The following is an original production of AZPM News.

Today on The Press Room, Arizona stands on the verge of another election season, what voters can expect from their choices heading to the mid-summer primary.

A state lawmaker is getting pushback from her own party for votes in the legislature.

Plus an update on a potential rate hike for electricity customers in Tucson.

We have the latest on these stories and more on The Press Room.

(upbeat music) Welcome to The Press Room.

I'm Tony Perkins and we have a great panel to talk about the news events of the past week.

Alessandra De Zubeldia with Nogales International.

Joe Ferguson writes for the Tucson Agenda.

Jim Nintzel with the Tucson Sentinel.

And Katya Mendoza with AZPM News.

Thanks a lot for being with us.

We really appreciate your being on The Press Room.

Let's first start talking about a story that happened last weekend, far from Tucson, but it directly impacted reporters and news reporting.

And that was the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington.

Jim, what did we learn about how the reporters were doing their work and maybe about beltway journalists in that kind of situation that happened in the room where they work?

Yeah, and I think it was quite shocking, obviously, to everybody assembled there.

And we got these firsthand accounts of what was happening as a would-be assassin was on a rampage.

I think the thing that was most disturbing to me in the aftermath of it was the number of conspiracy theories and the notion that this was somehow staged and the people who were, even though we did have the press assembled in that room to actually tell us what really happened, there was so much just a suggestion that the entire thing was fake.

That was disturbing to me.

All right, now let's move on to some of the local news that's happening.

Alessandra, you're up here from Nogales.

Welcome to The Press Room.

Thanks a lot for making your debut appearance here with us today.

The $2 million plan to upgrade the DeConcini Port of Entry is making news in Nogales.

What's that mean for the people of Nogales, Arizona, and how is it gonna make a difference?

So it's actually, as of now, two billion.

And for the people of Nogales, it is gonna mean a lot because it can potentially re-envision the downtown area, but also just the ability of how many people are able to come into the country.

So as of now, the Port Authority is the group that is pushing for this.

They were the group also behind the Mariposa port of entry remodel back in 2013.

And as of now, they are proposing to remodel the DeConcini Port of Entry, which is in downtown Nogales.

It has about two-thirds of the annual 10.6 million northbound crossings.

So it's very used, it's very popular among locals and business owners.

And as of now, it is not meeting the standards of CBP or the Department of Homeland Security.

Updated requirements need this port to be about 250 feet separate from the borderline for the first inspection, and I believe up to 450 feet for the secondary inspection.

The issue with the DeConcini Port of Entry is that it sits directly on the line.

So as of now, CBP agents have to physically, say, walk into Mexico if they're going to move a cone, which should not be happening.

In addition to that, the port is built in the flood zone.

So every monsoon season, the port floods obviously causes delays.

And so from a baseline perspective, the need is because it simply isn't meeting standards, but also because they're looking to expand just the commerce in the area, and that can mean potentially rerouting more people to, say, experience Santa Cruz County and Nogales, but there's also the potential of deviating and redirecting people away from the town, which is something that locals do not want to happen.

As far as the status goes, is there a timeline for this?

It is very, very early on.

Next year, the EPA will be finishing the environmental impact statement, and at that point, community members will be able to have a bit more of a say through that NEPA process.

And the earliest that the first phase of construction out of potentially four would be 2028, but it could be a six to 10 year project where the port will continue to be open, but in a bit of state of disarray.

All right.

Let's switch over to the state legislature and Democratic state lawmaker, Alma Hernandez.

Looking to become a state senator.

And the question is, you know, she's getting criticized for her votes across the aisle in Phoenix.

Jim, what is gonna be happening with Alma Hernandez going into this election season?

Well, Alma has always sort of flown by her own lights, as has her sister, Consuelo, who also serves in the Arizona legislature, and it has upset some of the party faithful because of the way that she will cross party lines in order to get some of her legislation passed because it is a Republican- dominated body.

You do need to find some Republican votes if you're gonna get legislation passed.

She is now in a primary up against Roque Perez, who served on the Tucson City Council briefly last year.

He filled in when Richard Fimbres left and did not run for the seat.

So he is a free agent right now, and he's looking to take on Alma.

This is gonna be one of the more interesting primaries that we see, I think, out there in the Democratic side.

There's only a handful here in Southern Arizona.

And, you know, this'll be a test.

I think she has built up a pretty solid political organization of her own, and she's sort of a counterweight.

The "Hernan-die," as they are known, are sort of a counterweight to the Grijalva machine that's out there.

And Joe, is this gonna expect, any surprises out of that race?

Oh, I expect there to be a lot of surprises.

I think this is probably the most heated race in Southern Arizona when it comes to the legislature.

I think that seat's gonna be fought for, and I think there's gonna be a lot more ahead of us in terms of twists and turns.

All right, now, of course, Arizona is on the verge of another election season.

The state primary is July 21st, still some weeks away.

Jim, a lot of money is already going toward one congressional race, Congressional District 6 with Juan Ciscomani, the Republican incumbent.

And JoAnna Mendoza, the expected Democratic challenger.

A national race, getting a lot of attention.

How do you think it's, or maybe it's too early to tell how things are gonna develop?

Well, Rep Ciscomani has said this is the, this is one of the seats that will decide the balance of power in the House of Representatives, and I think he's 100% right about that.

There was a poll out this week from a conservative organization that was briefly posted on their website and was taken down.

These things generally get put up by organizations that wanna be able to share this information on messaging and the state of the race, but can't coordinate, so they just throw it out there to the public.

And in this case, it showed JoAnna Mendoza with about 47% support and Juan with about 44%.

So she has a very narrow lead within the margin of error, but it just shows how tight this race is.

Congressman Ciscomani has won his races by fewer than three percentage points.

The challenge for him this year is the way that voters are swinging, particularly independent voters, are swinging in the direction of Democrats.

If you look at the special elections we've had around the country since Trump took office, you're seeing a 17-point swing on average, and when you've only won your elections by three percentage points, that must be worrisome to the Ciscomani campaign, as well as seeing a poll showing you're behind at this point.

Still anybody's race, it is a very, very close district.

The independents will decide it, and I think it's gonna be one that we're gonna be watching both locally and nationally.

And Joe, historically a third of Arizona voters consider themselves independent.

Which major or minor political party may benefit the most from those who are aligning themselves with the one side or the other coming into the primary season?

I think that there's gonna be a lot of Democrats that are gonna get a lot of support from outside groups that will see an opportunity to flip the House in an off year, and so I suspect that the Democrats are gonna get a lot of support both nationally you've got a lot of people coming in from out of state to help boost the profile of these races, and these candidates, Mendoza, is an unknown at the end of the day, and so I really do expect a lot of people to come in to kind of boost that profile.

And you know, the independents are such a sought-after group in a general election, but in a primary election where they can pick their ballot, and right now they're being allowed to choose their ballot.

If you're an independent, you wanna vote in the primary, I know that the folks at the county recorders know that you want a Democrat or a Republican ballot, but they really don't turn out in these primaries.

I've taken a look at the 2024 numbers.

About 10% of the electorate of the people who turned out for the Democrat, about 10% of the electorate that turned out for Republicans were independent, so they're still not that interested in the primary races, which in some ways is disappointing only because so many races are decided in the primaries.

Election season is happening, of course, in Nogales as well.

Alessandra, one of the issues that you wrote about was in the city council in Nogales, Arizona.

You get the same people occupying those offices year after year after year, and you found it was an issue of low pay.

Tell me a little bit about that.

Yeah, so as soon as I started reporting in Nogales, that's something that came up pretty quickly from residents.

You see the same faces again and again, year after year running for mayor and council and oftentimes getting those spots.

And there is a feeling from residents that this could potentially be causing lack of new, obviously, leadership, new ideas, innovation, and causing what some would describe as Nogales kind of staying where it's been for the last 20 years in terms of population and business.

So from some research, there's various research studies and papers published around how much should council members in small cities be paid.

And there is research to suggest that underpaying can lead to simply not seeing enough people running because it's not appealing enough to take on that type of responsibility as well as it can turn to only people that have the means to run or the elderly to run and it simply isn't attractive for say a young professional or someone with a family.

And according to the Arizona League of Cities and Towns, they did a survey of all the towns and cities, I believe it's 91 and about 71 responded.

And Nogales is actually the council and mayor with the lowest pay in Arizona, aside from four small communities that are affluent that don't pay anything.

So compared to similar size cities, Nogales is making six to 32 times less.

And the most shocking part of looking into this was the pay, which is $300 a month for each council member, so sorry, correction, $300 a year for each council member and $600 a year for the mayor.

That is written into the Nogales city charter, which was established in 1945 and has not been changed since.

It's in the city charter, so that means that people have to vote on it in order to change it.

And obviously compared with 1945, the purchasing power has shifted like 94%.

So the locals I spoke with, it's kind of mixed because a lot of people feel as though the council hasn't done enough for Nogales, so then they question whether bringing up the prices would do much or if it's deserved while other people feel that it would help bring in new perspectives and people that are willing to deal with the stress and the commitment of city government for more than $50 a month.

Well, sticking with elections and the decision that Tucson voters will have an opportunity to weigh in on, and that is the city's electricity needs.

Recent development is how Tucsonans will get a chance to vote on a franchise agreement between the city of Tucson and Tucson electric power.

And what kind of choice will voters get in this ballot measure?

Again, it's in November.

Joe, where do you think that this is going to fall as far as the two sides making their argument?

Well, voters rejected the last franchise agreement a few years ago and it was unpopular for a number of reasons, but it also was politically unpopular, so they're members of the council that just didn't give it a full-throated support.

And now with a new agreement, a side agreement called an ESA agreement, the city stands to make about $2 million a year from different fees that it's gonna get from TEP.

So unless there's a group that comes out specifically against TEP and says, "We don't want this franchise agreement, reject it," I don't expect it to be a controversial item on the ballot, but it's too early to tell, and I might be back on here two months from now talking about a group coming out against TEP.

And, Jim, it was a fight just to get it on the ballot, wasn't it?

Well, there was some debate among the council members, but it's a fairly standard step for the city to take to have this franchise agreement.

It essentially allows, without getting into the legal weeds of the TEP to go out and do work in alleyways and around town without having to worry about getting permits and go through a bureaucratic process.

So it's usually very uncontroversial.

They included an environmental fee in the last one, and that led to people saying, "Oh, our rates are gonna go up."

And this time, there's still this money coming from TEP to the city, but they're claiming it's from shareholder dollars and not from ratepayers, but I don't know, I mean, the only place shareholders get their money is from ratepayers, so I don't know how you manage to really prevent money that our ratepayers are paying from going into this pot of money that the city of Tucson's trying to extract.

But that's their spin on it, and we will see how voters feel about it, but I have a feeling of all the things we're gonna be talking about on this election run, this is gonna be way down at the bottom.

All right, let's move on to data centers, and the subject making a lot of news has been in the headlines for several months now, but the latest one is a Pew Research Center article showing Arizona is at the center of the debate over data centers nationwide.

Katya, you've been reporting on the ongoing fight regarding Project Blue, which has switched from Tucson now to Pima County.

Tell me what's the latest about Project Blue.

Sure, so there are two major data centers that are developing here in Pima County, the developers build infrastructure.

Last summer, I call it the summer of Project Blue, I mean, the community turnout in terms of vocal opposition to this project was huge.

People have voiced concerns about water, energy, that sort of thing.

In terms of Project Blue, the most recent update construct has begun, that started maybe a couple of weeks ago now, just last week, protesters with the No Desert Data Center Coalition, they showed up last Friday, protesting the project and construction.

The week before that, a Pima County judge did toss a lawsuit that was brought on by opponents to the project.

They were claiming that the Pima County Board of Supervisors Planning and Zoning Commission knowingly deceived the public in terms of, they knew about this developing project a lot longer than they may have let on.

The lawsuit was tossed in terms of public response to that decision, something that stuck out to me that an organizer said last week, last Friday at the protest was, we're doing everything that we can, that we're supposed to, we're submitting comments, we're reaching out to elected officials, we're making our voices heard, and yet this project has progressed.

We are also looking at a fight over a data center that centered around a completely different issue, and it's a referendum in the town of Marana.

What's the latest on that?

That's right, well, we're supposed to see a decision tomorrow, and this lawsuit was brought on by Marana citizens, more specifically Marana Citizens for Ethical and Transparent Government.

This issue, they filed a complaint.

They sued the town of Marana and its town clerk for rejecting two referendum petitions, and the reason why the town clerk rejected the petitions was that it lacked a proper legal description.

Well, now residents argue that they provided everything, all the documentation that was made available to them by the town clerk.

The town clerk argues that, well, you didn't have the proper information, so a lawsuit came on.

Oral arguments were heard on Monday, and something interesting about this lawsuit is that Beale Infrastructure, well, their subsidiary, Fremont Peak Properties has joined the case in suing the town of Marana.

Their argument is that they have entered into unnecessary litigation because of this lawsuit.

Prior to the town of Marana's decision in rejecting the petitions, the day before, the petitioner, Arizonans for Responsible Development, they requested to withdraw the petition, which is something very strange and very rare.

The town clerk said, well, we can't do that.

That hasn't been done before, and so it's a joint lawsuit.

We're expected to hear a final decision, hopefully tomorrow, Friday.

Well, Joe, even though there is a lot of public sentiment against the Project Blue in Tucson, that issue was never going to be completely over.

No, it's not, and I'll just say that the permits that Project Blue, and on the south side of town by the fairgrounds, those permits are relatively minor.

They're doing a little bit of dust abatement.

They're building a wall.

They're connecting a sewer line.

That's a far cry from putting up plans to build a data center, and we know that nationally, a lot of data centers are on pause right now.

So whether Project Blue happens, I don't want to give false hope, but it's too early to tell whether they're gonna really break ground.

I think it's fundamentally absurd that we are going to be using so much water and energy at a time when we are running out of water and energy rates are increasing so that people can flood the zone with made up fake things that are written by computers rather than human beings.

And to add to that, Beale Infrastructure, the developer of both Marana Data Center and Project Blue, they have since changed their tune in response to communities' concerns for water consumption.

These facilities will now be air-cooling facilities, and yet the concern for power usage still remains.

And you still need to cool the transmission towers that are sending you that power, so you may be using more water than was originally planned.

Well, Katya, we're gonna be seeing and hearing more from you about another issue, which is proposed mining in the Patagonia Mountains.

What's happening there in this contentious debate about mining and the environment?

Yes, so there is a mine that is getting closer to production.

It's the South32 Hermosa Project.

This mine looks to source zinc and manganese to federally designated critical minerals that are necessary for renewable energy.

Again, a large industrial user of natural resources, the nearby community, the town of Patagonia has also been very opposed to this project because it's out of concerns for air quality, water quality, water consumption et cetera.

Just last month in March, the Forest Service released the final environmental impact statement, and a ruling is expected later this summer, so we will see how that plays out.

You're gonna be presenting a story about this issue on our Arizona Illustrated coming up this weekend.

Tell me a little bit about what we'll be seeing in that story.

You'll be hearing from residents who live close to the area who received a well protection agreement that was offered to them by South32, the mine.

The reason why select few who live in close proximity to the mine received this agreement, it's entirely voluntary.

The mine is offering options in the event that their wells are potentially impacted by mining operations.

So in the documentary, you're gonna hear various concerns in terms of property value, observed changes to the natural landscape around them on their properties and some hopes for working with the mine to sort of mitigate a more desirable outcome.

We're going to see a clip about that issue.

What are we gonna see here now?

Yeah, so we're gonna hear from John Nordstrom.

He is a nearby resident who lives in an inholding on the Coronado National Forest, so very close to the mine.

He's observed changes to his property.

He claims that there used to be a little, a smaller than a lake, but a small body of water on his property.

It's since gone dry.

The mine claims that it's due to drought and climate change, but he is skeptical.

The mining law of 1872 is pretty clear.

They can take all the water they want, but what they can't do is destroy my property value, which is what they're doing.

We knew that at some point we would be implementing this groundwater management program, and we wanted baseline information for private wells.

Well, individual citizens own those wells, so we went to everybody within a five-mile radius and said, "Look, are you interested "in having your well monitored?"

We don't have to do well protection agreements.

Whatever happens with those wells happens, but that's, again, that's not how we have committed we would work with the community and work with stakeholders.

And that's part of Katya Mendoza's story updating the opinions over mining in the Patagonia Mountains.

We can see it more, see more of it on Arizona Illustrated.

That's coming up this Sunday on PBS Six.

Jim, what is it about this issue that tends to keep people interested in knowing about it?

Is it part of the history of Arizona in mining?

Mining certainly has a long history in the state, but it's a mixed history, certainly.

It's helped a lot of people get wealthy.

It has led to a lot of people losing their fortunes.

It has been very environmentally damaging, and yet we do need some of the stuff that they mine.

So it's definitely a mixed opinion.

I certainly think the one that's developing now for us in Copper World, this mine that's being built down south of Tucson is still controversial as they move forward with it, and there's some real questions about whether they'll have sufficient water supply.

All right, well, thanks for joining us, on behalf of our crew and staff and guests.

I'm Tony Perkins.

For everyone here, we'll see you next week.

(upbeat music) This has been an original production of AZPM News.