By Roland Murphy for AZBEX
There are any number of reasons magazines rarely take on Special Coverage projects.
The amount of time it takes to write everything is massive, and the time spent in research is often several times the writing time.
They take up a lot of space. While that’s not nearly as great a concern in the digital age as it was when we were printing everything, every page still has to be planned, prepped and laid out as seamlessly and efficiently as possible, which is another big outlay of time and talent.
Those are really secondary considerations, though. The three main issues are:
1) A project, circumstance or topic usually isn’t expansive enough to warrant the effort;
2) There’s usually not enough depth and breadth of information available to produce a complete story;
3) There’s no path to an objective and reasonable conclusion based on the information at hand.
Once in the bluest of blue moons, however, the stars align. You find an issue that takes several separate stories to tell, and you find enough information that you have a decent chance of doing each segment justice in assembling the whole picture.
When that happens, you’re pretty much obligated to take it on.
When HB 2685 was passed in the closing days of this year’s regular session of the Arizona Legislature, it passed with an extreme amount of political and popular support. The bill would have put a request to renew Maricopa County’s half-cent transportation sales tax – widely known as Proposition 400 – on a special election ballot in spring 2023. Its approval was considered a slam dunk.
When Gov. Doug Ducey vetoed HB 2685 in July, he put in motion a potentially generation-level catastrophe for Arizona infrastructure and economic development.
Over the next several pages, we’ll take the deepest dive possible into the history of Prop 400 and its vision for the future, the program’s economic development and social impact, and what the next steps may be for a program that has, in no hyperbolic terms, become an essential driver of modern life in Greater Phoenix.