Petersen is untouchable; let’s fix that

As Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen sits in jail – beyond the reach of anybody to fire him from his government job – let us pause for a moment to consider one of life’s imponderables:

Why the heck do we elect a tax assessor to appraise property?

Or a clerk to maintain court records? Or a recorder to oversee elections or a county superintendent to do whatever it is he does for the schools? (Quick, can you name him?)

Why do we elect a treasurer to invest the county’s money and pay the county’s bills?

These are administrative jobs best left in the hands of professionals, not politicians.

Yet Maricopa County and the rest of Arizona’s counties always have had these mini-fiefdoms, elected “row officers” who are unaccountable to anyone other than voters.

Untouchable when they ... oh I don’t know ... show up for work just 53 days of the year or when they are indicted in three states on charges of buying and selling babies.

Voters put them in office, and it appears only voters can give them the old heave-ho.

His attorney said Petersen has no plans to resign, never mind that he will have no time to work at his day job, the one that presumably requires his presence outside a jail cell.

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has its lawyers investigating whether there is any way to get rid of Petersen short of a voter recall – a costly process that would take months – or waiting until next year’s general election when he could be replaced.

There is ARS 38-291, which says an office is considered vacant if a public official is absent from the state without legislative permission “beyond the period of three consecutive months.”

That still means three more months of paying Petersen his $76,600 county salary to do nothing. Three more months of paying benefits and contributing to his county pension in the

Elected Officials’ Retirement Plan.

This, while he defends himself against 62 charges ranging from human trafficking to ripping off Arizona taxpayers by fraudulently signing up 28 pregnant women from the Marshall Islands for Arizona’s Medicaid program. Galling doesn’t even begin to cover it. There may not be much that anyone can do right now to get rid of Petersen, but we can make sure this never happens again.

Decades ago, there was an attempt to refashion Maricopa County government, moving from a system in which the county is a weak arm of the Legislature to a system of “home rule,” governed by a charter approved by voters. The proposal called for the assessor and other county “row officers” to be appointed rather than elected.

But the proposal was defeated in 1996 after opponents warned it could lead to a tax increase and the county’s seven “row officers” – the assessor, clerk, recorder, superintendent and treasurer

plus county attorney and sheriff – lined up to defend their turf, predicting all manner of shenanigans if professionals rather than politicians held the jobs.

“I think I would have been fired three years ago if I were appointed,” thenMaricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said at the time. “There would be no tents, no pink underwear, no green baloney. No nothing.”

Assuming Assessor Petersen will be appraising precious little property while locked up awaiting trial first in Arkansas then later in Arizona and Utah, it’s clear that Maricopa County needs to get rid of this guy.

Only we can’t, not anytime soon. Still, I like to think that something positive could come from this debacle.

The county Board of Supervisors should initiate the process of asking voters whether they want to convert some of these jobs to appointive posts, eliminating the mini-fiefdoms that make it virtually impossible to get rid of officeholders who don’t – or can’t – show up for work.

Sadly, it can’t happen soon enough to rid us of Petersen but never again should we be in the position of having to pay an official while he sits in jail.