MEMBERS OF THE DOBSON HIGH SCHOOL ROTC PROGRAM MARCHED TODAY IN MESA’S VETERANS DAY PARADE. (Photo by Tony D’Astoli/Tribune)

The organizers of Mesa’s Veterans Day Parade never have enjoyed the same level of support as their counterparts in Phoenix or Tempe — even when the city of Mesa picked up all of the costs of closing  streets, providing traffic control and cleaning up afterward. After the city cut off public funding three years ago because of budget constraints, those organizers have struggled just to keep the event alive. This year, veterans groups were worried because they had raised enough private donations to pay for the parade, but not enough for advertising to invite the public to attend.

After watching today’s parade in downtown Mesa, I’d say those worries were overblown and patriotism is alive and well here. A good crowd filled in both sides of Center Street to clap, cheer and salute as veterans, high school bands and active military rolled by. You can watch a video and a photo slideshow

    (Photo by Le Templar)

A high number of entries made for a long parade, another important sign of support. The only downside was large gaps appeared between groups several times, prompting some people to think the parade was over and wander away. Hopefully, organizers can recruit more volunteers next year to keep the parade closer together and lift up everyone’s interest in watching.

    (Photo by Le Templar)

For more scenes from the parade, you can watch a Tribune video and a photo slideshow.

     MESA MAYOR SCOTT SMITH

When Scott Smith took the mayor’s office in July, he had a goodly amount of optimism about what he could accomplish. He had a new council to work with and, despite the city’s fiscal challenges, some real opportunities ranging from the Riverview/Waveyard region to what’s on the horizon for Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport. The new council quickly agreed to a scaled-down version of a bond package and new property tax before city voters on Nov. 4. And he announced several promising changes in the business climate to launch his administration including expansion of Catepiller dealer Southwest Empire and a new Gaylord luxury resort.

What Smith couldn’t count on what the nationwide freeze in the credit markets in mid-September that put an even bigger brake on the national economy. Combined with already struggling Arizona situation, government tax revenues are taking a nose dive at state and local levels.

So Mesa’s on-going budget problems are going to move the forefront again, and likely will shape whatever legacy that Smith will leave the city. Tribune East Valley editor Patti Epler reported today that Police Chief George Gascon and other city department heads are sounding huge red alarms about coming budget cuts, and Smith only stoked the fire with his comments.

“We’re trying to get everybody in the mindset of not only where can we cut, but how do we do business and what services do we provide and where do we go from here,” Smith said. “We may have to make some basic changes in how we approach things. We need to at least start thinking that way. We don’t want to be caught off guard.”

Epler wasn’t able to learn any details about how big the budget cuts might be. But we can get a sense of what’s going on from neighboring Phoenix, where the City Council could be forced to shrink the general operating budget by more than 20 percent — after already making smaller spending reductions earlier this year.

By this time in 2009, Mesa’s city government could look a lot different, and be a lot smaller, than it is now.

   Politicker.com is an up-and-coming political news Web site based in New Jersey that has a goal of establishing a local presence in all 50 states. It has been running an Arizona-oriented site for a few months. Now, it has posted a list of top 50 “insider” power players. The list is clearly designed to boost Web traffic (Yep, they suckered me in) rather give a clear picture of who can out-muscle whom, since Politicker intentionally excluded all elected officials and former governors from consideration.
   A couple of quick thoughts about the list:
* Lobbyist Kevin DeMenna landing at No. 3 probably is over-inflation because he had a shockingly successful legislative session this year, including passage of the Decades Theme Park near Eloy.
* The brief and uninformative descriptions for a number of insiders on the list imply that the people behind Politicker don’t really know them, but someone Politicker trusts said these people belong on a top 50 list. (Full disclosure: I had not heard of about a dozen of the 50 people on the list, so I couldn’t evaluate whether they are a good fit.)
* Congratulations to Howard Fischer at Capitol Media Services as the only working journalist to make the list at No. 24. But Politicker couldn’t find a photo of him? Fischer works in the media. He owns his own camera and sells pictures to newspapers every day. Just ask him for one, for goodness sake!
* How does Jordan Rose come in at No. 32, but husband Jason Rose doesn’t make the list at all? Does that imply that Jason is all flash and no substance? Couldn’t be.
* Only one Democratic blogger on the list (Michael Bryan from Blog for Arizona at No. 45) seems odd since Arizona Democrats have been more active on the Internet, from what I’ve seen. Two Republican-oriented sites, Espressopundit and Sonoran Alliance, are on the list. My personal choice for another Democrat blogger would have been Ted Prezelski at Rum, Romanism and Rebellion.
* Who else is missing? There’s no one from the Phoenix firefighters union, which in fact is the most influential union in the state. Past union president Billy Shields would have been an obvious choice. And Cathi Herrod from the Center for Arizona Policy certainly belongs on the list, if only because the proposed state amendment to ban gay marriage is the single legislative referendum to be approved by lawmakers and go to voters this year.
   Who would be in your list of Arizona’s most powerful political insiders?

Sen. John McCain (left), President Bush and Cindy McCain (as found at talkradionews.com)

Tribune writer Paul Giblin is reporting that President Bush will be in Phoenix May 27 at a high-roller fund raiser to bring in money for John McCain’s presidential bid and several related groups including the Republican National Committee and state GOP parties in Colorado, Minnesota, New Mexico and Wisconsin.

But not the Arizona Republican Party.

That’s odd because McCain’s home state party apparently could use some help. The Arizona GOP raised only $214,599 through Jan. 31 (the last report available) for state causes and had only $2,594 in cash on hand. Federal reports show the state party had raised $934,051 to support federal candidates as of March 31, and had $129,552 in cash left.

By comparison, the state Democratic Party had raised $934,906 though Jan. 31 for state causes (although it was $289,302 in debt because of additional spending). On the federal side, the Democratic Party had raised a whopping $2.2 million (and spent nearly all of it).

Arizona Republican Party spokesman Tony Reinhard said the local hosts don’t need Bush’s help because McCain will handily defeat the Democrat nominee in November.

“Arizona isn’t in play,” Reinhard said. “We understood that Arizona would be a donor state to help those other states where the race will be more competitive.”

Reinhard said Arizona being snubbed has nothing to do with the fact that McCain and state Republican Party chairman Randy Pullen really, really, really don’t like each other. Pullen has had some rough criticism for Bush and other Republican leaders in the past for being too soft on immigration enforcement.

Pullen’s stance has played well with many grassroots Republicans but has turned off power players who round up the heavy donors. The state party is hoping to overcome that problem Friday night with a major fund-raising dinner and a successful state convention on Saturday, both in Mesa.

The Tribune Editorial Board had an informal debate Friday about the story that Phoenix and the developer of CityNorth on Loop 101 want nearly $690,000 in legal fees from the Goldwater Institute. Goldwater, on the behalf of five small business owners, had sued to stop Phoenix from paying $97 million in subsidies for the $2 billion shopping/office center. But a Maricopa Superior Court judge has sided with Phoenix, saying the subsidy is legal. What follows is a summary of my argument about the legal fee issue, and Editorial Page Editor Bob Satnan responds.

Updated: Clint Bolick, the litigation director of the Goldwater Institute, reacted to our little debate and I’ve added his thoughts at the end.

Le Templar:

This request for legal fees is outrageous and clearly intended to punish the Goldwater Institute for daring to challenge Phoenix’s legal authority to award this crazy subsidy. Along with the developer’s own legal experts, Phoenix used an outside team of lawyers to fight this case, which naturally charged top dollar. While not poor, the Goldwater Institute doesn’t have near the resources of a major American city like Phoenix and shouldn’t be threatened with destitution for exercising its right to ask a judge to intervene on an issue that many other people, including the Tribune Editorial Board, have criticized. Governments should be able to recover legal fees from private citizens only when a lawsuit is blatantly frivolous. Granting these legal fees would send a chilling message that other people shouldn’t challenge government actions, even when it seems obvious such action is illegal or unconstitutional.

Bob Satnan:

When a municipality is sued, the damages don’t come from those who made the decision that sparked the suit; they come from taxpayers. In this case, a judge ruled that Phoenix officials did nothing wrong in relation to the CityNorth deal. The fact that the city recruited experts from outside the municipal legal department doesn’t matter; Phoenix sought the best people to argue the city’s case. And they argued it successfully.Requiring plaintiffs to repay reasonable municipal legal fees only sends a “chilling message” to those whose arguments aren’t strong enough to win. Governments are magnets for lawsuits because they are seen as cash cows – even though that cash comes from taxpayers and is intended to be used for the people’s business. When a municipality is exonerated on its day in court, the people deserve to be reimbursed. If an argument has merit, stand strong and seek justice. If not, be prepared to repay the people.

Clint Bolick:

Thanks to Bob and Le for a thoughtful exchange on attorneys’ fees. There are some people who make a living suing other people and/or government agencies, hoping to make a living off settlements, and I have no sympathy for them. But public interest law, as I see it, is quite different. Generally, we exist to take on cases based on principle, where no one has a sufficient financial stake in the outcome or sufficient resources to litigate. A classic case is eminent domain abuse. In most instances, the people whose land was taken could not afford to hire lawyers to argue whether the taking was for a public use — rather, they paid their attorneys fees from the compensation. Were it not for IJ taking the case, Randy Bailey would have lost his shop, because he could not have taken on the case on his own. So too the taxpayers who are challenging CityNorth could not possibly have the resources to challenge it either in the legislature or the courts without us.

IJ lost the opening round in the Bailey case, just as Goldwater lost the opening round in the CityNorth case.  AZ is odd in that attorney fees are litigated at each level, rather than waiting for a final decision. That raises another relevant aspect of public interest law — typically, the cases are taken to change jurisprudence. In the cases that Goldwater selects, that is because jurisprudence has strayed from the original intent of the Constitution. Governments then keep pushing the bounds of power, as with eminent domain and retail subsidies, which will continue to erode constitutional guarantees unless someone stops them. Usually, the only entity that can push back is a public interest law firm — but more often than not, it will lose in the trial court, because the trial court must operate within the bounds of existing jurisprudence. In many instances, even losing cases shed useful sunshine on abuses of government power that are rectified through democratic processes — but only with the leverage of a lawsuit.

For those reasons, a straight-out loser-pays system would utterly destroy the ability of public interest firms to protect individual rights and restore constitutional boundaries to government power. The CityNorth case raises very important issues under the AZ Constitution. For only ten months of legal work on a single case, the fees sought by the City and the developer far exceed our entire litigation budget for an entire year. Given those economics, challenges of government power would almost never be filed if the public interest firm routinely has to pay if it loses.I hope these observations are useful. As always, we’re grateful to the Tribune for its steadfast support of freedom.