Tucson Weekly
Looks like voters will get to decide whether the city should scrap its current pension program.
Political consultant Pete Zimmerman emailed The Range today to inform us that the Committee for Sustained Retirement Benefits has turned in more than 23,000 signatures to put the Sustainable Retirement Benefits Act on the November city ballot. The group needed 12,730 valid signatures, so there’s lots of padding there to fight off legal challenges.
The initiative would force the city to scrap the current pension program for new hires and instead enroll them in a program similar to a 401K system.
A poll released by supporters of the one-cent sales-tax proposal before Arizona voters shows a majority support it. With the May 18th election just 64 days away, nearly 6 in 10 likely special election voters say they will vote yes on Proposition 100, a three-year, one-cent increase to Arizona’s sales tax meant to protect education, public safety and health care. A telephone survey of 506 likely voters, conducted in late February by veteran polling group Moore Information, used the exact ballot language voters will encounter in the upcoming election.
There’s a huge X factor in this year’s city election: Pima County’s permanent early-voter list. In previous city elections, voters had to ask for a mail-in ballot. In this election, more than 62,000 early ballots went out automatically to city voters when early voting started on Oct. 8. There are roughly 224,000 registered voters in Tucson. Whether all those voters will care enough to mail ballots back in remains to be seen, but the numbers we got from Pima County Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez suggest that most Tucsonans aren’t in a rush to cast a ballot.
Republican Steve Kozachik, who is seeking to unseat Democrat Nina Trasoff in Ward 6, has informed us via e-mail that he plans to continue to support the Public Safety First initiative on the Nov. 3 ballot. Kozachik had said he was reconsidering his support, given that the city could be facing a $46 million shortfall next year. Kozachik says he doesn’t trust the budget numbers released by City Manager Mike Letcher.