The Scoop

A Conversation with Mayor Regina Romero

December 2, 2019 |

On December 2, 2019, Regina Romero made history when being sworn in as Tucson’s first female and first Latina mayor. At the end of November, I spoke with her about her background and what led her to the mayor’s seat, along with conversing about political, gender and racial power structures; environmental issues; Tucson’s arts, culture, and history; and the city’s transportation concerns. Some quotes have been edited for length and clarity. 

Born in Yuma and raised in Somerton, Arizona, Regina Romero has been a Tucsonan since 1992—drawn here both by siblings who moved to Tucson for education and economic opportunities, and by her being accepted to study at the University of Arizona. While taking classes at UA and Pima Community College, Mayor Romero became inspired to get involved with politics after taking a Chicano studies class at Pima with Professor Lupe Castillo.

“We talked about Chicanismo, about the history of the land and Mexican-Americans living for many generations in the Southwest (pre-Gadsden Purchase), and activism. We also talked about policy and needs, and the lack of participation of women and people of color in our democratic process. That really sparked a nerve with me,” Mayor Romero recalls.

Through her studies, Mayor Romero became a student activist. In 1995, she was invited to get involved with the Ward One City Council race, help with voter registrations, and go door-to-door to talk to constituents about issues and ask for their votes. 

“I started getting involved with community, and that’s what started my passion for the political process, in electing women and people of color that would represent the needs that I felt were important to me,” Mayor Romero says. 

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, 42.9 percent of Tucson’s populace identifies as Hispanic or Latina/o/x. Considering that Romero was Tucson’s first Latina elected to the Tucson City Council in 2007 and is now the first Latina mayor, we discussed the power structures that keep women and people of color, and especially women of color, from running for and being elected to public office. 

“It took a lot of years for me to even realize, ‘Oh, I could do this,’” Mayor Romero shares.

It took 12 years from becoming politically activated to her running for and winning her Ward One City Council seat in 2007. Through her deep involvement with community, when the position vacated, she was called upon to fill it. 

“People started calling me saying, ‘Hey, you are the cofounder and the chair of Las Adelitas,’ a group that encourages political participation with Latinas and our families. So, they were saying, ‘Isn’t that the mission of your organization?’”

Romero heeded the call with some concerns, especially since she had an 18-month-old son at the time. The support of her husband and family was, and is, key considering that city councilors are paid $24,000 and the mayor’s salary is $42,000—a wage that hasn’t changed since 1999. Again in this year’s election cycle, voters said no to raises, thereby directly affecting the ability of mayor and city councilors to concentrate full-time on Tucson, since they have to work outside of their elected positions to make ends meet. The current gross annual salary of a councilperson is equivalent to a full-time, minimum wage job in Tucson as of January 1, 2020— at $12 an hour.

“That lack of living wages for elected officials—that’s both for the state and for city mayor and council—has been an impediment for other women and other workers of the community to step up and run,” Romero explained. “What we’ve seen is that either independently wealthy males or retired males have been ready and willing to not care about that pay to be able to serve. For me and my family, it’s been a struggle.

“In terms of why we see such lack of participation of women, especially women of color in our political processes, it’s because we continue perpetuating a cycle of racist systems that were not created for us. If you’re a working person, if I were a single mom with my two kids, there’s no way I would have ever been able to run. My husband is the breadwinner. I’ve also had to work, and for the last three years, I’ve had an amazing job with Center for Biological Diversity as the director of Latino engagement, which has been very flexible with me.”

At the top of Mayor Romero’s platform is addressing environmental concerns such as recycling, sustainability, and resiliency in the face of climate change. She explained that it is important for the city to partner with entities such as the UA, local and national environmental nonprofits, and ASU on these issues. 

“It is about finding solutions together for the biggest problems that we have as a society and a city. We have to change our mentality from ‘I can consume whatever I want and I can recycle it’ to ‘How do we reduce waste?’ Reduce, reuse, recycle. We have to reeducate our community and find a better way, because Trump is fighting with China, and China says, ‘No, we’re not going to take your trash.’”

When campaigning, Mayor Romero said that Tucsonans shared their climate change concerns, such as the rising temperature, the heat island effect, and water resources.

When it comes to water stewardship, Tucson Water has led the way in Arizona with its water-saving incentives such as offering rebates for residential rainwater and greywater harvesting systems, along with installing high-efficiency toilets and clothes washers. This fall, mayor and council passed a green infrastructure plan that will help direct stormwater that collects along Tucson’s streets into streetside basins. These efforts will provide water sources for planting and establishing trees in neighborhoods, which will help mitigate flooding and the heat island effect.

Tying into the above climate issues includes tackling carbon emissions. According to a 2017 study by the Environmental Protection Agency, transportation (cars, trucks, ships, trains and planes) accounted for 28.9 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Mayor Romero’s platform calls for transitioning the city’s vehicle and bus fleet to 90 percent electric by 2032, reducing single-occupant vehicle commuters from 76.5 percent to 50 percent by 2035, and implementing a transit system that is affordable and reliable.

“The City of Tucson hasn’t seen a bus rapid transit system. Once one is implemented, it is much less expensive than rail and as effective, and sometimes even more effective, because the most effective rapid transit, in any city, has the fewest stops. You want to get people moved fast to where they need to go. And so the City of Tucson is thinking about a tapping into federal transit-oriented development funds.”

In November, Romero was in Washington, D.C. for a conference and took the opportunity to set up meetings with federal agencies and met with the Federal Transportation Administration Administrator K. Jane Williams to discuss rapid transit, what makes those systems work well, and what to include in Tucson’s application for FTA funding.

“It was awesome to be able to have that conversation with her. It’s about diversifying our transit and mobility choices in Tucson. And as we look at the possibility of a potential expansion of a streetcar, we can’t forget that there is bus rapid transit that is successful in other cities. We’re studying the highest-used transit lines in the city, and of course we’re going to get input from the community.

“It’s important to start thinking as a jurisdiction about what makes sense and how to do it equitably, to make sure that we do not displace families, that we create affordability and maintain affordability to those lines that we want to see happen. We have to plan ahead and look holistically at how it’s going to affect the city of Tucson.

“We have to look beyond what we’ve traditionally done to move to the next level of progress.”

What do you love about Tucson, and its arts, culture, and history?

I love that Tucson is surrounded by mountains. I love the desert. I love the culture in Tucson. It feels like a small town, like everyone knows each other. Even if you don’t, people treat each other like they know each other. The food is amazing, and that’s why we’re a UNESCO City of Gastronomy. The history is amazing and so rich. It has been Tohono O’odham territory and Yaqui land. We were Spain once, then Mexico, then a U.S. territory. Tucson has always been very multicultural, with deep roots of Chinese, Mexican, Irish, and Jewish people. It’s a basin of different cultures here.

The arts scene is so awesome. It has its own unique funk and vibe. Tucson has a history of muralists and painters. We need to make sure that we follow and continue the tradition. What I’ve loved recently was seeing those murals throughout the community, especially concentrated in downtown, become again an attraction to people. People love them. We should expand on that and expand on making sure that we’re inclusive in celebration in arts of both color and the representative communities. We could make art available and easy to access for students and for working families throughout the city of Tucson. We need to continue investing not only in that but also arts programming in our parks; continue investing in the local talent that we have here and make art available and accessible, maybe by partnering with the school districts with their arts programs.

And, street art. Why not use art on the street? There’s this movement happening right now, called tactical urbanism, that promotes art on the street and that actually provides safe spaces for bicycles and pedestrians to use. It’s really cool. So, there’s many, many ideas and concepts that we can push on to expand that investment that we do as a community in the arts.

Zócalo Magazine – November 2019

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Interstate 11: A Road to Nowhere

June 19, 2019 |

Saguaro National Park West, looking into Avra Valley

Saguaro National Park West, looking into Avra Valley

Break out a map of the United States. Start at the Canadian border, at the Michigan town of Port Huron. Trace your finger through Flint and Lansing and down to Indianapolis. Arc southwestward through Paducah, Kentucky, to Memphis, then cross the Big Muddy near Greenville, Mississippi, and barrel down to Texarkana, Houston, and on to the Mexican border at Laredo and Brownsville.

You have just described what has been slugged Interstate 69, the so-called NAFTA Highway. It was approved way back when that trade agreement was first signed, with plans costing upwards of $2.5 billion. So far only segments have been built, since the federal government has been slack on infrastructure since the days of the Great Recession, and the current administration hates the very notion of trade agreements in the first place. About the only place where much activity is taking place is Texas, where, for the past decade, sections of the highway have been laid out and others constructed using funds from tolls, public-private partnerships, and fees imposed on commercial vehicles.

Now focus on Arizona. Draw a line from Nogales to just north of Green Valley. Jog to the west through the Avra Valley behind the Tucson Mountains. Follow a line roughly parallel to the existing Interstate 10 up to Casa Grande, then jog west again through the Maricopa Mountains to Buckeye. Go west more, across the wetlands of the Gila and Hassayampa Rivers, and follow Aguila Road and the Vulture Mine Road up to Wickenburg.

You have just described the southern reach of what has been designated Interstate 11, following US transportation conventions that number north-south highways sequentially from west to east and east-west highways from south to north. Like I–69, its ghostly counterpart, I–11 is meant to hasten the flow of goods from Mexico north to Canada and vice versa, connecting to roads leading to lucrative markets in Salt Lake City, Denver, the Bay Area, Seattle, and so forth.

Like I–69, portions of I–11 already exist in the form of a US 93 that runs north from Wickenburg to Kingman and thence to Las Vegas over the recently built Mike O’Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge at Boulder Dam. Beyond Las Vegas 93 has been improved only here and there, but planners at the Arizona Department of Transportation are itching to get going, Texas-style, without waiting for the rest of the Mountain West to catch up.

Now, highways are like water: as the old saying goes, water flows uphill toward money, and roads flow either to where money exists or where it can be made—one reason why, when Loop 202 was slated to be extended around the South Mountains of Phoenix, there was a quiet scramble to buy up the land where the road would be built. If you care to go up and have a look at that massive construction project, which is supposed to be finished by the end of this year, you’ll see another fact about highways: Though the roads themselves are comparatively narrow, they require huge tracts of land on either side of them to be bladed, cleared of vegetation, and leveled.

ADOT’s preferred route, across great stretches of undeveloped land, would visit destruction on scores of thousands of acres of prime Sonoran Desert land. Much of the Tucson stretch lies adjacent to Saguaro National Park and Tucson Mountain Parks. Although the plan overlooks the fact, I–11 would also isolate Ironwood Forest National Monument, which at least some members of the Trump Department of Interior have made efforts to decommission, the better to privatize it and make some of that longed-for money.

Says Kevin Dahl of the National Parks Conservation Association and a longtime environmental activist, “Improving I–19 and I–10 through Tucson would be so much more beneficial to our community’s transportation needs than a new freeway in a location and direction that almost no one in Pima County needs to travel. Add the facts that the new freeway has huge impacts and a huge cost, and we really do have to ask why this alternative has not been fully explored and reviewed. We and others who have been involved in scoping and stakeholder process have wondered why the emphasis on developing the problematic Avra Valley route.”

ADOT counters that it is offering alternatives, but it also makes plain that the route I asked you to trace from Nogales to Wickenburg is its preferred one, its first choice, the course it wants Arizonans to embrace, writing the collateral damage off as a cost of the progress that feeds The Machine. Some of its arguments seem to be stretches: for one thing, ADOT says, I–11 will have a “homeland security” dimension in the event that the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station at Wintersburg, which the new road will pass close to, blows a stack, allowing for the rapidly developing West Valley of Phoenix to be evacuated. And “rapidly developing” is no exaggeration: It’s the fastest-growing part of our fast-growing state. Small wonder that Bill Gates, the former Microsoft head who once was reckoned to be the richest man in the world, bought up a 20,000-acre tract of land between the White Tank and Belmont Mountains for a reported $80 million. The location, as it happens, is right in the path of the proposed interstate, assuring the likelihood of a handsome return on the investment.

Why build a new interstate that will destroy prime desert land, disrupt wildlife corridors, churn up public domain holdings, turn national parks and monuments into islands, and effectively bypass existing cities and their infrastructure in favor of seeding new ones in a state already strapped for water in the face of a quickly changing climate? Why, money, of course: Money for agricultural interests, trucking companies, landowners, developers, roadbuilders, all the usual suspects. Money for unseen future interests as well—perhaps for the Spanish conglomerate, for instance, that has turned the Indiana segment of Interstate 80, which American taxpayers paid for years ago, into a private toll road that generates billions of dollars annually. Doubtless such a concern is waiting in the wings, for, as former Bush administration US Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters notes, “While per-gallon fuel taxes served as a proxy for our highway needs in the past, the pending insolvency of the federal Highway Trust Fund proves that model to be unsustainable.” Funding new highways, in other words, will come from other sources—including the possibility of mileage taxes, private ownership, tolls, and the like.

Meanwhile, building I–11 along the route that ADOT’s planners hope for will cost untold billions of dollars—and at least $3.4 billion over improving existing highways in Tucson alone. Tucson civic leaders have voiced opposition to the new road precisely for the reason that the money would be better spent locally rather than bypass the city altogether. It would certainly be possible to use existing roads, though it would be messy: Just look at I–10 around Houston, parts of which in west of downtown run eleven lanes wide, and anyone who has to travel the interstate in town or between Tucson and Phoenix will probably not be enthusiastic at the prospect of yet more traffic filling an ocean of asphalt. Almost as if a threat as much as a scenario, some ADOT planners have even advanced the notion of a stacked I–10 through Tucson, the upper deck headed north and the lower deck headed south, which seems to offer a little slice of hell for future motorists.

That future is very much of concern, for unless vast pots of money magically appear, it may take ten or twenty years for a 268-mile-long new highway to be completed. A lot can happen in that time, including the possibility of driverless vehicles that can efficiently use existing roads—or the development of newer and better forms of transportation, such as high-speed trains, that can deliver goods transcontinentally in far less time than any semi could. The age of the highway and of the automobile may well be drawing to an end, should be drawing to an end, though there are powerful forces at work seeking to extract every last cent possible from a fossil-fuel-based economy and opposed to anything that looks progressive, renewable, or “soft.” One of the last big highway bills was passed under the Obama administration, and even there the president slated $8 billion for the development of high-speed intercity freight and passenger railroads. Retrograde in every respect, the Obama administration’s successors have been busy undoing that, of course.

How do you and I benefit from a road that will speed up the transport of winter vegetables from Mexico to Canada? How does Arizona benefit from a diminished, fragmented desert ecosystem? It doesn’t, and unless you’re a mogul in the making, you and I don’t. But those powerful interests are at work, and landowners and developers, especially in the Phoenix area, are already counting their money as the Valley continues its inexorable sprawl, now to the west.

This is a road to nowhere, and it should be opposed. The Arizona Department of Transportation is accepting comments from the public until July 8, and we urge all those who care about the health of the Sonoran Desert to urge ADOT to find other alternatives—whether following existing roads or scrapping the project altogether. Comments—a simple “no” will do—can be sent online at www.i11study.com/Arizona, delivered by voice at (844) 544–8049, or sent by mail to I–11 Tier 1 EIS Study Team, c/o ADOT Communications, 1655 W. Jackson Street Mail Drop 126F, Phoenix, AZ 85007.

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