[Source: Teya Vitu and Blake Morlock, Tucson Citizen] -- The bill to extend the Rio Nuevo tax increment by 30 years has stalled in the state Senate, and Tucson leaders worry the measure could die before getting an up or down vote. The tax measure would inject an estimated $1 billion into downtown Tucson to make it the vibrant cultural center of the community. The Rio Nuevo shared-revenue legislation would extend the financing plan's life span from 2013 to 2043 adding a projected $800 million to the $156 million Tucson voters approved in 1999. Keeping the bill alive will require the whole delegation to demand it from a legislature dominated by Phoenix Republicans hesitant to spend so much money in Tucson, said Rep. Steve Huffman, R-Oro Valley. "If we're going to get this done we need the whole delegation (to say) that this is a priority to everybody in the southern Arizona delegation," Huffman said.
Such devotion could cost Tucson other things, such as the University of Arizona faculty retention money and cash to keep Tucson's only trauma center running, said state Sen. Toni Hellon. Republican leaders could force Arizona lawmakers to choose. "The sad part is when you are up here long enough and pushing legislation, everyone knows what's important to us and they go for the jugular," Hellon said.
The bill passed out of the Senate rules committee April 12. Bills usually head right to the Senate floor after that, but the Rio Nuevo bill still has not surfaced. "That's why we we're concerned," said Mary Okoye, director of intergovernmental relations at City Hall. In the past month, city leaders crafted amendments to allay Senate doubts about the legislation. Okoye and the Southern Arizona Leadership Council tried to rally local legislators, who succeeded to get the bill out of the House and the Senate commerce committee. "There's a swirl of rumors," about why the bill has stalled, said Ron Shoopman, the council's president. The group prodded the southern Arizona delegation to get the bill moving. "What we don't want to see is for it to die just sitting there."
