The following is an AZPM original production.

From the radio studios of AZPM, welcome to the latest edition of The Press Room.

I'm Steve Goldstein.

Coming up, Tucson Mayor Regina Romero joins us to talk about her Safe City proposal, Project Blue, and federal immigration enforcement.

Plus, a new statewide study shows the potential positive economic impact of making housing and childcare more affordable.

Those conversations and more are next on The Press Room.

(upbeat music) Welcome to The Press Room, I'm Steve Goldstein.

Mayor Regina Romero has led the city of Tucson since 2019 after serving on the city council for a dozen years before that.

This is a time of challenges and opportunities for Tucson as leaders try to determine the city's direction while also having to deal with an adversarial relationship with the current administration in Washington.

So we thought this was an ideal moment to welcome Mayor Romero to The Press Room.

Thank you for joining us, great to see you.

Thank you, Steve, thank you so much for having me.

Let's start with that adversaria relationship.

We have seen recent times in Tucson federal action related to immigrants.

We've seen ICE, HSI.

How do you feel about how the Trump administration is trying to handle immigration enforcement and how can and how should Tucson be reacting to it?

Well, first and foremost, as mayor, it is my responsibility to make sure that our community, our residents are safe.

And as a welcoming community, it does not matter to us their immigration status.

We feel that every resident is a contributing resident to our economy and our city, and we have a responsibility to keep them safe.

And so it's not a secret that I strongly disagree with the method and the policies of the Trump administration.

And we have a mayor and council that have been very clear that we are going to protect our residents.

And fortunately, we have a city attorney, city manager and chief of police that believe that our police should not be involved in these raids.

Our Chief Kasmar has been clear that their job is to keep people safe and will not practice any immigration actions with HSI or ICE.

And so for me, it's about keeping people informed, making sure that they know their rights, making sure that I'm talking with elected officials at every level of government.

And we will not tolerate immigration enforcement HSI or ICE mistreating and attacking members of our community.

I believe in the First Amendment, and I believe in the freedom to gather and do it peacefully, making sure that people know that they can record, but they cannot get in front of the work that agents are doing, which is very difficult because we see them handcuffing and taking people.

But it's important that Tucsonans practice their First Amendment and record, but not get in the way of federal agents.

You mentioned the word safe a few times, so it's a good transition for us to talk about Safe City, which we introduced in the fall.

We don't have time to get into all the details, but two things, I wanna give you a chance to say what you think the priorities are for it.

But then also, how challenging is it to balance the safety of a community, which is a very welcoming community, as you said, and making people feel like they are not going to be attacked violently as the perception, by some, has become, but also not condemning, overly punishing those who are addicts and not violent criminals.

How do you balance all that?

Well, the goal is not incarceration.

The goal is treatment.

And as mayor, we immediately after I became mayor, was just reading last week, my first mayor and council retreat was January of 2020.

I was elected in November of 2019.

And we set three goals in that retreat, that we tackle poverty and unsheltered homelessness and affordable housing.

And those goals have not changed for me as mayor.

I introduced the housing first approach for unsheltered homelessness.

I introduced the community safety, health and wellness and care coordinators, so that we could serve the most vulnerable, especially those that are unsheltered, in the most humane way, without criminalizing it.

And so, we've been practicing that, but we've been seeing gaps in services, as well as how we perform, and how we deliver safety to our community.

That's why for me, the Safe City Initiative was really important to bring everything under an umbrella.

Many of the programs that we created to humanely treat unsheltered people, but also we need to make sure that we are bringing others, other governments like Pima County, the state and federal governments to the picture, to make sure that we're filling the holes that we as a city do not have the funds to do.

Mental, behavioral health, substance use disorders, those are huge issues that our charter really doesn't say, you as a city have to solve.

That's why the partnership with Pima County is important, and the additional funds through the opioid settlement money, I believe need to be laser focused on creating programs that fill those gaps.

And there's an accountability that comes with the Safe City Initiative as well, that is important to deliver the safety that people need to see tangible results.

As part of that, and you mentioned affordable housing, going back to 2020, this has been something that affects communities all across the country, it's not unique to Tucson.

In December, the city council took action related to middle housing.

If you could talk about that a bit, why you think that's important, why you think it's a good step, and then what else can be done?

Can Tucson, are there other communities around the country, frankly, that are best practices that Tucson could borrow from?

Well, Tucson is a model around the country in terms of affordable housing, and our laser focused approach to moving quickly to creating it.

Under my leadership, we created a housing affordability strategy for Tucson, and it's an action plan that we're putting into action.

Everything from a low barrier shelter that we created thanks to the Biden administration and American Rescue Plan dollars that we received, from low barrier shelter that we've created hundreds of beds, to transitional housing, to affordable rental, even to home ownership.

We have a plan, we're putting it to work, and Tucson led in the state in creating the casitas, or accessory dwelling units, and middle housing was a little bit of a hybrid of what we were already working on, but we felt that, Mayor and Council felt that we needed to expand it citywide, because we didn't wanna see an area of town pressured, with over development, and then we have an emergency.

We also in December, passed a homeless and housing emergency, Mayor and Council did, and that is basically to move some land use codes, to make it easier, to build housing and to build affordability.

And so, we are in need of more than 35,000 units of affordable housing, and we're intent on making sure that Mayor and Council, and Tucson is part of the solution, and middle housing is one piece of that solution.

Okay, early in 2025, voters soundly rejected Prop 414, which would have been helpful for police and fire, also could have helped those who were unhoused, and yet it was rejected.

So, looking ahead, RTA Next is another thing, which would be a sales tax extension, so a little bit different, but did you learn anything from the defeat of Prop 414, from the standpoint of how we approach the public differently, or how we put ideas together?

Well, Prop 414 was the funded version of the Safe City Initiative, and it was a holistic version to creating safety to our community, because I believe deeply that police cannot be the answer to safety.

Mental behavioral health, creating affordable housing and low barrier shelter, creating safe neighborhoods, and lighting, and a good safe transit system.

What we understand is that there are special interest groups in Tucson that are good at convincing people at voting against their own interest.

And we've got to realize, as Tucsonans that want a beautiful city with good quality of life, good jobs, good infrastructure, and good roads are part of that quality of life.

Proposition 418 and 419, which is RTA Next, will allow us to invest in ourselves.

And so, what we learned from 414 is that we need to tell residents that nobody's gonna come to save us.

We need to save ourselves and invest in ourselves.

And when we want good things, like good roads, we've got to vote for Proposition 418 and 419.

We want safe roads for bicyclists and pedestrians.

And so, we need to understand as a community that the state and the federal governments, at least in the next three years, will possibly not come and save us, and that we need to do this with ourselves.

Because the opposition has not shown us a different plan.

So, this is that plan that we have in front of us.

Maybe not absolutely perfect to some people's eyes, but it is an investment that we have to say yes to, because it will create 52,000 jobs.

It will invest in our infrastructure.

And investing in our infrastructure leverages private investment.

This is for the future of Tucson.

I'm gonna ask you for a brief answer on this last one.

We've got about a minute left or so.

Project Blue, very controversial.

Tucson City Council wanted nothing to do with it.

A lot of Tucson residents don't either.

But some people have said, okay, where do we get economic development from?

Can you give me a fairly quick sound about where economic development comes from if it's not something like that?

I was very proud to be accepted to the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative.

My main goal with that is to create an economic development strategy with the partnership of Tucsonans.

And so we can and should ask for good quality jobs that don't sacrifice our environment, our water resources, and that don't benefit just a few billionaires, right?

We want to make sure that we're creating good quality jobs for our future that Tucsonans can be proud of.

Okay, Tucson Mayor Regina Romero, thank you so much for being on The Press Room.

Thank you Steve.

Great to see you.

And The Press Room continues after this.

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Welcome back to The Press Room, I'm Steve Goldstein.

When many Arizonans think about our politics, there's a consistent narrative that the divide is as great as it's ever been.

And it's nearly impossible for people from different parties to agree on anything.

For a couple of decades, the Nonpartisan Center for the Future of Arizona has conducted surveys with Gallup that show something quite different.

On issues like education, the environment, and transportation, significant percentages of Arizonans agree that action needs to be taken at the highest levels to achieve what CFA has called "the Arizona we want."

Recently, CFA's Chair, President and CEO, Sybil Francis, partnered the organization with economist Jim Rounds of the Rounds Consulting Group to bring concrete economic analysis to the shared priorities that Arizonans agree on.

The report is called "Unlocking Potential for an Arizona's Priorities and Economic Gains."

And joining me now in The Press Room to talk about the report are Sybil Francis and Jim Rounds.

Welcome to you both, thanks for joining me.

Thank you.

Sybil, I mentioned in the introduction, Center for the Future of Arizona has been a leader in learning what issues are important to Arizonans and where we agree.

Give us a little bit of background briefly if you would on CFA and what it's done in the past, but how did bringing an economic analysis fit into the overall nonpartisan approach you've taken?

Thanks so much, Steve, you really set the conversation up so well.

We're a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that's really focused on what matters most to Arizonans.

That's where we draw our inspiration and our direction.

And as you mentioned, we've been doing public opinion survey research of Arizonans for nearly two decades.

And despite this narrative of polarization and division, what we've discovered through this really in-depth opinion survey research is that we agree on much more than we disagree on the big important issues like education, like healthcare, like the environment.

And so this is something that we call the Arizona we want and that has really inspired our work and that we try to share broadly.

How that fits into this economic analysis we did was we asked ourselves the question and then we asked Jim Rounds to help us answer it is what would happen if we actually achieved the outcomes that Arizonans want?

Should we consider those costs that costs money to achieve those outcome?

Or are there some kind of really significant returns that we would get by doing so?

And we thought those insights would be helpful to policymakers and leaders across the state.

And there were five priorities you asked Jim to specifically focus on.

We'll get a chance to talk about a couple of them.

Child care access and affordability, housing affordability, post-secondary attainment, dual enrollment and transportation infrastructure.

And before we have Jim jump in with some analysis.

So let's start with why childcare access and affordability was important to include.

Well, sure.

So one of the important findings of our public opinion survey research is that I'm sure your listeners won't be surprised to learn that childcare is really not very affordable for many families.

But beyond that, we also learned something really significant and really important, which is that because of the high cost of childcare, there are significant numbers of people who are actually opting not to go back to work or not to go to school because of the top cost of childcare.

It's more expensive to go to work and pay for childcare than it is to stay home and forego your paycheck.

Well, that has huge implications for us in Arizona.

It means that those people are not really engaged in the economic life of our state.

They're not being consumers.

They're not working for employers.

Now, if people wanna stay home and take care of their kids, that is fantastic, but it should be a choice.

And so this is why we thought it would be important to find out, well, if we could make childcare affordable for households, what would that impact be on their pocketbook at home, as well as the impact economically on the state?

And Jim, you crunched some numbers on that one specifically.

What did you find for childcare access and affordability?

Well, we identified that if childcare access and affordability, the imbalances were no longer there.

It was affordable for an individual.

Like Sybil said, if they wanted to work, they could work.

They weren't choosing to not work because of some economic constraints.

We would have another 100,000 jobs plus in the state and about $12 billion in economic activity.

So these are big numbers.

The state's economy is $400 to $500 billion, pretty large, but these things add up.

And so a lot of the questions that Sybil's teams ask during this process relates to, do people understand the importance of these issues?

And what I thought was fascinating is that people are in agreement and they didn't have the benefit of seeing the economic numbers or doing the studies.

They were asked just directly, do you feel like this is important?

And a vast majority of them said yes.

And so I was really impressed with the fact that a large percentage of the public seems to understand these economic issues.

I'd like to pretend that I'm a little elitist as an economist, but the general public understands all of these points.

And I think policymakers need to listen to that a little bit more.

Terrific.

And Sybil, let's move on to housing affordability.

Definitely wanna make sure we get to that.

That's something people talk about in Arizona and across the country.

So why was that vital to include on this?

Well, certainly through our survey research, we found that people are very much feeling the strain of how expensive it is to rent or to own a home.

And really what the implications are for living here.

As we continue to grow as a state, it's not just a housing issue and it's not just about compassion for households and people struggling with housing affordability or even homelessness.

It's really an infrastructure issue.

It's a workforce issue.

It's a family stability issue and an economic competitiveness issue.

We've long relied on affordable housing to help fuel the growth of our state.

Well, if that becomes a bit more of a barrier than it's been, what does that mean for the economic development of our state?

What does it mean for families who may have to keep moving because of housing issues in terms of the stability of their home life, their ability to be good employees if they're struggling with housing.

So we found that Arizona and see this as a very urgent issue across the political spectrum.

We have 84% of voters who say rental prices are too high and 80% who say home prices are too high.

And Jim, if we reached housing affordability to some extent, if Arizona actually became a state that was a leader in that, how much money would that mean and how could that affect the economy in the state?

Each household would have about $9,000 more to invest or to spend each year.

And we're dealing with another more than 100,000 jobs would be created across the state.

So like Sybil said, it's not just about one particular item.

All of these items are interrelated.

And when you have an efficient economy, when you have everything working together, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

And I think that's what we're trying to get at is that there's a lot of different things that are interrelated.

And we do have a chance to work on these because a lot of these things pay for themselves if we're thoughtful about how it's implemented.

Just a couple minutes left and a couple more questions I wanted to make sure I asked.

So I wanna have you both weigh in on this briefly if we could.

So the issues in this report are, they're so in sync, but they're also massive.

How can movement begin on these issues?

And with your history at CFA, how have you seen that concrete data can really affect how people approach it?

And then when economic data, as Jim has alluded to, could that actually lead to real movement here?

Yeah, so one of the major things that we've been working on since we've understood this truth or reality that Arizonans agree on much more than we disagree on big important issues is to try to share that information with as many people across our state, leaders and others that we can.

Because I think as a first step, you need to actually believe that you can make a difference, that change can happen.

And if you think you're hopelessly polarized as we often hear in our public dialogue, then maybe you're just gonna give up or drop out.

But if we know that we actually agree on things much more than we might realize, that gives opportunity for change.

But the next step with this return on investment or economic analysis really is, well, if that is the case, then what are the benefits that could accrue from addressing the things that we know we all care about in common?

And I think what we're trying to do is also move the needle from short-term thinking, how much does something cost to address, to long-term thinking, which is what is the return on that investment?

So as Jim often says, if you spend it a dollar, but you get $5 back, well, that makes a lot of sense.

So it's also about moving from short-term thinking to long-term thinking, moving from costs to returns, and really moving away from the idea that some of these things are handouts, but they're actually really about improving the economics of our state.

Jim, just about a minute left.

I wanna have you follow up on that and then extend the question just a bit if we could.

You've spent a lot of time at the Capitol.

Will data like this help lawmakers on both sides see these issues through what I would call an Arizona lens as opposed to a partisan one?

We've already seen some of this.

When lawmakers were coming to us and they were asking, how do we evaluate government being more run like a business?

My initial comment was, government's different than business.

And then I decided to say, okay, well, a business would invest in something where it was gonna yield additional profits later greater than the initial investment.

So develop a positive ROI.

So we started applying that concept at the Capitol around the beginning, around 2020.

And we were able to get through to some lawmakers because they didn't view something like childcare as a center left type of a topic.

They viewed it as, you mean we can spend a dollar and make multiple dollars back if we plan this long-term like Sybil was talking about?

And the answer is yes.

And so if we do this properly, we're actually gonna reduce the burden on taxpayers, or we're gonna have better higher quality services in the state and a stronger, more resilient economy.

So when you look at these items and you put some math behind it, it's a little bit easier to ignore some of the politics that you've, policy makers have been bound by in the past and they can instead focus on numbers and helping doing what's right for the taxpayer.

Okay, I need to stop there.

Jim Rounds, CEO of the Rounds Consulting Group.

Sybil Francis, Chair President and CEO of the Center for the Future of Arizona.

We've been talking about the new report, unlocking potential to an Arizona's priorities and economic gains.

Sybil, Jim, thanks so much for joining me on The Press Room.

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Welcome back to The Press Room.

I'm Steve Goldstein.

An impactful show for me.

It's been my honor since September of 2024 to be the founding host of The Press Room.

I'm moving on to other opportunities.

This is our chance for a few minutes to introduce you to the next host and also news director of AZPM, David Lee.

David, thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me.

So let's talk a little bit about your background.

You're coming to Tucson or have you come to Tucson from a PBS station.

But before that, you had some other interesting experiences also in the media.

Can you give us sort of a quick overview of what you've done before and how it connects with what you're gonna do here?

Yeah, you know, I got into media a long time ago on air.

I was a sports director and covered a lot of sports over the years.

I had a daughter, or I still do, who was growing up in California.

She was getting ready to start high school and I wanted to be closer to her.

So I got off being in front of the camera and started my way back up on an assignment desk in a small station in Salinas, California, and then worked my way up to eventually an assistant news director and news director.

And so I was a news director in Tallahassee for about five years, Green Bay after that.

And then most recently in Seattle, I was the executive editor who oversaw our news product, original productions, and our podcast.

And the nice part about it was it was a PBS station.

I got acclimated into nonprofit journalism, which I think is really important.

And then when the opportunity came to come here, I jumped at it.

So you've been in Tucson for a few weeks at this point.

What do you like about it so far?

What are your first impressions?

My first impressions are it's a beautiful city.

The people have been really friendly.

There's a thing in Seattle where they call the Seattle Freeze where people don't necessarily talk to you.

I didn't find that to be much of the case.

But the people here are really friendly.

And I'm looking forward to being in different communities and really learning what the city in Southern Arizona is really all about.

It is a different kind of place for sure.

So let's wrap up.

We've got about a minute or so.

We've been doing this show and people had said to me, "Oh, it's the end of an era."

It was a pretty short era.

It was less than a year and a half.

But can you give us an idea of how the program's gonna evolve, how you envision it going forward?

Well, first of all, I have to say thank you to you.

I mean, you set the pace for how this whole thing runs.

And we're gonna adopt a lot of what you did to continue The Press Room.

It's one of those stalwart kind of programmings that we are really excited to have here at AZPM.

So I'm gonna use a lot of that to continue with.

And then I'm gonna lean on the fact that I am the new guy in town.

I'm gonna be able to work and learn new issues, what is important to the communities, because ultimately for me, it's really about having our news and shows like this reflect what's really important for the community.

Terrific.

That is David Lee, News Director of AZPM and new host ongoing of The Press Room.

Good luck.

Thanks so much.

Thank you much.

And Steve, I cannot tell you how much we really appreciate everything that you've done.

And thank you all for being a part of The Press Room.

It continues next week with a new episode.

I'm Steve Goldstein.

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