Arizona's First Political Blog

E-mail Anonymous Mike at zonitics4-at-yahoo.com

By Anonymous Mike, pseudonymously.

 
It's a 90's Thing, I Don't Understand

Dear Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon,

I knew you were up for re-election this year but I didn't realize it was coming up so soon, September 11th as of matter of fact. Caught me a little by surprise you see because where I come from, Chandler, we have our city government elections during a more normal time of year.... March.

Anyway the election is a little over 2 months away and the only person I can find who is running against you is political gadfly and Al Sharpton buddy Jarrett Maupin. I imagine that one reason for the lack of challengers is your large campaign fund which I have read is around $575,000.

Well I am a curious person so I wanted to know where you got that money from so I went to the City of Phoenix web site to look up your campaign finance information and this is what I found:

To review specific information about a committee, visit the City Clerk Department at 200 W. Washington St., 15th Floor, Phoenix, AZ.

Mr. Mayor I am less than pleased.

I remember back in the day when the City of Phoenix had one of the best city government web sites in the country. The year was 1994, you might remember back then... it was when Hillary Care was the national rage, Newt Gingrich was an unknown minority whip, and the whole Valley was alive with Buddy Ryan fever. It was also when it was considered leading edge for a Web site to tell you to get into your car and visit a government office if you wanted real information.

This isn't 1994.

Take a look at cities of comparable size. Houston has campaign finance information on-line, Philadelphia has campaign finance information on-line, and of course Maricopa County and the State of Arizona do as well. So why doesn't Phoenix?

Maybe it's all part of your secret plot to generate human traffic in downtown Phoenix because I don't think there's any place I would rather be on a June weekday afternoon than visiting the City Clerk's office in downtown Phoenix digging up information that should have been on-line 10 years ago.

I think Mayor Jarrett would have had this thing done yesterday... I wouldn't underestimate him.
posted by Anonymous Mike at 6:03 PM