Three members of the Independent Redistricting Commission voted Saturday night to spend public funds to hire lawyers for each of them to respond to questions raised about their conduct by Gov. Jan Brewer.
The move, which followed a closed-door session, came over the objections of Scott Freeman, one of the two Republicans on the panel. He said it is not "appropriate'' for the panel, which already is paying two law firms to represent the commission as a whole, to shell out more cash for more attorneys.
So the other three -- independent Chairwoman Colleen Mathis and Democrats Linda McNulty and Jose Herrera -- voted to leave Freeman and fellow Republican Richard Stertz out and instead get more legal help only for themselves.
Ray Bladine, the commission's executive director, said the attorneys will work over the rest of the weekend in a bid to meet Brewer's deadline to respond to her questions by 8 a.m. Monday.
An extension is unlikely.
``The governor believes the Independent Redistricting Commission and its cadre of lawyers will be more than able to comply with Monday's deadline,'' press aide Matthew Benson said late Saturday.
Bladine said the amount each of the three lawyers are charging varies but said it averages out at about $295 an hour.
Mathis, who attended the meeting in Yuma by phone, did not return a call asking about the move.
The decision to retain three lawyers to respond to Brewer is likely to only exacerbate the controversy.
In her letter last week to the commission, the governor questioned an earlier decision to hire those same attorneys as legal counsel for the same three commissioners.
That was to respond to a separate probe of the panel that was being conducted by Attorney General Tom Horne. Brewer said she does not believe there is legal authority to retain multiple attorneys.
Freeman and Stertz did not seek legal help there, either, opting to testify about possible Open Meeting Law violations rather than fighting his authority to question them.
In his comments Saturday, Freeman said spending more money on lawyers to deal with Brewer's concerns "would compound the concerns ... in the governor's letter.'' But he said the issue goes deeper than that.
"The constitution requires the commission to conduct our business in public meetings,'' he said. And Freeman said there is a mandate for commissioners "committing themselves to conduct themselves in a fair and honest and impartial manner and in a manner that would build confidence in the public in the integrity of the process.''
Several of Brewer's allegations relate to the same questions Horne was raising: Did Mathis try to line up votes ahead of time to select Strategic Telemetry as the consultant to help draw the 30 legislative and nine congressional districts. Horne contends that once Mathis spoke to more than one commissioner, even in individual phone calls, she effectively was violating the Open Meeting Law by trying to reach an accord of the majority of the five-member panel.
Brewer also said there were discussions among commissioners, ahead of the public meeting to award a contract, to award a perfect score to that firm which has strong ties to Democratic interests.
"These concerns are not just the governor's,'' Freeman said. "I think that they're shared by a lot of people in the public.''
Freeman said the commissioners themselves should respond to Brewer, without getting more lawyers involved.
"I don't think it's appropriate at this time to take the step of authorizing the expenditure of additional public funds to have additional legal representation for individual commissioners,'' he said.
In a separate vote, the panel directed Mary O'Grady, one of the two staff attorneys, to respond to a separate letter by Brewer questioning some of the decisions the panel made in drawing the congressional districts. What they told O'Grady to tell the governor, though, is not known, as that, too, was discussed behind closed doors.
The other staff attorney, Joe Kanefield, will not be participating in that response. That is because he used to be the governor's chief legal counsel and still represent her, as an attorney in private practice, in several other legal matters.
jezzabella posted at 8:41 am on Sun, Oct 30, 2011.
Jan is following the SARAH playbook. She is slandering, dividing, creating chaos, targeting anyone who doesn't agree with her. And then she will emerge as a victim of the media.
Diogenes Lantern posted at 9:23 am on Sun, Oct 30, 2011.
JezzaBella: That is such a tired ole MoveOn org script! Please update.
The truth is that Mathis was chosen as the Independent Chair to break the vote of 2 Dems and 2 GOP. Mathis donated to Obama and various state democrats. The Mathis ended up with a job in Tucson distributing Obama stimulus dollars (UofA million to study ant colonies). Then Mathis is selected as the Indepedent and the Chair so now the Commission is 3-2.
Mathis then proceeded to Vote Trade, Bid Rigged, desroyed the ballots,etc to get Strategic Telemetry as the mapper. State Law requires the State Procurement Office to vet and sign contracts and they walked from the ST Contract due to the fraud.
Why Strategic Telemetry-who had no prior mapping experience, double the cost, and required three extra subcontractors to show them what to do. Per ST's website (before they scrubbed it) ST does micro-targeting (also called mind Control0 and their Mission Statement is to convert every non-progressive to progressivism. On St's application, they proudly state that their main clients are Obama, MoveOn, state progessive parties, Wisconsin Recall, SEIU, AFL-CIO and other mob-controlled unions. ChicagoLand INC.
So now the MoveOn org created maps help Dems in every district and smash and squash the GOP incumbents into a few districts. The maps are such a farce that it's laughable. The hearings were worthless and just a fraud while the Commissioners listened to hours of minority testimony. "Competetiveness" means that Gilbert and Mesa are too conservative. Make minority protected districts throughout all the state so only Dems win.
The only good news is that if Lewis wins the Pearce Recall, then the uber left has snaked the map around so that the only Lewis will be in the ASU controlled district with ASU"s Schapira-the Dem darling. Lewis will have been used just to get Pearce recalled and then thrown on the garbage heap next year by the progressives.Pearce would work as a lobbyist at much higher salary for a year. Biggs is MUCH tougher than Pearce. Then Pearce has an easy race next November against Crandall.
So JezzaBella, how about some facts. The MoveOnorgers have tried, racist, teabaggers, kill the cops, rich is bad cards so now we are back to the REALLY OLD line about Sarah, who is a private citizen. Why don't you attack Palin's retarded baby as you usually do? Or make racist comments about Herman Cain-our next President? Or that Bachmann is dumb (Phd in Tax law)?
onerebel posted at 4:42 pm on Sun, Oct 30, 2011.
A Democrat wanting something on Taxpayers dollars, when did this start happening?
Masterrogue666 posted at 5:44 pm on Sun, Oct 30, 2011.
"He said it is not "appropriate'' for the panel, which already is paying two law firms to represent the commission as a whole, to shell out more cash for more attorneys." -- Gee, and here I thought Democrats claim to SAVE us money! Triple redundancy at our expense.....
Arizona Willie posted at 7:31 am on Mon, Oct 31, 2011.
Ya gotta love Arizona newspapers. When it comes to innuendo they are the masters. They say the Dems are defending their commission members -- AT PUBLIC EXPENSE -- as though that was some evil thing and the Democrats are committing some ' crime '.
They fail to mention that the Republicans challenging the commissions findings are also using lawyers paid by the taxpayer.
Oh, I see, it's ok for Repubs but evil wrongdoing for Dems.
Darn when did Fox ( unfair and unbalanced and court certified legal liars ) News buy the Tribune?
Guilden_NL posted at 8:58 am on Mon, Oct 31, 2011.
Crooked politicians trying to game our representation, who would have imagined it?
We should adopt an approach across the country where a square grid is laid out. If any inner square doesn't have enough population, it should be expanded until all squares have approximately the same population.
This entire redistricting exercise is a power grab by Liberals who wish to overcome their lack of citizens who buy into their Marxist ideology.
Through out these fake results and use a commonsense approach.