Recorders, Reagan spar over funding
It’s Reagan vs. recorders, again. This time, the dispute between Secretary of State Michele Reagan and the 15 county elections officials in Arizona is over who’s to blame for letting lapse a committee that makes sure the voterregistration database keeps working.
But it’s really about simmering tensions over the coming creation of a new statewide voter-registration system — and who will be in charge.
“I think the counties got tired of being pushed around,” said F. Ann Rodriguez, the Pima County recorder.
Recorders were offended, Rodriguez said, when state Elections Director Eric Spencer told them in 2015 that the agreements between Reagan’s of-
fice and the recorders on maintenance costs for the system “wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.”
Ever since, the committee hasn’t met. No one has tried to revive it, until now.
Today, the VRAZ II committee, labeled for the shorthand name for the statewide Voter Registration System, will meet in Phoenix and outline how to pay for the system’s ongoing maintenance. The county recorders organized the meeting in late April and notified Reagan.
Matt Roberts, a spokesman for Reagan, said it’s “ridiculous” that the county recorders are trying to blame Reagan for the lack of a meeting. Payments for the system upkeep have continued to flow since 2015, he said.
The registration system is operating well, Roberts said, taking updates as new registrations are filed and as voters file such things as new addresses or party registrations.
But most counties stopped payments this year, Rodriguez said. The agreement her office had with the Secretary of State’s Office expired at the end of 2016, and she hasn’t made her payment of $95,000.
Newly elected recorders in five counties have questioned the arrangement.
Currently, the counties and the state split the estimated annual maintenance cost of $820,000. The Secretary of State’s Office pays 25 percent, according to a 2011 agreement, while the counties share the remaining 75 percent, with Maricopa County picking up about $400,000.
Patty Hansen, the Coconino County recorder, said she continued to make her maintenance payment out of goodwill. But the threat of withholding payment is what forced Reagan’s office to agree to a meeting scheduled for this morning.
“It’s how we’re getting them to the table to discuss moving forward,” said Hansen, who is president of the Arizona County Recorders Association.
David Stevens, the newly elected recorder in Cochise County, called the meeting an important step toward clarifying how costs are divided and who is responsible for what, especially as the state moves toward a new system.
“This is probably the biggest meeting of the year for us,” Stevens said. “We’re sort of flailing in the wind.”
It’s one of a series of disagreements between Arizona’s elections officials.
Earlier this year, the recorders sent Reagan a letter complaining about Spencer’s behavior, which they described as “ineffective and disrespectful.” (They said subsequent interactions have vastly improved.)
The recorders also objected to a change Reagan’s office slipped into an elections-related bill during the legislative session. They complained the bill would give the Secretary of State’s Office more authority over precinct information that the recorders contend is their domain.
The bill was passed and signed into law.
And in March, Reagan asked the attorney general for an opinion on who can access certain information in the registration databases of Maricopa and Pima counties.
The counties see that as an affront to their authority to run their own databases. The opinion is pending.
The VRAZ II committee was created more than a decade ago, when former Gov. Jan Brewer was still secretary of state. Reagan’s office is not the only one with questions about it, though.
Virginia Ross, the newly elected recorder in Pinal County, wrote to Reagan’s office questioning the legality of the committee because its bylaws were never formally agreed to by her county board of supervisors.
In addition to a financial agreement for the current system, Thursday’s meeting is likely to prompt discussions on how to pay for the nextgeneration system, which is the subject of a bid request that Reagan’s office issued last month.
That system is not expected to go online until at least 2019.
Reagan has pushed the idea of a single system, and has questioned why the state’s two largest counties — Maricopa and Pima — run their own systems while sharing data with the state. Those counties have said they have invested heavily in their systems and don’t see the need for abandoning them or for creating a newer one.
Smaller counties are nervous that the larger counties will cut back their contributions to the future system, leaving them with bigger bills.