Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry (left) and Sheriff Mark Napier

In a newly published analysis, Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry admitted that county taxpayers have been saddled with a significant fiscal burden due to the county’s accepting certain federal grants to the Sheriff’s Department. The detailed analysis applies to the Operation Stonegarden grants (OPSG), but Huckelberry made it clear that other federal grants have similar impacts, specifically mentioning the Gang Intelligence Immigration Team Enforcement Mission (GIITEM). In his December 10 memo to the Pima County Board of Supervisors, Long Term Fiscal Impact of Federal and/or State Grants that Pay Personnel Services in Only Overtime, Huckelberry wrote:

Many of the proponents of funding OPSG have said the County should not ”turn down" free money. Based on this analysis, there is no ”free money” and acceptance of any OPSG funding, based on the current structure, is at a financial detriment to local taxpayers.



It is clear, accepting $1 of OPSG overtime costs the local taxpayers approximately $6 or more in long term pension obligations. … Without the Sheriff clearly indicating a strategy to minimize these long term fiscal impacts, acknowledgment that the federal funding law needs to be changed to allow a more flexible application for providing local law enforcement personnel services and the allowance of indirect expenses, I cannot and will not recommend and [sic] future acceptance of OPSG funding. [emphasis added]

This represents an abrupt reversal for Huckelberry, who had previously recommended that the Board of Supervisors accept the grants. As detailed in a diary I published last year, the Board overrode his recommendation in 2018 by rejecting the OPSG grant, with all three Democrats on the five-member Board voting to reject.

That changed in 2019, when Democratic Supervisor Sharon Bronson, who had previously said “our deputies should not participate in a federal program whose stated goal is to proactively engage them in immigration enforcement,” voted to accept the grant provided certain conditions were met, including repurposing part of the grant money toward humanitarian aid for refugees. (quotation source: Arizona Daily Star, September 2, 2018)

In both 2018 and 2019, progressive activist groups and immigrants’ rights groups advanced several arguments for rejecting the OPSG grant:

The grant money is not “free money.” It comes with strings attached. It requires our deputies to collaborate with Border Patrol and ICE.

Our communities are less safe when immigrants know that local law enforcement collaborates with Border Patrol and ICE. Crimes are less likely to be reported. Witnesses are less likely to come forward. Consequently, criminals remain at large who could have been apprehended.

It is not the mission of county sheriff’s deputies to enforce federal immigration policy.

There are more than 4500 Border Patrol agents in the Tucson Sector and fewer than 200 sheriff’s deputies available for patrol duty. The Border Patrol should do their own work. They have much greater resources.

Federal immigration policy is immoral. We should not be enforcing it under any circumstances.

Farther down the list, but still important, was the fiscal argument. The Board discussed in broad terms the idea that the county was incurring additional expense by accepting the grants, but there were no specifics. No one seems to have known that the liability was at least $6.00 for each grant dollar accepted. Indeed, after the memo was published, the Arizona Daily Star reported:

In an interview, Huckelberry said it confirmed a long-held “inkling that funding overtime, particularly Operation Stonegarden, was a contributor to our excess pension obligation costs.”

My question for Mr. Huckelberry is “What took you so long?” I’ll be looking for an opportunity to ask him soon. If he had long held an inkling, to the point of raising it during Board discussions, why was this analysis not done years ago? It might have changed the minds of conservative and moderate supervisors.

In fact, one would have thought that avowed fiscal conservative Republican Supervisor Steve Christy, for example, would have voted against accepting the grant for fiscal reasons, but no, even after Huckelberry revealed the actual cost, Christy still defended his repeated votes for the grants. As reported in the Green Valley News:

Christy was among the three supervisors – along with Sharon Bronson and Ally Miller – who approved the Stonegarden grant this year. Christy said he disagreed that Stonegarden is dead or that the county should stop accepting the grant. “I think there's an element who want to attack and remove the autonomy of the Sheriff's Department and control it,” he said. “And they're using this as something to fan the fire with even though it's existed for over a dozen years.” Christy said it doesn't make sense to him that after all these years of accepting the grant that overtime is an issue when it has always been there. “I think this really smacks of politics,” he said.

I have a personal connection with this ongoing story. I led one of the activist groups opposing the Stonegarden grant this year and in 2018, and I’m running to replace Steve Christy on the Board in next year’s election. If I’m elected, I’ll continue to oppose any federal grants that require sheriff’s deputies to collaborate with Border Patrol and ICE.

For more about my campaign, see my November diary, Running for Office in a Red District, Purple State.

This district leans significantly Republican. Republicans are used to running unopposed. I’ll be the first Democrat on the ballot here since 1996. I’m going to need all the help I can get. Arizona is widely considered to be an important swing state in 2020. Strong downballot campaigns like mine can help energize voters to turn out.

Please consider donating to my campaign via ActBlue.

Have a look at my website and my Facebook page for more info. You can also follow my campaign on Twitter.