Costs for two unrelated projects, renovation of the old Southern Pacific Railroad at the east end of downtown and completion of the downtown leg of the Barraza Aviation Highway, have inexplicably been lumped in with Rio Nuevo. Some of the private projects have grown, and the museums are all clamoring for more cash. Scheduled to go in on the west side of the Santa Cruz, the parkway would be squeezed in between the current river park on one side and the archaeological sites and museums on the other. Tucson has already done too much harm to its riverfront, and I-10 irrevocably damaged the city's center. Rio Nuevo was supposed to re-create the spirit of Tucson's early days.
Some lawmakers sure are hot and bothered about the initiative process.
Even worse is House Bill 2556, also co-sponsored by McClure. It sets up a government review of initiatives before supporters start gathering signatures. Under the new regs, the Secretary of State gets to give an official title for each measure, which will be appended to the petition before signatures can be collected. So instead of the Citizens Growth Management Initiative, the Sec of State can elect to call it the Radical Environmentalist Economic Collapse Initiative. Several of its ballot descriptions were so biased against ballot measures that the courts had to order them to rewrite their descriptions.