees were part of the Hay Timber Sale, which had been contracted to Precision Pine and Timber in Heber. The project involved cutting about eight million board feet on…
After the dust cleared from the November election, it was widely assumed that school vouchers were a done deal. After all, Fife Symington was still governor, aided by the recently converted former state schools chief, C. Diane Bishop. Lisa Graham, who formerly led the voucher charge in the legislature, was…
The normally sleepy Deer Valley Village Planning Committee has become a whirlwind of political intrigue that pits current and former members of the advisory panel against Phoenix City Councilmember Thelda Williams. The antagonism centers on the land-use plan for 87 acres west of Deer Valley Airport. The village committee wants…
For state Senator Jim Buster, environmental regulation is like a midway game named Whack-a-Mole played at the Yuma County Fair. As soon as industry dares to make a buck, whack! Regulators pound it with environmental laws. Buster, chairman of the Senate Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Committee, intends to change…
Way out on U.S. Highway 70, past Zeke’s General Store and towns so small the post offices have dainty curtains in the windows, sit the adjoining southeastern Arizona towns of Thatcher and Safford. They are places where routine and tradition have a way of becoming the same thing, and neither…
