The latest backstep in our local water-politics tango comes as the accordion plays the Verde River Basin Partnership theme. The interim committee of the Partnership invites the Tri-City mayors to dance. The mayors decline, disliking the Partnership’s structure. They claim it doesn’t fit the choreography of the Great Accordion-player, Sen. John McCain, when he crafted the law creating the Partnership. The interim committee disputes the mayors’ version of the steps. The dancers eye each other mistrustfully.

Will somebody please call the senator?

Let's Dance

The Verde River Basin Partnership (VRBP) sprang up a year ago when McCain brought the U.S. Senate the details of a land exchange allowing Yavapai Ranch owner/developer Fred Ruskin to consolidate land holdings by swapping his scattered tracts for National Forest lands. Congress passed it, President Bush signed it, and “The Northern Arizona Land Exchange and Verde River Basin Partnership Act of 2005” legislation awarded Ruskin substantial acreage in the Verde Valley.

McCain, responding to citizen anxiety about growth in the Verde Valley and its impact on water and expressing concerns of his own, wrote a “Title II” into the exchange legislation. It’s this Title II that authorizes the creation of a Verde River Basin Partnership to work on Verde watershed protection and water management issues. Along with the unique geography under its wing, what distinguishes this group from others is the $8 million it stands to receive in U.S. Department of Agriculture grants to study the basin’s hydrology and come up with scenarios and options for management.

So, last February a large group of interested people assembled in Camp Verde. Attendees included representatives from the Prescott area, Verde Valley, and other municipalities; three counties; Federal and state agencies; Northern Arizona University; local and national environmental groups; private water companies and more -- a very broad spectrum of water-concerned groups. Many of them have met regularly since then, as an interim organization, to decide on the Partnership’s final form. Over the past month, the charter members have hammered out a plan for the organization’s structure, including (the trickiest step) who gets to lead by voting in the executive committee.

The leaders become wallflowers

However, in March Prescott City Council member Bob Roecker made it clear that the Prescott area cities did not approve of the structure as it was taking shape. City representatives and the Yavapai County supervisors met to discuss what they want the  Partnership’s structure to be, and their objections have surfaced again this month as the VRBP finalized its own structure. The mayors feel that voting in the Partnership’s executive committee should be proportional, weighted according to the population of each city, and that elected representatives should take the major (originally they said “the only”) voting role in the committee. They maintain that these were Sen. McCain’s intentions in authorizing the Partnership.

Over the past two weeks, the Tri-Cities’ councils have met to hear presentations of the proposed Partnership structure so they can decide whether to join or to continue to sit it out. The first meeting convened in Prescott Valley on Nov. 2, when John Munderloh, Water Resources Manager of the Town of Prescott Valley, reported to his Town Council. He recapped the VRBP’s history, describing “a big difference of opinion” over the Partnership’s structure between “a large number of special interest groups” and the Tri-Cities. “The ad hoc group looking into the development of this structure went one direction and the communities went the other,” he said.

The 'PV' tango

Munderloh referred to McCain’s July 5 “Town Hall” meeting in Prescott, when the senator urged the mayors to join the Partnership. McCain had made a comment that Munderloh now partially quoted to the council, that the legislation intended “a very significant role” for local officials. (McCain added “though not to the exclusion of others,” but Munderloh omitted that from his quotation.) Two weeks after that July meeting, McCain sent a follow-up letter to the mayors. The letter, like Title II, referred to the Upper San Pedro Partnership (USPP), one of a few similar groups that exist in Arizona to work on watershed issues. The dispute now centers on how closely McCain intended the Verde partnership to resemble that for the San Pedro River.

In Munderloh’s opinion, McCain wants the VRBP modeled exactly on the USPP. Munderloh also asserted that, “significantly, [the USPP] includes proportional weighting of the vote based on population.” But what McCain actually wrote was:
“I have encouraged all of those working on the Verde River Basin Partnership’s establishment to learn from the experiences of this sister organization. It is my hope and indeed my expectation that the [VRBP] will be comprised of a knowledgeable group of balanced interests similar to those that comprise the Upper San Pedro Partnership.”

Unfortunately, neither McCain’s letter nor Title II spells out how to structure the Partnership.

The 'Fear of Tango' tango

Munderloh noted that, if the Tri-Cities join as proposed, elected officials would have 40% weight in voting; he called this “a far cry from McCain’s ‘very significant involvement’ directive.” This prospect clearly created anxiety in the Prescott Valley Town Council, and Town Manager Larry Tarkowski worried that without population-proportional voting, PV would have a minority vote, with “folk that are not elected representatives” obligating town funds.

Council members spoke up. Lora Lee Nye said that because there was a departure from McCain’s proposal, “special interest groups” would predominate in decision-making; “all we’re doing is trying to protect our citizens.” Fran Schumacher preferred to work with the committee to express Prescott Valley’s concerns and seek consensus; Harold Wise thought “we should keep working, but we need to protect our own.” Mayor Skoog feared that “self-serving special interest groups” could “commit the town to things we would feel not in our best interest.”

The Mayor did not identify those “special interest groups.” In his presentation, Munderloh had noted that over time “the ‘ad hoc group’ did make some headway in dealing with the large number of special interest groups, but they have not by any means addressed Sen. McCain’s directive on how to structure this Verde Basin Partnership.”

Sen. McCain, not appearing alarmed by the non-elected entities in the VRBP, closed his July letter by noting, “Some of the best water experts in Arizona are associated with the Verde River Basin Partnership. I am hopeful that the combined efforts of all the knowledgeable individuals who are taking an interest in this special opportunity will promote greater State and local water planning efforts.”

The 'Won't Hurt to Tango' tango

The PV council didn’t get to hear the Partnership’s perspective on McCain’s intentions, but on Nov. 7 the Prescott City Council heard two points of view. First to speak was Clarkdale Mayor Doug Von Gausig, who chairs the Partnership’s committee on structure. (Von Gausig will give his presentation to Prescott Valley this week.)

Von Gausig told Read It Here that he sees a clear advantage to joining the Partnership. “What it gives the Town of Clarkdale is a potential $8 million grant that we can use to study what our water situation is, where we can drill, what some likely scenarios are  -- studies I can’t afford to do alone as the Mayor of Clarkdale,” he said.

In his presentation, Von Gausig worked to calm the anxieties expressed in Prescott Valley. He outlined the Partnership’s only two tasks: 1. to create a “water budget” for the Verde watershed, calculating how much water enters it and how much leaves, and 2. to produce recommendations for management tools local governments might adopt with their citizens’ approval. He emphasized that the legislation in no way grants the Partnership, which has no regulatory function, authority over water. Addressing PV Town Manager Tarkowski’s concern, Von Gausig responded, “We know that nobody can obligate funds without a vote of the Council.”

Although Title II is a typical piece of flabby, imprecise Congressional prose and does include the word “implementation,” it closes with this language: “Nothing in this title diminishes or expands State or local jurisdiction, responsibilities, or rights with respect to water resource management or control.”

Somebody called the accordion player

Regarding McCain’s intentions, Von Gausig said that he had called the senator’s office, speaking a number of times with McCain’s aide Carlos Sierra, who searched the senator’s records and found no expression of any desire that the VRBP strictly follow the Upper San Pedro Partnership model. (Von Gausig put it more vividly a few days later: “Carlos told me point blank that the senator never has said he wants the VRBP to fashion itself in the image of the USPP.”) Von Gausig told Prescott City Council the USPP actually has features that would not sit well with our local mayors -- it can set policy, for example. He also challenged Munderloh’s statement about population-proportional voting in the USPP.

“It is often claimed that the USPP (see sidebar) uses proportional representation, but that is not true,” Von Gausig said. Sierra Vista and Fort Huachuca do get extra votes, he said, but it’s because they contribute more money to their Partnership, not because of greater population.

Von Gausig presented a chart comparing membership in the USPP’s advisory commission with the plan that the Verde Partnership has adopted. This version is the fruit of months of discussion and negotiation, during which the structure planners did take into account the elected officials’ concerns. “We recognize that there’s a manifest change coming in membership,” Von Gausig said.

Von Gausig noted that many of the state and Federal agencies in both the Verde and San Pedro partnerships have chosen not to exercise their votes, giving the 14 elected officials’ votes a greater percentage of the voting total.

The environmental category, “always a bugaboo,” said Von Gausig, receives one vote for all local groups combined, and one for national groups. There are similar one-vote “caucuses” for other interest groups.

Mayor Von Gausig ended by strongly confirming the Partnership’s desire to include the Tri-Cities. He repeated that the VRBP’s main product will be scientific information, with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) as the “gold standard” of studies it will request. He emphasized that the best way for the City of Prescott to affect the Partnership is to join it. “Why do we need you?” he asked the Council. “So long-term management options will reflect your needs.”

The 'Prescott' tango

Council member Bob Roecker spoke next, calling Mayor Von Gausig “a terrific guy” and expressing his respect. “However.” He paused. “I see it differently from the ad hoc [interim] committee.” Roecker is the Council member with the most official involvement in water issues, recently serving as co-chair of the Water Advisory Council (WAC), a Yavapai County organization reporting to the Board of Supervisors. Despite the Partnership’s different geographic base and access to Federal funding, Supervisor Carol Springer has expressed concern that the VRBP will duplicate WAC efforts. (The Supervisors initially considered not joining the

Partnership, but joined provisionally in July, for six months.)
Roecker continued his presentation: “I do want to say, I can’t speak for others on the Council, but we do want to participate,” he said. “It’s in our best interests.” He then presented what he called “the city’s position,” acknowledging later that, as Council has not yet voted on the issue of joining the Partnership, this is not official. He said, however, that it represents wide-ranging agreement. He thenquoted McCain regarding the elected officials’ “major role…to ensure that the local area communities’ interests are represented to the greatest extent possible.” Roecker called this McCain’s “key directive.”

Prescott, Roecker went on, urges the committee to accept a structure modeled exactly, not partially, on the San Pedro organization. The City is “willing to embrace that concept as a compromise in the interest of fulfilling the goals of the VRBP,” even though it falls short of Prescott’s original elected-officials-only proposal. That concept includes “equal representation of stakeholders based on population … [in] the governing committee.” Roecker later said that he too had talked with McCain aide Carlos Sierra, who had not provided any confirmation one way or the other on the senator’s position on the issue.

At the end of his talk Roecker acknowledged that the Partnership would not make policy, but cautioned that future management policy will be made on the basis of studies the group commissions, so a base in elected representation would be important. He affirmed that U.S. Geological Survey studies should be the “gold standard” for research, saying he would like to see them do all the research.

Should we cut in?

City Council members offered questions and comments. Jim Lamerson suggested joining the group to keep an eye on what they’re doing. Mary Ann Suttles asked who would be voting (that is, would some agencies refrain). Roecker said he wasn’t sure who would or wouldn’t vote, but the City favored the population-proportional vote as “a fair and accurate way.” He then noted that the San Pedro Partnership bases voting on funding, adding, “I suggest that we should vote on population.”

Mayor Rowle Simmons expressed concern that “we’re still in the minority,” mentioning environmental groups. Von Gausig replied, “[That] was true until two or three months ago, but now there are only two votes ceded to those organizations -- for exactly the reason that’s on your mind.” He emphasized that the VRBP is a data-gathering, scientific group, not an environmental organization.
Roecker commented that the Partnership has formed itself “from the bottom up,” adding, “We need to get hold of this so we can get it formed from the top -- not just by people who are interested in water per se. Once we get it done that way, we can do a lot of good… I’m confident we can get this thing together as long as we can get this structure set from the top.”

Bob Luzius spoke in favor of joining. He said, “I understand that much of getting funding hinges on participation, is that correct?” Von Gausig confirmed that.
Von Gausig later presented his case to the Chino Valley Town Council, with similar results. Chino Valley Water Resource Manager Mark Holmes presented the town’s position there, reading Title II as allowing the Partnership to implement policies, and asserting that a recently completed USGS report has already performed a water budget for the Verde basin, making the new one called for in Title II a waste of taxpayer dollars. He pointed out that Yavapai County is “out voted/not represented by a 3 to 1 vote,” the other three being the other counties in the Verde watershed, just as the Prescott area cities are “outvoted” by other cities in the watershed.

Stepping on toes

Doug Von Gausig is frustrated at the cities’ reasons for not wanting to join the Partnership. He finds their insistence on proportional representation disingenuous, considering that they are already members of other water organizations that do not work that way.

As for McCain’s USPP comments, Von Gausig believes the Verde group has followed that partnership’s steps as closely as McCain intended. McCain, he says, “has always  “encourage[d] us to look at another successful partnership dealing with water and to learn from their successes as well as their failures. We have done just that.”

The real issue, in Von Gausig’s view, is the pipeline project to import water from the Big Chino area. He believes Prescott and Prescott Valley don’t want the VRBP to succeed because they are afraid its studies might block the project by showing its potential environmental harm, when they should look at it as “an organization to help [the cities] gather the information they need to effectively mitigate their pumpage.” Asking, “Aren’t we all special interests?” he feels the mayors use “special interests” as code for “environmental groups.”

Bob Roecker questions the authority of the current group to declare itself the Partnership and determine its constitution. It hasn’t been officially recognized, he says; according to the legislation, the Secretary of Agriculture will make that determination when the group applies for grants, by funding them. Or not.
Roecker said there would always be mistrust among parties to any Arizona water issue, but he also told me, “I think it’s going to work out, it has to work out. I want this to work out as much as anybody else on the other side of the mountain.”

The last tango: In D.C.?

The VRBP has decided on its structure and voting arrangements. Now the city councils will consider the offer to join, then put it on their respective meeting agendas for a vote. If they decline, one of two things will happen: either the Partnership will go on without their input, or the Federal agencies will decline to fund it because the Tri-Cities refuse to participate. Can it be that the only settlement of this disagreement will be a direct statement from Sen. McCain of his intentions for the Partnership’s structure? I suspect he really hopes all the interested parties will resolve the issue on their own. So far, he hasn’t returned my phone calls.

One thought of Sen. McCain’s that no one disputes is the gravity of the problem at hand. The communities, he wrote in his July letter to the mayors, “are challenged with the crucial task of managing a shared but limited water supply in the face of drought and rapid population growth -- a challenge that you know well in your capacity as Mayor. We can and must do more to strike a balance between these forces by employing a collaborative, science-based decision making body that will advance essential planning and management at the State and local level.”

Comments (1)

... : ziggyfly Thank you for the indepth coverage. November 17, 2006

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