HIGH FIVE FOR THE BIG MAN ON CAMPUS

posted by Michael Chihak

Can a straight-laced, seemingly mild-mannered physics professor find love and happiness in the high-fiving, good-old-boy world of big-time sports?

We’ll soon find out.

Robert Shelton will leave his perch as president of the University of Arizona this summer to become executive director of the Fiesta Bowl in Phoenix, his hometown.

That someone of Shelton’s stature is taking the lead of this scandal-tainted organization will put an even brighter spotlight on what had until this spring been a sports organization with a record of phenomenal success.

Shelton will be responsible for seeing that the success resumes after this year’s pause to get rid of a CEO who played fast and loose with the organization’s money. He handed it out in the form of questionable if not illegal political contributions, spent big chunks on high-roller entertaining and even threw himself a $30,000 birthday party.

Shelton at his introductory press conference this week didn’t want to dwell on all that, understandably, but rather insisted more than once that the Fiesta Bowl needs to move forward.

And move forward is what he is doing, from his situation of the last five years, caught between the Legislature and the regents on one side and the university community on the other during unprecedented budget cuts, academic program consolidations and record tuition increases.

Considering that scenario, this Fiesta Bowl gig should be as much fun as a Saturday night fraternity kegger.

And for it, he’ll get paid about the same as being a university president – nearly a half-million dollars a year.

But when one looks at the repairs needed to bring the Fiesta Bowl to back respectability among prudent people, maybe Shelton is getting short-changed.

FIESTA BOWL SCANDAL MAY HAVE MINIMAL EFFECT

posted by Michael Chihak

Arizona benefits from the Fiesta Bowl and related sports and community events to the tune of $250 million a year, and that increases to $400 million in the years the state hosts the college football championship game, a university economist said.

Dennis Hoffman, professor in the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, said his team will complete its report on this year's Fiesta Bowl and Bowl Championship Series game within a week and turn it over to bowl officials. It is expected to show an impact in the same range as four years ago, which was $400 million, Hoffman said in an interview for Arizona Week.

This spring, the Fiesta Bowl board of directors fired executive director John Junker after an audit report showed misspending on entertainment, including in one case at a Phoenix strip club, attempts at political influence and a $30,000 birthday party Junker threw for himself.

The bowl this week hired University of Arizona President Robert Shelton as executive director, saying he is the right person to bring back credibility, respectability and accountability to the bowl.

Will the scandal hurt the economic power of the Fiesta Bowl? Hoffman was asked.

"Bad PR is bad PR, and it certainly leaves an imprint at some level," he said. "How to measure that is certainly challenging."

Hoffman said that with Shelton coming on board, the Fiesta Bowl ought to regain stature as it cleans up its books and reestablishes fiscal responsibility.

FIESTA BOWL BY THE NUMBERS

posted by Michael Chihak

By DIANA SOKOLOVA, Arizona Week intern

Robert Shelton will get a slight increase in total compensation when he leaves the presidency of the University of Arizona to become executive director of the Fiesta Bowl.

Shelton now earns $470,000 in base salary, a $50,000 housing bonus and another $94,600 in benefits, according to the Arizona Republic. At the Fiesta Bowl, he will be paid $455,000 in base salary, plus benefits that will bring his total compensation to $620,000, the Fiesta Bowl says.

Fired Fiesta Bowl executive director John Junker made $673,88 in fiscal 2010. He was fired after being accused of excessive spending and questionable spending for political influence.

The bowl’s economic impact in Arizona is more than $230 million a year, according to a report in the Arizona Republic. During the bowl’s 41-year history, the Fiesta Bowl and its surrounding events have generated more than $3 billion in economic impact in the state, the Fiesta Bowl estimated.

The Fiesta Bowl organization oversees two annual college football bowl games, the Fiesta Bowl and the Insight Bowl, and 40 other events. It also is part of the collegiate Bowl Championship Series network, hosting the national collegiate football championship every four years.

The Fiesta Bowl reports that in its 41-year history, more than 3 million out-of-state visitors have traveled to Arizona for it and surrounding events. The Fiesta Bowl has hosted a record seven national championship games.

The BCS national championship game drew 78,603 to University of Phoenix Stadium in January, the biggest crowd in the stadium's history, the Fiesta Bowl reported.

WILDFIRE CAUSE AND CURE: ECOLOGICAL AND POLITICAL

posted by Michael Chihak

By DIANA SOKOLOVA, Arizona Week intern

Wildfires are ravaging Arizona’s wilderness, chasing thousands from their homes, closing popular high-country cool spots and draining money from already hard-pressed governmental agencies.

A carelessly tended campfire, a tossed cigarette butt or a lightning strike are blamed. But the cause is much bigger and the responsibility of many.

Arizona Week on Friday will explore the forest management, environmental and political decisions behind the state’s vulnerability to large-scale, virtually unstoppable fires.

A human-caused wildfire burning for 15 days in eastern Arizona’s high country and now moving into New Mexico is likely to become the largest fire in state history. The Wallow Fire, named for the Bear Wallow Wilderness in which it started in the White Mountains, already has burned 452,000 acres in eastern Arizona’s high country, destroying 29 homes and other structures.

The Horseshoe 2 Fire in southeastern Arizona has been burning for more than five weeks, consuming 148,000 acres and has damaged or destroyed nine homes and 14 outbuildings.

Several other fires also are burning in the state. No human life has been lost.

These and other wildfires seem unrelenting, but should they be?

“Trying to exclude fire in naturally fire-prone places only stirs up an ecological insurgency,” fire management expert Stephen J. Pyne wrote in an op-ed piece for Sunday’s Arizona Republic. Pyne is a professor at the School of Life Sciences at the Arizona State University.

National Geographic magazine backgrounds the country’s wildfire situation on its Website, reporting that more than 100,000 fires burn 4 million to 5 million acres on average in the United States every year.

Although wildfires are catastrophic and expensive to humans, they play an essential role in nature and are considered to be necessary.

In his Arizona Republic article, Pyne discussed several approaches to prevent wildfires. Letting fires burn freely in the backcountry, “is cheap, safe and ecologically benign.” Another method is setting so called prescribed fires. It can help prevent wildfires and do the required ecological work of removing undergrowth, brush, and clean forests from litter. Large-scale landscaping along with building roads can change the behavior of fires.

Each of these approaches is doomed to failure if used on its own, Pyne said. What is needed, he said, is a mixture of strategies, adjusted to particular places, from both ecological and political rationales.

THE PERILS OF NOT-SO-LIVE TELEVISION

posted by Michael Chihak

A better scenario could not be produced than the one that has come about for Arizona Week's episode for tonight.

We're tackling the hot topic of extending unemployment benefits in the state, an issue that affects 15,000 unemployed people now and perhaps double that many later this year. Those are people for whom the 79 weeks of state and federal jobless payments have or are about to run out.

Gov. Jan Brewer called the Legislature into special session for today to make a one-word change in state law to allow the benefits to be extended another 20 weeks, at a cost to the federal -- not state -- government of $3.2 million a week.

Legislative leaders acted today as if they had been dragged to their seats, and in fact a number didn't show up for the hastily called session, probably because they had made other plans. The House convened and recessed first, and the Senate, after a good bit of political rancor and rhetoric, recessed a bit later.

Both will be back Monday at 1:30, and that means benefits will run out, on Saturday, for those long-term unemployed.

The good news is that for Arizona Week, we can have a timely and lively discussion of what's happened so far and what might happen next week, without worry that it will be usurped by on-rushing political news.

DO THE UNEMPLOYED GET BUSY AS BENEFITS WANE?

posted by Michael Chihak

Economic analysis exists to show that people take longer to find new jobs when they are receiving unemployment payments.

That is according to Stephen Slivinski, a senior economist with the Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank. "Studies show that people put off their search for work until their benefits are about to run out," Slivinski said. He will expand on his comments on Arizona Week Friday.

Meantime, George Cunningham, chair of the Grand Canyon Institute, which describes itself as a centrist think tank, said the payments are needed to bridge people to new jobs and to boost the economy. "This is not about lazy people, this is not about people with entitlement. This is about economics, this is about bringing money into this state.”

Cunningham, also on Arizona Week Friday, argued that the multiplier effect of infusing money into the economy would make the 20 extra weeks of benefits being considered for out-of-work Arizonans worth more than $167 million to the state's economy.

Slivinski said even if such payments are approved, they shouldn't come before an audit to show that people are complying and the money is being properly spent.