The following is an AZPM original production.

From the radio studios of AZPM, welcome to the latest edition of The Press Room.

I'm Steve Goldstein.

Coming up, Project Blue takes a significant step forward, but that doesn't mean the fight over the data center is finished.

Plus, Arizona joins a lawsuit over a $100,000 fee on H-1B visas.

A panel of journalists joins me to discuss those and other stories next on The Press Room.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) And welcome to The Press Room.

I'm Steve Goldstein, journalists joining me on the program today are Yana Kunichoff of AZ Luminaria, Dylan Smith of the Tucson Sentinel, Alisa Reznick of KJZZ and Nick Rommel of AZPM News.

Thank you all for being here.

Gosh, Dylan, Project Blue, something has been going on here for a while.

But anyway, let's talk about what happened this week.

Pima County Board of Supervisors took more action, not surprising a three- to-two vote again, but what was so significant about this latest vote and getting us closer to Christmas Eve, which Beale infrastructure seems to be fixated on?

Well, Beale, the developers of the data center want to close the deal.

They pulled the trigger a little over a month ago, saying, hey, we want to actually buy this, despite the certain conditions about the city annexing, providing water and all of that.

They waved those and said, we're going to buy it anyway.

And according to the contract that the supervisors voted on, a little bit before this became so controversial, they have the right to do that.

They can close the deal, basically whenever they want, as long as they have the money.

Apparently they have the money.

What the supervisors were voting on this week wasn't so much anything that triggers the purchase.

That is kind of an add on, a side deal, where Beale's offering to put some money into funding some local scholarships for STEM students and mostly a bunch of unspecified stuff that they will decide later.

And what they're touting as a commitment to use renewable energy to power the data center, although it's incredibly vague and basically unenforceable.

The terms of the contract say, they would never have to pay a penalty, essentially, if they don't do what they are, say they're committing to do.

Yeah, Yana one of the things that stood out to me, at least in the reporting that I read, was that we've seen so much opposition to Project Blue, especially at public meetings.

It almost felt like 99 to one, in essence.

From the reporting I saw, it did seem like there were some union-related folks who were really pushing for the construction jobs, because that has been one of the arguments that is this going to have any sort of economic impact?

Data centers don't employ that many people, but construction jobs might be different.

What did you make of the different dynamic from this one?

I think what we're seeing is just that labor comes out in force, and I think that's what we saw here.

I think that's also, to me, doesn't change the level of concern around it, because No Desert Data Center folks have been almost at every meeting now for months and months.

But I think as this moves closer, I think the jobs that will come from this, to me, are gonna be what to watch for what the community impact will be at the start, given that we know that there's, as of now, no clear end user for this.

I think that what happens around construction will, to me, show what this means for the community in the immediate term.

Yeah, Alisa, what do you think?

Yeah, I mean, I think it was interesting to see this latest sort of Board of Supervisors meeting showdown, this time included those, a lot of audience members had those yellow construction vests.

I mean, some folks were there to talk about other operations like mining.

But that's something we saw in these larger meetings when this deal was still before the city.

So it sounds like, at least in some capacity, unions are speaking up about wanting this project, since they have secured, it sounds like some labor deals.

But the questions about how this is actually gonna look still remain, I think it was, Andres Cano mentioned, like, we don't still know the main question, answer to this question, which is, who is this for?

Because Amazon has reportedly pulled out, Meta has reportedly pulled out.

So at this point, it's not clear who the end user is gonna be, aka who this is for.

Yeah, and Supervisor Cano also was disturbed by, he related a story that happened to his grandmother, says, "These projects don't always work out the way they're pegged to."

Nick, did you feel like the environment was any different from what you've seen from other public meetings?

Interesting to me is I reported in Wisconsin before this, and there was a huge data center project just north of Milwaukee, where I was reporting that for months, we were reporting on it as it was moving through the city government.

And there was some people speaking about it at public meetings, but really nothing significant.

As soon as it's announced, after I've left, that OpenAI was the end user, it's just this wave of mobilization that me looking back on there now, I'm thinking, where did this come from?

And it all came after the public process basically concluded.

With Project Blue, it seems like the timing was a little better, but still there's the sense that often people feel like they only hear about these projects once it's too late, even if the press has been reporting on them before that.

Well, Yana, that leads, oh, go ahead Dylan, please.

I think we see the folks in the construction trades right now especially concerned because there's not a residential housing boom going on right now, despite the understood need that we gotta have more places for more people to live that's not being invested in the same way.

The Trump administration is dialing back on investments in infrastructure, public infrastructure, not spending nearly as much money as had been planned.

And the future of the RTA is a little bit up in the air ahead of that March election.

Put together, that's a lot of jobs.

And so they see this as an opportunity to at least maintain some of those jobs.

So why they show up that way is very understandable.

Yeah, I think they mentioned too, I know union folks that I talked to back in the summer talked about having to travel to Phoenix or Pinal County for these bigger jobs that do have a labor contract.

So it's understandable that people want to have jobs here.

I thought one other interesting thing that Supervisor Cano mentioned was just the long history that Tucson has with industry and the consequences of industry in some regards.

He talked about water contamination related to TCE, which has been a decades long issue that Southside residents have faced.

I don't remember exactly how he worded it, but that the community shouldn't be told just to trust us and nothing else because they know already the consequences of what that can mean in the longterm.

We are to this day, seeing the impacts of water contamination on particularly the Southside of Tucson.

Yeah, I wanna go back to Nick's point about what happened in Wisconsin.

Let's talk about secrecy and how that played into this and the advance on an NDA, at least at the Tucson City Council level.

So what significance is there and how much is this NDA, how much is this NDA advance happening because of Project Blue?

Yeah, I mean, I think that Tucson has, following the anchor directed Tucson over Project Blue has taken a number of concrete steps.

Its ordinance for large water users was part of that.

So the NDA policy passed at this week's city council meeting basically makes a template for companies to sign if they want Tucson to keep data confidential.

That is for three years initially, which is significantly longer than the county's version of an NDA document that they've also put forward since in response to Project Blue, that's only six months as an initial term.

So I think the question of if Project Blue came now and then they signed a three year NDA, would some of the concerns about transparency still be happening?

It's a fair question.

But I think one thing I found really interesting thinking about Project Blue and then thinking about the Marana immigration detention center conversation, the smelter in Benson, and also I was reading another Beale infrastructure project in Oklahoma.

I think there's just so much anger about how these projects come to people.

And I think, at least for me, I'm just learning like what are the actual public levers that exist for people to feel like they have been given enough information about a big project in their community.

Yeah, and Dylan, a question that comes to mind for me, this has not been a shy, wallflowerish community when it comes to certain projects, but it does feel to me, and obviously I've spent a lot of time in Phoenix, sorry everybody, but is this a new age of activism in Tucson to some extent activated by ICE raids, by Project Blue, by some other things?

I think there are some folks who, their buttons have been pushed and their levers have been pulled in new ways by this.

And I think especially their feeling that there are these unseen outside forces coming to Tucson trying to do big things and potentially take advantage of us.

One thing about the cities, my understanding is that before the council were to vote on anything that was covered by an NDA, they would have to, the NDA would end, so the info would be public and that so that there would be some kind of time period for people to go poking through the paperwork to see who are we actually helping here.

Interesting.

All right, let's completely change up here, Alisa.

Let's talk about Attorney General Mayes joining 19 other attorneys general.

Related to the Trump administration wanted to charge businesses $100,000 for H-1B visas, which sounded like an outrageous sum, but what's the basis of the lawsuit?

Well, essentially the lawsuit argues that this is unconstitutional and goes against rulemaking, procedures when creating a new rule, specifically that Congress is tasked with deciding whether to raise the fee for H-1B visas and that that process is meant to be done through a public comment period, things like that.

This was done through a presidential proclamation, so very different process.

But just to give a context for what H-1B visas are, a lot of people tie them to sort of like tech jobs, but as Mayes mentioned in the press release about this lawsuit and also the lawsuit itself, that H-1B covers a lot of different fields, rural schools like the Nogales School District, the School District in Buckeye, rely on H-1Bs to hire staff and teachers.

That's also true for researchers, special researchers with particular expertise in certain fields or religious practitioners, teachers, people in medicine.

So it's a huge range and yes, of course, tech.

It's also a visa that's already capped yearly and it's a complex process for getting around that cap.

You know, maybe you have a very specialized skill or a higher degree, but the other thing is that there's just a lot of questions about what this actually means, when it's going to take effect, who it's going to take effect for.

And yeah, I think Mayes' lawsuit is one of several groups that are opposing this action.

And so I wonder, Yana, any thoughts on this?

I'm wondering if this would disproportionately affect Arizona in some way.

Yeah, that's a good question.

There's many ways I imagine it would.

I also used to be an education reporter and report in rural schools and I think just thinking about what it would mean to get this money, also in schools that have facility issues and that courts have found don't get as much money from the state as urban districts for those facility issues.

So I just wonder how this impacts students in the long run to have to pay this.

There is this perception, as you said, that H-1B visas are for highly paid tech workers.

People getting multiple six figures to work for Google or Facebook or whomever.

And sure, that happens, but as you said, great many rural schools rely on these workers.

Also rural hospitals, medical clinics, it's very difficult to recruit somebody to go be a doctor in the middle of nowhere.

And so we end up importing doctors to these places.

What makes that point especially interesting, a political standpoint is, unless I'm wrong about this, this was a divide.

Not rural hospitals, not rural teachers, but a divide in the MAGA world was because folks like Elon Musk were saying, wait a second, you're gonna make it a lot harder for tech workers to come in.

Is that something that even if, to a lot of us, it's more important rural hospitals and rural schools, is that something that could actually put a fly in the ointment on this is more the tech worker angle even if these other things are so important?

Because maybe there are a lot of people on certain side of the aisle who are not gonna be moved as much by the rural hospital, they might be moved by, this might affect business and the economy.

Yeah, that's a good question.

I think it's a hard one to answer because so many immigration changes have happened even in the last couple of weeks since Thanksgiving even.

And a lot of them have been things that have included whispers of some sort of bipartisan opposition.

But it's hard to say how far that opposition actually goes and what it means in real life.

I think because of the unknowns around this H-1B new fee, I think the question remains about how much lawmakers in general are gonna be speaking up about it.

Mayes' lawsuit or rather the lawsuit of these 20 attorneys general is kind of the first we've heard about it since September.

Or rather there was another lawsuit that was filed by religious groups and private industry.

But really it's, yeah, it feels like one of so many changes that I don't know it's gonna garner the support.

But certainly when it was first announced, there was a lot of, including like Elon Musk saying, hey, what's the situation here?

And also questions about like, oh, I mean, I had, I remember immigration attorneys saying that they were calling their clients saying, come to the US within the next like 48 hours before this takes effect because we don't even know if you'll be allowed to come back in.

We don't know if this applies to current H-1B visa holders, people who are still in the process.

We have no idea what it's gonna look like.

So come back if you wanna make sure that you get to the US.

So that was over a weekend essentially.

Nick, I wanna bring you in on this one.

You had the good fortune to cover the Tucson City Council voting on middle housing.

First of all, I gave us a quick background of folks who don't know Governor Hobbs signed some legislation.

What in fact is middle housing?

Can you define that for us?

Middle housing, it means duplexes, triplexes, what some people like to call fourplexes by now, townhouses.

That kind of housing type that the state legislature in 2024 required all cities with over 75,000 people in Arizona to allow within a mile of their downtowns.

So what the Tucson City Council, and the deadline to do so was this coming January 1st, what the Tucson City Council at the end chose to do after a lot of speculation about who would vote which way, they chose to make this change for all residential neighborhood in Tucson.

So not just that one mile radius, but almost the entire city with the exception of some areas that are technically considered rural within city limits.

Was it contentious?

Well, the final vote was not so contentious.

Only one council member voted against making it citywide.

That was Kevin Dahl from Ward 3, although before that three council members had backed a proposal to make the change in a smaller area.

But in the end, two of those council members backed the final proposal anyway.

So it did not appear as contentious in the end as it maybe some people expected it to be, but there was certainly a lot of public opposition and support for the plan that was also vocalized at meetings.

Councilman Dahl was looking to limit it to a certain area, didn't want it to be the entire city.

Yeah, he wanted to start it out in a smaller area, just to see how it goes, see what demand is like, see what the effect is before expanding it.

Dylan, what do you think about this?

Well, the potential issue is now, as soon as this takes effect, you have a property right that can't be withdrawn.

The city can't go, there's no take backsies here.

You gave somebody a property right to develop their property in a certain way if they so choose.

And there are potentially ways that building codes could be switched up a little bit to perhaps limit things because that wouldn't change the zoning ability.

But it does create the possibility of people building a fourplex in a neighborhood that's otherwise just a bunch of single family ranch houses.

Will that happen?

Probably not.

Other cities around the country have done things like, you did a bunch of digging into this, didn't you?

I did a little bit.

I went down a rabbit hole this morning.

It doesn't happen, right?

Not really.

I mean, again, there's more flexibility for a variety of housing types.

There's a lot of people that that's gonna be really helpful to, I live in a townhouse, so I'm not opposed to townhouses.

But it definitely people who, politicians especially, who present this as some kind of solution to the housing affordability issue, it's misleading.

The market conditions for building residential houses right now are just not good, and that's why their supply is low.

And cities that have done changes like this, data's starting to show that it doesn't really impact supply a whole lot.

And in fact, the effect it might have on cooling price growth has more to do with the way it changes home buyers and seller's behavior in ways that researchers aren't quite sure about yet.

But not because of supply.

Yana, you want to weigh in on this?

Yeah, I think, yeah, I think it's interesting to see zoning as the tool in which the city is trying to kind of make some change.

They also have a nonprofit housing development arm.

I think that's been really interesting.

Something I haven't reported a ton on, but I'm looking forward to.

But yeah, I think the other thing, just thinking about the report that I was reading, said that Tucson needs 63,000 more units built in 2024-2025 to meet under development, the homelessness need, and then growing population.

And I just don't see us moving towards that.

I mean, that's just like a massive amount of housing.

And I don't know that this proposal-- One of our biggest challenges is, in addition to just the straight up need for additional units is so much of our housing stock is really old and worn out and wasn't constructed in a great manner to begin with.

We spent decades in Tucson quickly throwing up homes as the sunbelt boomed.

And my house is kind of on the tail end of that a little bit, I think.

My house was built in 1973.

It's a ranch house.

We've got terrible windows that need to be upgraded.

That's gonna cost me a fortune.

Just all of those things, right?

Not that my house is a nice place to live, but there are plenty of folks who live in places that are much worse off.

In addition to like that need.

Yeah, Nick.

I would just add that I think people should remember that this was a state mandate.

Tucson had to make this change, at least for part of the city.

And also, I think it's worth remembering that real estate interests developers are very well connected lobby at the local and state level.

So when you see housing shortage, housing affordability issues kind of addressed through these changes that really just make it easier for developers down the line, there might be some coordination going on there where developers might see this as an opportunity to make their lives easier in the future.

An example that cynicism is not lost on the young.

Alisa, what are your thoughts on this?

I mean, I think just to echo what Dylan was saying, I think there's, and obviously, Yana, there's a lot of ton of housing that's needed.

And the housing that we do have is, it needs work.

Thinking about that stat, I'm not sure if it's even still relevant anymore, but that 10% of Tucson's housing is mobile homes.

That's a huge number.

We've seen a lot of issues with mobile homes, even the last couple of months.

And I know mobile homes have also been put forth as a potential affordable housing solution.

They don't do well in the heat, not always depending on what the situation is.

There was a great documentary.

I think, Yana, you were involved in that.

Yes.

So, Yana, how does that, yeah.

I mean, I think that I often wanna have mobile homes in the conversation around affordable housing.

And there are both city and county programs that help people upgrade their mobile homes.

A lot of the stock that we have in Tucson, much like other housing, is really, really old.

And I think that is the challenge to keeping it kind of like climate friendly.

But yeah, there's also a federal grant that just came in that is going to help Tucson keep that stock more available for folks.

Dylan, as we wrap this up, I wanna have a quote that Councilmember Miranda Schubert gave the Sentinel.

It quote, "Feels very contradictory if we're going to admit that there's a housing emergency on the one hand, and they'd be too scared to implement new solutions in order to address it.

To me, emergencies mean no more business as usual."

End quote.

I think she was trying to counter Council Member Dahl on that one.

But I sort of wanna get into the politics of this.

I mean, she is a newbie.

She's just on the council and saying some pretty bold things.

How much do you think this will impact anything going forward on the council?

To have someone this outspoken, this new?

It certainly affects the Overton Window of discussions.

Can one member of the council have a major impact?

Sometimes.

Can say that.

To her point about the, the city has declared a housing emergency, which is, that's about all the substance that really has.

It's a kind of a label they're putting on the rest of their efforts to do something about it.

But does that mean anything in particular?

No, not really.

Okay.

As we wrap up the last couple of minutes, Nick, let me go to you briefly on this.

You had a story about the council voting for a transit safety and security action plan.

Even though, so violent crimes are uncommon, it does feel like people are feeling like there's less safety and some have tied it to free fares and whatnot.

What's the significance of this vote?

I think the significance of the plan itself is that a lot of the bus driver's concerns got heard by the city.

I mean, if you look at point by point, what the plan proposes, like more cameras, more of a police presence, and then you listen to what city officials explained as the process behind those changes in public meetings, they all pretty much came from the unionized bus drivers on Sun Tran.

So while the plan certainly might have an effect on overall safety and security on public transit, I think in the more immediate sense, it might kind of give bus drivers a few of the things that they've been looking for for a long time now.

Yana, what about free fares being a factor in this?

That did seem to be something that people were interested in changing potentially.

Yeah, I think that that is, that's something that I've heard and I think supporters of free fares disagree with that analysis.

I do think that the bus driver's unions, where I've seen labor show up at city council.

And so I think that it is, yeah, I think the pressure to have enough bus drivers who are working the city buses is a big part.

Big picture on this, Dylan, what do you think?

Free fares, will they make it through the next year?

I wouldn't bet on it either way, actually.

While significant, yeah.

It did bring, I think that's very much up in the air.

But is there gonna be still activity tying it to, with people feel less safe?

And is there an argument to be made, oh, more people will take this?

Because I think that's also the juxtaposition of people who are addicts, which is very different than someone who's committing a violent crime.

And it's, you know, never the twain shall meet, maybe I suppose.

I think so much of the rhetoric around it is about folks hanging out at bus stops, rather than anything that actually is about riding the bus itself.

You know, that's where, you know, if you have a bunch of people who are congregating to do their drugs or get their drugs in that place, that's what is very apparent to everybody else who's driving by.

Okay, less than 30 seconds, Alisa.

Any thought on that?

Well, I mean, yeah, I think I took the bus just this past weekend.

So I certainly hope that it stays free.

And being on the bus is a normal experience with normal people everywhere.

But I do think, like Dylan mentioned, a lot of that, again, is just tying these very violent, very random incidents to the fare free bus transit we have in Tucson that, yeah, I think, we get into a lot of the reasons why it's kind of an easy scapegoat.

But I think at the end of the day, yeah, I don't think that violent random crime would go away because bus fares came back.

All right, we'll stop there.

That is it for this edition of The Press Room.

Thank you all for being here.

Thank you all for watching.

I'm Steve Goldstein.

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