Jack DeBolske: A relentless force
Jack DeBolske, who died this week, had a greater influence on the development of the modern Phoenix metro area than any other figure in our history. More than any governor, senator or member of Congress. More than any mayor or state legislator. That most of you probably have never heard of him is exactly as Jack wanted it. He was a behind-the-scenes guy. But behind the scenes, he was a relentless and inexorable force.
When I tangled and danced with Jack in the 1970s and 1980s, he wore two hats. He was head of the League of Arizona Cities and Towns and the Maricopa Association of Governments, a regional planning agency.
Honest, competent and relatively efficient municipal governments are one of the unheralded economic advantages of the Valley. That’s part of Jack’s legacy. He knew that good government was found in the nitty-gritty of service delivery and sound management. He inculcated that in generations of city professionals.
As I indicated, Jack was both an adversary and a partner. A story to illustrate each.
In 1980, I was a legislative bugler for the Arizona Chamber of Commerce. Shortly after California passed JarvisGann, the Legislature started working on a comprehensive set of tax and spending limits to submit to voters.
The chamber was touting a spending limit for local governments based upon population growth and inflation. Local governments would be given flexibility, including the ability to ask voters for permanent additional spending capacity by adjusting the base. But population growth and inflation would remain the touchstone.
This, obviously, was anathema to the League. Jack was a masterful and creative tactician. Given the prevailing political winds at the time, he knew outright opposition was undoubtedly futile. So, instead, he concocted and promoted what he called a “home rule” option.
The population growth and inflation limit would be the default constraint. But cities could ask their voters to approve an alternative spending limit, which would be in effect for four years, subject to renewal.
The Legislature referred the entire package to the voters, who enshrined it in the state Constitution.
More than three decades later, I don’t think there’s a single Arizona city living under the population growth and inflation limit. All, or virtually all, have adopted home-rule alternatives. Some are pretty brazen: Our spending limit is whatever our council decides to spend.
Despite bucking the prevailing political winds, DeBolske created the exception that swallowed the rule.
In 1984, I had changed uniforms and was toiling for the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce. The MAG proposed property tax bonds to build what was known at that time as the Outer Loop, roughly today’s 101.
Property taxes fell disproportionately on the business community. And some downtown advocates on the chamber board feared the effect of building only the Outer Loop on in-fill. So, I was tasked with working with MAG to develop a funding plan for an entire network of freeways for the Valley.
Jack was game, and thus commenced what seemed an endless series of work sessions in the basement of Jack’s lair at the League.
The combined staffs dusted off a Valley freeway plan that had been developed in the 1960s, updated it and produced some cost figures for it. Finding a revenue source to match was frustrating. The size of the increase in a gas tax or property tax was too big to be politically palatable.
Mostly through a process of elimination, we turned to the sales tax. A half cent did the trick, and that seemed politically doable.
So, Jack and I sallied forth to make the politics work, which it did. The Legislature passed enabling authority. Voters approved the tax in 1985.
And today, rather than a single freeway Valley residents called something different every time it turned a corner, we have a network of freeways that stitch the metro area together.
The birth of the Valley’s freeway system is commonly described as a collaboration between the chamber and the MAG. And in a sense, it was.
But in another sense, it wasn’t. The rest of us were there only because of Jack’s persistence. He was indefatigable in the pursuit of what he thought the Valley needed to improve and progress. Decades of slow or no progress didn’t deter him a bit.
I used to kid Jack that the freeway network should be named the Jack DeBolske Freeway System. His invariable response: So long as it’s not the Jack DeBolske Memorial Freeway System.
Now, that’s exactly what the freeway system, or at least a component of it, should be officially named.