Journalists’ Roundtable: Is Maricopa County going to be Split into Four?

Feb. 18, 2022

Here are the topics for the week:

–House votes to eliminate education spending cap issues/Senate hasn’t acted yet
–Senate moves to expand vouchers/ESAs
–Deputies to County Attorney Allister Adel call on her to resign
–House committee moves to split up Maricopa County
–Senate passes abortion ban
–Ward & Finchem were subpoenaed by January 6 committee

How would they turn Maricopa County into four counties?

Pitzl: “Well they would carve it up into four counties. Maricopa could consist of most of Phoenix, Glendale, Tempe, i.e Democratic leaning. Then there would be a county up in the North to Northeast part of what is now Maricopa county, then there would be one in the Southeast Valley and there would be one in the West Valley. This is all done in the name of being more efficient and getting government closer to people because Maricopa is a very large county both population-wise and geographically.”

Fischer: “Let me put it this way, there has been talk in the past of splitting up, specifically the East Valley. Red Mountain County was what it was going to be because somehow the jurors were forced to drive downtown and the people being picked are not reflected of us. Then they started realizing the fiscal realities of it, which, talk about divorce, this is a four-way divorce dividing up assets (Palo Verde nuclear generating system), dividing up liabilities, existing bond obligations, taxes for the light rail. You just have too much to do. That does not mean they won’t try to shove this out of here.”

How political is this?

Small: “There is a very clear political element to it… You take Maricopa County which is a red turning pretty deep purple county in a lot of places and you split it into four counties: one of which is Democratic and the other three which are pretty solidly Republican. You are creating a whole bunch of new offices … for candidates to run for.”

In this segment:

Mary Jo Pitzl , Arizona Republic; Howie Fischer, Captiol Media Services; Jim Small, Arizona Mirror join Steve to discuss the major topics of the week.