Journalists’ Roundtable: Mail-in ballots and more

It’s Friday, which means it is time for another edition of Journalists’ Roundtable, where we discuss Arizona politics. This week, “Arizona Horizon” host Ted Simons was joined by Dennis Welch of 3-TV and CBS-5, Jessica Boehm of Axios Phoenix, and Howie Fischer of Capitol Media Services.

This week’s topics included:

• Mail-in ballots
• ICE warehouse facility
• Federal gas tax pause
• Review of city ordinances on ICE activities

Mail-in Ballots:

Dennis Welch: “This is something that’s been on the President’s…forefront of his mind for a while now…we’re 82 days away from early ballots being sent out in the primary election…if you had this kind of big changes coming right now, what kind of timeline, and types of pressures, and how this would affect the election would be huge.”

Jessica Boehm: “First of all, you’re asking postal workers who are not election workers, so suddenly be in the elections business…there is pretty significant precedent that shows that you can’t make serious changes to an election so close to an election.”

ICE Warehouse Facility:

Howie Fischer: “They’re saying we need a couple of hundred beds…they won’t be staying there, they’ll be using that as sort of a transfer facility…you’ve got to decide, do you in fact believe ICE? I think a lot of people in Arizona who don’t, and then the question is, what controls does the local government have? Now if ICE owns a facility…then there’s very limited things local government can do.”

Dennis Welch: “Some of the folks I’ve been seeing, some of the folks i’ve talked to they don’t trust…it is very close to a high school…they’re not happy about this, either because…what kind of risk is it to them, to their neighborhood…and also, if you bought a house around that in that area, what would that do to your property value? I talked ot some people about that who are extremely concerned about that.”