On Monday, Heap sent out a testy press release chronicling what he called his “battle” with the board over their respective election duties. At issue is a “shared services agreement” that splits election administration duties between the board and the recorder’s office.
Heap doesn’t like the current agreement, which he called “radical.” The former state legislator characterized it as a “backroom, eleventh hour power grab” made by “unpopular, lame duck officials” — that is, the previous iteration of the board and former Recorder Stephen Richer, the moderate Republican whom Heap ousted in the primary — “attempting to knee-cap incoming elected officials.” Namely, Heap.
Quite the dramatic accusation! Too bad that, like many of Heap’s public statements since taking office last month, it’s at significant odds with the facts.
For one, the SSA with the county wasn’t “quickly and secretly executed,” as Heap suggested in his release. Its renegotiation was the subject of numerous news stories and the agreement was discussed in public meetings. And while the timing was notable — Richer was indeed a lame-duck official, though Heap hadn’t won the general election yet — the agreement didn’t change nearly as much as Heap’s release claimed.
Heap’s release correctly noted that the new agreement shifted a bunch of information technology staffers and $5 million in budget from the recorder’s office to the board and moved some money. But Heap also claimed the agreement “transferred nearly all the Recorder’s elections duties to the Board,” which isn’t true.
What really changed was that early ballot processing became the board’s responsibility. In other words, the board’s election staff will now open early ballot envelopes after the recorder’s office has verified their signatures. It was a minor shift.
Heap’s chief of staff, Sam Stone, did not respond to questions from Phoenix New Times.
In a statement, board chairperson Thomas Galvin — also a Republican — noted the “factual errors” in Heap’s narrative. Journalist Garrett Archer, a former elections worker, called out the falsehood on social media, leading Richer to chime in that a “1/3 of that email is wrong.” In an email to New Times, Richer sardonically suggested that Heap deserves some slack.
“This is Heap's first time with any employees,” Richer wrote, “so I think we should let the guy who struggled to file campaign finance reports, obtain car insurance, and who got fired by the County Attorney's office, crawl before he walks.”
Former Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer suggested that his successor, MAGA devotee Justin Heap, should learn to "crawl before he walks."
Katya Schwenk
A loose relationship with the truth
Richer’s acidic overview of Heap’s record isn’t off-base. Heap was indeed fired by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office in 2010 and excluded thousands of dollars of political donations from campaign finance reports, though he was cleared of wrongdoing by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.Since taking office, Heap’s also shown a rather loose relationship with the truth. In January, Heap tooted his own horn for taking thousands of inactive voters off the voter rolls when doing that was just a normal, statutorily mandated responsibility. Heap also announced a new policy to allow observers to be in the room where ballot envelope signatures get verified — even though that had already been happening.
Earlier this month, Heap took credit for firing staffers that New Times subsequently reported had actually left on their own before he took office.
It’s come across as a hamfisted attempt by Heap to conjure an image for himself as a tough guy here to get Maricopa County’s elections in line. During his run for recorder, Heap played up concerns about county elections, calling them a “laughingstock” on the campaign trail last year. He wants to “restore authority” to his office, he said in his press release. He warned of “costly legal battles” if the board didn’t meet his demands.
"If the board is not even willing to enter into a good-faith discussion with the recorder of the county, who is the primary elections officer, then maybe we do need to talk about it being consolidated back into this office,” Heap said in a Monday interview with FOX 10. “As it stands right now, the board is not taking the steps that I would expect and would be appropriate."
By contrast, Galvin said in his statement that “conversations between the Board and its staff, and the Recorder and his staff, have been happening for weeks.”
Heap’s negotiating tactics certainly seem cribbed from the Donald Trump school of fact-free blustering. Richer said he had plenty of disagreements with the board while he was recorder, but he “always handled those internally” and not through the press.
“I certainly never publicly threatened to sue the Board,” Richer said in an email. “I think this evinces a pretty clear difference in personality types. There are people who work to get stuff done, and there are people who just like fighting. You can get away with the latter personality type when you're in the state legislature, city council, or the Congress, and you're not actually responsible for anything other than your own vote.”
What happens now remains to be seen. Heap claimed he terminated the agreement after consulting with the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. Stone told KJZZ that civil attorneys Thomas Liddy and Joseph LaRue from the county attorney’s office offered their advice. Jeanine L’Ecuyer, the chief of staff for the county attorney's office, told New Times that Liddy and LaRue "provide legal advice to all MCAO agencies including the Board and the Recorder's office," but she "cannot disclose the content of any discussion."
The board of supervisors isn’t so sure that Heap can unilaterally cancel the agreement. Jason Berry, interim director of communications for Maricopa County, told New Times that the board is “reviewing its legal options.” L'Ecuyer said both "the Board and the Recorder made the decision to work with outside counsel on the SSA matter only."
