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Joyce Clark Unfiltered

For "the rest of the story"

Barrel council district candidates are similar to that of Cholla district candidates. Some are articulate and exhibit varying degrees of intelligence. Some are passionate and believe that they want to be part of the solution with regard to Glendale’s financial difficulties. I congratulate them for their willingness to put themselves before the voters to be weighed and measured on the issues of the day. Choices among the 5 candidates will be based on the information publicly available to date that was used in the previous blogs about each candidate.

John Benjamin filed a No Activity Campaign Finance Report. Michael Patino has one contribution of $200 and has no expenditures. Reginald Martinez raised a little over $1,000 and the bulk of his expenses were for printing and refreshments for volunteers who gathered his petition signatures. Bart Turner and Randy Miller have received a few individual contributions. Randy Miller is self funded to date. All have done minimal fund raising. It is surprising that none of the candidates appears to be reaching out to their constituency for campaign support to date. It just may be that candidates prefer to reveal their contributors in later Finance Reports as a means of keeping that information from their opponents.

It is extremely difficult for the voter to determine how each Barrel candidate stands on a particular issue. Benjamin, Martinez and Patino have no websites. While each candidate may have developed campaign literature that they pass out or mail to the voters, it is just that, voter specific, and may not reach the entire Barrel district voter universe. Turner has a website but there is no publicly available information offered on his positions on Glendale’s issues. Miller has the most robust website and clearly takes a stand on Glendale’s finances. He regularly attends city council meetings and uses the public comment period to discuss issues such as the debt and the sales tax sunset.

Miller acknowledges that Glendale has financial problems and he supports the sunset of the sales tax increase in 2017. He offers several strategies for the reduction of Glendale’s debt including a thorough assessment of Glendale’s O&M costs.  None of the other Barrel candidates have publicly available material that would indicate their positions.

All have lived in the Barrel district for a minimum of 4 years and some have lived in Glendale for far longer but not in the Barrel district. Miller and Turner are self employed and that does provide them the flexibility they need to fulfill a councimember’s responsibilities. The others appear to have regular job commitments that could make it difficult to attend to councilmember meetings and duties.

Only Turner has served on Glendale’s boards and commissions but that may not play in his favor. His interaction with staff may make him more sympathetic to the current staff agenda. Miller recognizes that the relationship between staff and council is broken and seeks more staff openness. He has already demonstrated his willingness to “do his homework” on the issues and to ask meaningful questions.

The candidate picks for the Barrel district are in stark contrast to one another in terms of philosophies of governance. Those voters who are supportive of the status quo should look to Turner. Those voters who are supportive of change and realistic alternative solutions should consider Miller.

It seems safe to assume that with 5 candidates no one will take the Barrel councilmember seat out right in the Primary Election. The two top candidates will face off in the General Election in November. It is not an easy decision for any voter but based upon information publicly available to everyone, this writer’s picks for the Barrel district are:

           John Benjamin

           Reginald Martinez

   checkmark__bottomheavy_140  Randy Miller

           Michael Patino

  checkmark__bottomheavy_140    Bart Turner

© Joyce Clark, 2014

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Please note: Some of the information presented here is repetition of information from my previous blogs on the Cholla candidates and applies to all candidates. Some of you reading this blog for the first time may not have read the previous ones.

If you have relatives, friends or acquaintances that live in the Barrel district, please consider passing this series of blogs on to them as another tool to help them evaluate the Barrel candidates prior to casting their vote.

Early ballots are mailed at the end of July, 2014. Candidates (well, most of them) have their websites up, are raising campaign money (or not) and beginning to stake out their positions on Glendale issues.

We move on to the Barrel district council candidates in alphabetical order: John Benjamin, Reginald Martinez, Michael Patino, Randy Miller and Bart Turner. Three of these candidates will be reviewed together and Miller and Turner will be reviewed separately.

All of the information to be discussed will be based on the candidates’ websites and their June 30, 2014 Campaign Finance Reports. Some of the candidates I had met previously and am familiar with their positions on various issues. Others I have never met and so I arranged an interview with them.

We’ll take a look at each candidate’s Campaign Finance Report of June 30, 2014. Here is the link to Glendale City Clerk’s posting of each candidate finance report: http://www.glendaleaz.com/Clerk/2014PoliticalCommitteeCampaignFinanceReports.cfm . Go to that page and you can choose which candidate’s campaign finance report you wish to read.

Each report totals 19 pages. The first 2 pages are summary pages. Section A will show all contributions from individuals. Section B shows all political committee contributions. Section C shows loans either the candidate made to the campaign or any other loan received. Section D deals with all expenditures. Section E is for In-Kind contributions and Section F shows miscellaneous items.

This could be considered nit-picky but the finance report is 19 pages. Each candidate’s report should consist of a minimum of 19 pages (there may be multiple pages especially in Sections A and D). Some candidates did not submit the minimal 19 pages. It could be assumed that if they had no financial activity to report in certain areas they just did not bother to include those pages. Technically, that is not a complete report. All pages should be submitted and if there was no activity to report in certain categories, the candidate can leave the page blank, draw a line through the page or indicate “NA,” no activity. Even if a candidate has a treasurer who fills out the report the candidate is still ultimately responsible for the accuracy and veracity of his or her filing.

There is another kind of Campaign Finance Report a candidate can submit and that is a No Activity Statement. That means the candidate didn’t receive any contributions and did not spend any money. Some of the council candidates filed this kind of report.

The items to look for are: what individuals are contributing; are they Glendale residents, relatives, attorneys or other professionals; or Political Action Committees (PACs)? Did the candidate loan his or her campaign any money? How much? Are the expenditures typical of a campaign; signs, printing, bank charges, food for fund raising events or volunteers; web site design or hosting? Is the candidate using a paid political consultant? At what cost?

At this stage of the game candidates are often reluctant to reveal too much about their finances. They may ask that large contributions be made after June 1, 2014 to be reported in the Pre-Primary Report or after August 15, 2014 for the Post-Primary Report.

John Benjamin

Campaign Finance Report – He submitted a “No Activity” campaign finance report. That means that he has not collected any campaign contributions or made a loan to his campaign committee. He reports no expenditures. Please remember, Mr. Benjamin ultimately bears the responsibility for the accuracy and veracity of his report.

Campaign contribution limits have become very generous as a result of recent court rulings. In the last election of 2012, the individual contribution limit was $400. Now it is $2,500. A political committee’s limit is now $2,500 and a Super PAC’s limit is $5,000. The trick for local candidates is to get large contributions. It’s not an easy task.

Campaign website — He has no website and no campaign signs. He has not paid for the printing of any campaign literature. There is no publicly available information on a website offering his positions on Glendale’s issues.

As of this date, he should not be considered a serious contender for the Barrel district city council seat and consequently I did not meet with him.

Reginald Martinez

Campaign Finance Report – He submitted all 19 pages of the report. He did make one error in reporting. Schedule A has a column labeled “Cumulative total this campaign to date.” It wants the total amount of money that an individual has given to the candidate’s campaign as of the date of filing. That column is not to be used as a running total of all contributions received from all individuals. It’s the first time that I have seen a candidate misunderstand the instructions provided for filling out the Campaign Report.

He reports 3 individual Glendale contributions totaling to date $350. $200 of that amount is from the candidate and is not a loan. There are a total of 15 contributors. 9 are from acquaintances and friends at the Phoenix Union High School District totaling $1,050, where the candidate works; 2 are from Darshak Law totaling $100; and 1 is from attorney Nick Wood in the amount of $200. There is one in-kind contribution reported from Aniset Rodriguez of La Tolteca Restaurant in the amount of $250 for food for a fundraising event. Please remember, Mr. Martinez ultimately bears the responsibility for the accuracy and veracity of his report.

Campaign contribution limits have become very generous as a result of recent court rulings. In the last election of 2012, the individual contribution limit was $400. Now it is $2,500. A political committee’s limit is now $2,500 and a Super PAC’s limit is $5,000. The trick for local candidates is to get large contributions. It’s not an easy task.

Mr. Martinez’ campaign expenditures are usual and ordinary: supplies and printing. One item of note is a cumulative total of $211.76 (or 25%) of $894.16 in total expenditures was spent on food for volunteers who presumably collected his petition signatures.

Campaign website – Mr. Martinez has no campaign website. There is no publicly available information on a website regarding his positions on Glendale issues. He declined a meeting invitation. As of this date, he should not be considered a serious contender for the Barrel district city council seat.

 

Michael Patino

Campaign Finance Report – All 19 pages were submitted. Mr. Patino reported one individual campaign contribution in the amount of $200 from J.D. Campbell of Peoria. Please remember, Mr. Patino ultimately bears the responsibility for the accuracy and veracity of his report.

Campaign contribution limits have become very generous as a result of recent court rulings. In the last election of 2012, the individual contribution limit was $400. Now it is $2,500. A political committee’s limit is now $2,500 and a Super PAC’s limit is $5,000. The trick for local candidates is to get large contributions. It’s not an easy task.

Mr. Patino reported no expenditures of any kind.

Campaign website – Mr. Patino has no website. There is no publicly available information on a website regarding his positions on Glendale issues. As of this date, he should not be considered a serious contender for the Barrel district city council seat and consequently I did not meet with him.

After review of all 4 Barrel district candidates we’ll try to narrow the choices down to 2 people. In this district, as with the other council races, there are so many candidates none of them are expected win outright in the primary and we can expect a run off in the general election in November.  Next up, Randy Miller.

© Joyce Clark, 2014

FAIR USE NOTICE

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which is in accordance with Title 17 U.S. C., Section 107. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democratic, scientific and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Section 107 of the US Copyright Law and who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use,’ you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.